Radio doings (Dec 1930-Jun1932)

each night to KMPC, wearing their worn and shabby clothes and carrying their own instruments, to amuse an audience which is now estimated to be approximately 750,000 listeners each evening. After each evening's program is finished these rustics mount their steeds and return to their homes in the Malibu. No one knows whether they will return the next night, but everyone, including Tall-feller himself, prays and prays that they will not be disappointed. And that, my children, is the story of the Beverly Hill Billies in the very words of Glen Rice as told to the radio audience. — o — "THEY'RE partly fakes," Tall-feller I explained to me. "But what of it? Aren't they swell entertainment1 Aren't they the biggest sensation on the air? Well? "They were just a bunch of professionals, some good, some not so good, when I rounded them up early in 1930. Some of them had been in vaudeville, some had tried to crash radio, others had been set musicians at the picture studios. I rehearsed them night and day for three weeks, and look what I got! The best gag in radio. In fact, hillbillies are being 'discovered* all over the country now that we have started the vogue. Just recently WLS, Chicago, inaugurated its programs featuring the Cumberland Ridge Runners, which is nothing but a copious reproduction of my own Malibu mountaineers." The personnel of the Beverly Hill Billies now numbers six, five of whom are the brain-child of Mr. Rice. The sixth, Elton Britt, is the genuine article. Only fifteen years old, he really hails from the Ozarks. There's "Hank," a rather taciturn fiddler, dark and just a bit morose. Before turning hillbilly, he was a set musician in the picture studios. He and "Lem," the guitarist, were a team of musicians in the old pre-hillbillian days. "Lem" is known outside the KMPC studios as "Speed" Hansen. He is a Swedish mountaineer and lives with his Swedish mother, who speaks English with difficulty, and his wife and two children. They live in Hollywood. Lem is the oldest of the Hill Billies. "Ezra" was born Cyprian Paulette. Tall and handsome, with a deep cleft in his chin and with dark, curling hair, he is a Southerner. His mother still teaches school at Little Rock, Arkansas. Before his reincarnation as a Hill Billy, he sang blue songs with only a modicum of success at KFI. "Zeke," who plays the accordian infinitely better than he sings, is really only Leo Manns, studio organist for KMPC. He has been a leader of several dance orchestras. "Jed," he with the Phillips Holmeslsh blond hair and profile, and who, along with "Ezra," provides the sex appeal, is Ashley Dees. He graduated from Hollywood High School and is a brother of Buster Dees, entertainer at KFWB. Ashley played with several dance orchestras before coming under Mr. Rice's tutelage. As has been mentioned before, there is no need of quotation marks around Elton Britt's name. He's the real goods. A well-mannered lad of fifteen, he was unearthed by Rice last summer when the latter spent a fortnight in the Ozark mountains studying the customs of these mountaineers who still use spinning wheels and have only the vaguest notions of radio, talking pictures, and the like. Elton is due to return home shortly, but he's coming back, he says. "You betcha I'm coming back," he declared in his quaint dialect. "Ya couldn't make me stay on the farm no more. Maw and Paw'll let me come back, 'cause they want me to have all the advantages I kin get." It's Elton who has that sweet soprano voice and who yodels so delightfully. In the daytime he wears clothes of a Hollywood cut and lives under the wing of Tall-feller Rice on South Canyon Drive, Beverly Hills. Watching the Hill Billies perform each night are perhaps five hundred people crowded into the studio itself, with several hundred more in the outer reception room beyond, and scores clambering outside the barricaded window. Mouths wide open, eyes gaping, lads and lassies drink in every note uttered by the Hill Billies, howl with glee at their quips, and wave enthusiastic farewells when the troupe at last departs. And so on until the lights are all turned low and the Hill Billies are far, far away — spurring their steeds, most of them ride Fords, homeward to Malibu, or Hollywood or somewhere. Ezra, Lem and Jed. Dress the part of the songs they sing Below, the Britt family at home, in +hc Arkansas hills. Elton may be seen standing on the porch RADIO DOINGS Page Nineteen