Sunday Morning Radio
Sunday morning radio was a mix of news, religion, talk and music. Among the more interesting programs:
8:00 AM: Tom Glazer's Ballad Box on WJZ
Tom Glazer was among the group of left-leaning musicians of the 1940s who wrote and sang in the folk music style. He was born to Russian immigrant parents in 1914 in Philadelphia. He lost his father to the flu epidemic of 1918 and spent part of his childhood in an orphanage. He came to New York as a teenager and worked at Macy's while attending City College at night. He took a job with the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. where he became involved with the famed musicologist Alan Lomax.
Glazer was on the board of People's Songs, a Popular Front organization to which many of the folksingers of the era belonged. Although the members of this group called themselves folk singers, much of what they sang were not traditional folk songs like the ones archived by Lomax but rather songs of protest. The People's Songs crowd was dogmatic about both politics in which they took a hard left position and music in which the pop music style was anathema. Glazer's songs from the period included "Because All Men Are Brothers," "When the Country Is Broke" and "Citizen C.I.O." In 1946 he wrote "Talking Inflation Blues" to protest the end of price controls. The song was recorded much later by Bob Dylan. Glazer also wrote songs for children, achieving his greatest fame in 1963 with "On Top of Spaghetti/" He later also wrote pop songs that were recorded by Frank Sinatra and Perry Como among others. But this came later.
He made his professional debut in 1943 at Town Hall in New York after performing the amateur circuit in Washington where Eleanor Roosevelt invited him to perform at the White House. He began his radio broadcasts on the ABC network in 1945. He shared his half-hour slot with news. He backed away from involvement with the activist Left in the early 1950s, as did a number of other members of the coterie either out of political disillusionment or for career reasons. Glazer remained a committed liberal. However when he wrote a song in honor of General MacArthur, some of his former comrades castigated him for his political deviation. Glazer died in 2003.
10 AM: National Pulpit of the Air on WEAF
A multitude of religious denominations were represented on Sunday morning radio including Judaism, even though Saturday was the Jewish sabbath. Perhaps the most significant was "The National Pulpit of the Air," which had aired on the NBC network since 1928.
Dr. Ralph W. Sockman was the featured preacher. A Time magazine article in January 1946 noted that he received 4,000 letters each week from listeners looking for spiritual advice, suggesting sermon topics or asking for a copy of one of his talks, making him the most prominent Protestant radio minister at least by this measure. Only Fulton J. Sheen on the Catholic side elicited an equivalent response. Sockman, an Ohio farm boy by birth, was the senior minister of swank Christ Church, a Methodist congregation that still resides in a beautiful Byzantine/Romanesque edifice adorned with Russian icons and Venetian mosaics on Park Avenue and 60th Street. (See here for photos of the interior). It was a far cry from the simple chapels of country Methodists and the services had more ceremony than most. Sockman also went on speaking tours around the country and frequently preached at the Ocean Grove Auditorium in New Jersey, which, with its 6,000 person capacity, was a forerunner of today's mega-churches. He also wrote a number of books on religious subjects and was known for his widely quoted epigrams and aphorisms.
Sockman belonged to mainstream Protestantism, the once dominant religious group in the United States and even at one time in New York City, but which is now a small minority dwarfed by Evangelicals, Catholics and secularists. It was still a potent force in the nation and city in 1946. He was known for the plain talk in his sermons and drew crowds to the morning and evening services in his church. In 1961 Time magazine said he was "generally acknowledged as the best Protestant preacher in the U.S." His sermon this Sunday was "Lord of All Life."
The January Time article said that Sockman had made several observations on postwar spiritual life based on the letters he had received:
"Many Americans, facing the atomic age and the multiplicity of postwar problems, have lost confidence in free will and their ability to control their destiny."
"Under the pressure of mass living, maintenance of individual values has taken on new importance."
"Laymen, increasingly impatient with denominational divisions in U.S. Protestantism, want greater church unity on high-policy levels."
"Americans as a whole - not only the minorities- recognize the need for greater religious and racial tolerance."
