Swing (Jan-Dec 1953)

Record Details:

Title:
Swing
Date:
Jan-Dec 1953
Publisher:
Kansas City : WHB Broadcasting Co.
Volume:
Swing (Jan-Dec 1953)
Leaf #:
000269
Language:
English
Subjects:
Radio broadcasting -- Missouri -- Kansas City -- Periodicals, Radio broadcasting -- Kansas -- Periodicals","WHB-AM (Radio station : Kansas City, Mo.) -- Periodicals","Kansas City (Kan.) -- History -- Periodicals","Kansas City (Mo.) -- History -- Periodicals","Cook Paint and Varnish Co. -- Periodicals","WHB Broadcasting Company (Kansas City, Mo.) -- Periodicals.
Collection:
Broadcasting & Recorded Sound
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
University of Maryland, College Park
Sponsor:
LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
The official magazine of Kansas City's WHB radio station, SWING printed far more than the station's schedule (which, as the title SWING suggested, relied heavily on music). From 1945 to 1953, SWING offered readers something eclectic every month -- profiles of entertainers on one page, discussions of citizenship in the postwar world on the next, with write-ups of nightlife offerings in KC, Chicago, and New York mixed in. WHB spent decades lobbying the FCC for clear channel status; the magazine's ambitious scope may have been part of the station's attempt to legitimate itself. But it was SWING'S first editor, Jetta Carleton, who later wrote a celebrated novel, that gave the magazine its distinctive style. -- Eric Hoyt, 2015
Date Added:
March 28, 2024
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A half-hour weekly stage-show and broadcast that ran for 520 performances over a period of ten years was the result of a friendship between Lathrop Backstrom, now president of Cook Paint & Varnish Company, and Charles Lee Adams. Backstrom and Adams were members of the 356th Infantry, 89th Division in World War I. Adams turned up in Kansas City in 1932, thinking perhaps his years of stage experience might be useful in radio. Backstrom sent him to WHB. There was no "job" open — but as usual, when promising talent appeared, Don and John set out to create an opportunity for the applicant. They persuaded John W. Jenkins III and Frank Howard of the Jenkins Music Company to sponsor a weekly program which Adams created and titled the Ktddies Revue. Adams auditioned hundreds of small fry, built an orchestra of child performers, en listed the aid of Kansas City's dancing schools, planned routines, suggested costumes, wrote a theme song and each week's scripts — and for eight years produced a weekly show which he emceed as "Charles Lee." It carried on for two years after Adams left WHB . . . but no other producer could quite make it "click" as Adams had done. He was a marvel of ingenuity, patience, kindness and diplomacy — dealing with jealous mothers and child performers who often displayed unexpected twists of temperament. Each week, out of chaos and. bedlam, Adams turned in a smooth performance and a finished "production." An entire generation of young Kansas City performers learned stage technique from "Charles Lee." Outstanding among them is Vera Claire McNary, of the Kansas City Philharmonic, whose "Marimba Co-Eds" are a flashy new sensation in the entertainment world, touring the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.