rand’s esoteric otr

Today, we present the flip side of a disc heard last week on the blog featuring the series “Home Town Sketches”.  This rare program was syndicated circa 1936 and sponsored by Fels-Naptha laundry soap.

“Home Town Sketches” was heard four times each week and took a light-hearted look at life in the small town of Centerville.  The plots centered around the owner of the radio station, his family and friends.  Program 50 in the series takes the form of a “broadcast” from Lem Weatherby’s station FELS, where he gives us news about Captain Alberry and Anna Watts wedding, a commercial for a local furniture dealer and mortician, and a poem for a sick shut-in.

It would be interesting to hear a run of consecutive episodes of the program to see how they handled telling the story with this unusual format that went between being a kind of traditional serial like “Vic and Sade” or “Lum and Abner” and a parody of small town radio.

The show was transferred from an original Radio Recorders transcription disc, pressed on blue Vinylite by Columbia, matrix number RR-1544.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [ 15:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (221)

Well, here’s an odd little syndicated show I can’t find much information on.

“Home Town Sketches” seems to be a light-hearted serial, along the lines of “Easy Aces” or “Vic and Sade”, that looks at characters in a small town called Centerville.  It was sponsored by Fels-Naptha laundry soap (which is, believe it or not, still available today) and was broadcast four days a week.  I’ve seen the program listed in some newspaper logs in 1936; it may have only been syndicated regionally, perhaps on the West Coast.

The main characters on the show operate a radio station - an example I’ll post next week actually takes the form of a “broadcast within a broadcast”.  In this show, Anna Q. Watts and Captain Albert return from their honeymoon in Hollywood and Catalina.

The show was transferred from an original Radio Recorders transcription disc, pressed on blue Vinylite probably by Columbia, matrix number RR-1543.  Apologies for the scratches on the disc, but the years haven’t been kind to this unique transcription.

Next week, the other side of the disc with program 50 in the series.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [ 14:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (195)