11:05 AM: Wings Over Jordan on WABC
Religious music from country gospel to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir could be heard on Sunday morning radio, One of the most significant and popular groups was the Cleveland-based gospel group Wings Over Jordan, which had a 25-minute radio show on the CBS network. The group's roots was the choir of Gethsemane Baptist Church. The church minister approached a local station about a broadcast in 1937. The station, WGAR, had a number of shows geared to Cleveland's various ethnic communities and so it began airing "The Negro Hour," featuring the choir and a homily from the Reverend Glenn T. Settle. The station's program director, a young white man named Worth Kramer, recognized a greater potential. He took over as the group's musical director, added new members to the group, bringing it up to 35 voices, and created new arrangements for their songs, transforming the ensemble from a standard church choir into a professional organization. The show quickly became a local hit and by January 1938 the show went national on CBS as "Wings Over Jordan."
In addition to music, the CBS show also had five-minute talks by prominent African Americans on issues of concern to the community. The audience included some whites as well. The group's members gave up their day jobs, traveling the county performing concerts as well as doing the radio show. They had a Good Friday concert that week in New York at Town Hall. But success brought dissension. The group broke up in 1947 over a salary dispute. "All Things Considered" on NPR did a story on the group in 2008 that can be found here. Time magazine ran a story in 1940.
Also of note Sunday mornings:
9:00 AM: Uncle Don on WOR
This kid's show debuted in 1928 and was at one time a widely popular show in New York where it used to air daily. It also aired on WOR weekdays at 5:00 PM. An urban legend claimed that a live mike caught host Don Carney referring to his audience as "little bastards" after sign off. There is no evidence this ever happened and the same story has been told of other kid show hosts.
9:00 AM: Sunday Men's Pages on WJZ
This talk show starred Bert Bacharach, a syndicated newspaper columnist and father of Burt Bacharach, the composer, debuted this Sunday. It was conceived as covering all aspects of "the man's world." The guest this day was Cuban singer Miguelito Valdes, known as "Mr. Babulu."
10:15 AM: Frank Kingdon on WOR
The liberal Kingdon was one of a stable of political commentators of all stripes who had opinion shows on the Mutual Broadcasting Netwok. Kingdon was a former minister, president of Newark College and head of the National Citizens Political Action Committee, one of the earliest PACs, affiliated with the CIO and the American Labor Party. He lost his radio show in 1947 after criticizing the FBI for red-baiting. In 1948 he became a target for the Far Left as well when he withdrew his support for the Progressive Party and the Henry Wallace campaign for president, charging that they had become Communist front organizations.
10:30 AM: Chaplain Jim on WOR
This soap opera had been created by the War Department in 1942 and was produced by the Hummert radio factory. It originally aired daily. The intent was to reassure the folks back home that their sons and daughters serving in the military had chaplains to offer them guidance. It also emphasized the importance of letters from home to maintain morale. Here is a 1942 Time magazine article on the show.
11:00 AM: The Fitzgeralds on WJZ
Ed and Pegeen Fitzgerald had a later start on Sundays for their radio program on which they discussed the day's news, books and events over breakfast in their apartment overlooking Central Park or their weekend country home. The show premiered in 1940 and aired for 42 years. Pegeen was a folksy liberal and Ed a cultured conservative.
11:00 AM: Snow Village Sketches on WOR
The short-lived return of a comic soap opera that had first appeared on NBC in 1928. Arthur Allen and Parker Fennelly portrayed rock-ribbed New Englanders in a rural New Hampshire town. Fennelly also portrayed New Englander Titus Moody on the Allen's Alley segment of the popular Fred Allen radio show Sunday nights. Later in life he appeared in the Pepperidge Farm commercials from 1956 to 1977.
11:15: FDR: One Year Later on WQXR
An evaluation one year after FDR's death from Jerome Nathanson, a leader of the New York Ethical Culture Society. Even the secularists had a voice on Sunday morning radio.
11:30: Brunch with Dorothy and Dick on WOR
Another late Sunday start for a popular breakfast morning show. This one starred Journal-American entertainment columnist Dorothy Kilgallen and her producer/actor husband Dick Kollmar. This one debuted in 1945 and had the same format as the Fitzgerald's program.
11:45: The Help Wanted Ads on WMCA.