David and Art - A World Largely Disappeared

Back in the early 1930s, a national government agency called the Federal Radio Commission—which would become the Federal Communications Commission in 1934—stipulated that all recorded music being played on the air had to be clearly announced as such.That is, a station couldn’t play a record and let the listeners think it was a live performance. This was done in large part to protect the jobs of working musicians. Imagine that.The Commission said that “the use of ordinary commercial records in a city with ample original program resources is an unnecessary duplication of service otherwise available to the public and the crowded channels should not be wasted in this manner.”Music was something that people were accustomed to hearing live.

Accordingly, many stations had a stable of their own house musicians and musical acts, and regularly scheduled music shows.At the same time, there were independent acts that basically went from station to station being guests on those regular programs, many of which had sizeable regional or even national audiences.It was a whole musical biosphere.

Last week when we were busy extoling the Geezinslaws, I mentioned another duo called Homer and Jethro.They were one of these acts that travelled around to radio stations—in their case in Kentucky and Tennessee—before settling in for a while in Springfield, Missouri at a powerhouse station called KWTO.In the early 1950s, KWTO began broadcasting a bluegrass and country show called the Ozark Jubilee.It helped start the careers of Brenda Lee, Webb Pierce, Carl Perkins, and Porter Wagoner

The most famous such radio show would surely be the Grand Ole Opry that began airing on Nashville station WSM in 1925.Also in Tennessee, there was a Knoxville station called WROL that started a show in 1929 that featured players like Roy Acuff and Bill Monroe.

All in all, some of the biggest names in American music history music got their start playing on these regularly-scheduled radio shows on stations whose broadcast strength often enabled them to reach millions of people.Included in this roster of stars is one whom we’ve recently lost, and she was one of our dwindling connections back to this era.

Her name was Dolly Parton, and since she deserves our full attention, let’s talk about her next week.

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