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Forward Into The Past - Thanksgiving-style

Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 9:18 pm
by Gary Johnson
I was just listening to our good friend Randy S.'s annual holiday tribute to the day that the Pilgrims and the Indians first broke bread.
For those unaware ones you can find it here....http://spinitron.com/radio/playlist.php ... howid=9165

Anyone who has the slightest interest in our recorded history of comedy and music on wax would know that Mr. Skretvedt is one of our leading collectors of vintage 78's. His weekly 3 hr Sunday program on http://kspc.org/ plays everything under the sun; from classic and not so classic radio programs, records that you are familar with, records you have rarely heard,,,and then those records that you didn't know existed but assumed they did and now you had proof that they actually did...because he just played them.

That happened to me today during a segment featuring comic monologues about the upcoming holiday. There was a familiar B. Hope monologue taken from a World War II appearance - skewing all of the usual suspects. But then there was a Benny Rubin recording about the first Thanksgiving with a decidedly ethnic bent -- ala Eddie Cantor. The Jewish slant of his material was very pro-Indian (fairly refreshing), but that was nothing compared to the Will Rogers' talk. His take on the whole affair was basically a modern day liberal tongue-lashing over our history of Indian policies -- albeit, done with Rogers typical soft, good-humor. Although, even he had to stop half-way through to ask, "I hope my Cherokee blood isn't slanting my opinion much..."
According to Mr. Skretvedt, this was taken from a 1935 radio appearance. Since so much of radio humor during the Golden Age was geared solidly towards the mainstream (no rocking the boat....as Mr Nicely Nicely says), I found this selection pleasantly invigorating.

Here are more typical examples of Thanksgiving radio humor during the 30's and 40's...
https://archive.org/details/100OtrThank ... lidayShows

Re: Forward Into The Past - Thanksgiving-style

Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 12:52 am
by Richard M Roberts
One of my favorites Randy plays on his Thanksgiving show is Gene Autry singing "Guffey the Goofy Gobbler". Ol' Gene tried and tried, but he never found another "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".


RICHARD M ROBERTS

Re: Forward Into The Past - Thanksgiving-style

Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 10:48 am
by Gary Johnson
And he wasn't kidding when he said Autry recorded for every holiday. Go through his discography sometime. He recorded more obscure xmas tunes than anyone.