It was Tuesday evening, September 16th, and people all across America were settling down for the first performance of a new CBS comedy and music program. Rather than watching the show on fifty-inch TV screens with names like Sony, Samsung and Panasonic, since the year was 1941, they would be gathered in front of AM radio sets bearing such then familiar names as Philco, Emerson and RCA.
In Little Rock, Arkansas, they would be tuned to their local CBS affiliate, KLRA , the “Voice of the Wonder State,” to hear the new program called “The Arkansas Traveler” starring one of that State’s favorite personalities, Bob Burns. The show was a combination of a humorous, homespun Southern monologue by Burns and a situation comedy filled with an array of Burn’s fictitious relatives and neighbors from his home town of Van Buren, as well as novelty music provided by Spike Jones and His City Slickers and popular songs by the big-name band vocalist from Texas, Ginnie Simms.
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I listened to one of these shows on Youtube. It was dated and a bit hokey but overall not bad.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to check it out.
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