BECOMING KING OF THE CLASSICS

 By Dr. Robert E. Plucker

 

Radio listening in the 1930’s, when I was growing up was a different kind of experience. Now, on AM radio we are met with a steady stream of disk jockeys playing CDs of the top forty or fifty rock and country music with some small differences: hard rock, soft rock, Christian rock, classic rock and so on. In the thirties, music, news, weather forecasts, interviews and the like were all done “live.” Even the big network programs such as the New York Philharmonic orchestra, the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera’s broadcasts (with Milton Cross) had to be done live, as recording for later broadcast was well-nigh impossible.

One type of show, usually around the noon hour was the “Man on the Street” kind of interview. WOW, Omaha, had its Foster May, who stood on the street in front of large Omaha department stores, catching people at random and asking them questions including any further conversation that might be of interest. WNAX, Yankton, South Dakota, had its George B. German, who now and then moved to different cities to do his interviews. That is how my Dad and my grandfather got snared at the front door of a Sioux Falls store. Grandpa had a more than usually interesting interview as he told about a stage-coach robbery he had witnessed as a boy. 

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George B. German was also employed by WNAX to be a staff singer of cowboy songs. Not “country western” but genuine cowboy songs that had been sung by real cowboys. “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,” “We’re Headin’ for the Last Roundup,” and “Red River Valley” are all examples. 

WCCO, Minneapolis, had a staff pianist and a tenor singer. The pianist later became the head of the music department at the University of Minnesota; I don’t know what became of the singer. 

Then came the 1940’s and the Second World War. Too young to serve on active duty during the shooting, I was old enough to serve in the Army Occupation forces in Japan. I was terribly proud to be a member of G Company, 188^th Parachute Infantry Regiment, but intrigued enough by the hope of radio broadcasting to set about transferring to the despised IX Corps Headquarters to get on the Armed Forces Radio Service. I would have swept out the studio and done all sorts of mean chores to get my foot in the door, but no. My time ran out and I went home to South Dakota State College and the beginnings of their college radio station KAGY – very short-range radio meant to serve only the campus.

Together with a fine student pianist and a girl singer, we had a fifteen minute broadcast, noon hour once a week. This had to be done live, of course, as recording was still not in the cards. Wire recording was in existence, but tape recording was a lot better. I had saved enough money to buy a tape recorder (paper tape), a Brush Sound-Mirror. Apparently there was no way to directly connect the Sound-Mirror to the transmitter and it was beyond ridiculous to think of putting a low-quality microphone in front of a low-quality speaker. The girl singer was fine, but I was conceited enough to believe that some people wanted to hear me sing. The Statesmen Quartet (I was the baritone) was available to sing, but rarely could all be present at the required time. 

After two of the Statesmen graduated, breaking up the quartet, I received the opportunity to join another campus quartet as their second tenor. For the fun of it, we entered a local talent contest in Brookings, top prize to be an appearance on “Stairway to Stardom,” a talent show on “WCCO radio in Minneapolis, hosted by Cedric Adams, a Minnesota celebrity. We sang on the show but did not automatically become stars. 

South Dakota State University
Brookings, SD

After graduation, I got a job teaching music and history at Faulkton, South Dakota. Three weeks later, as a member of the US Army Reserve, I was called to active duty in Korea. I have written about my tour of duty with the Eighth Army Special Service Company (10^th Sp Sv EUSAK). Here it is enough to say that our platoon chorus sang a weekly program over Armed Forces Radio for a short time. A friend of mine said that he knew our program was popular with the prostitutes on Isezaki-cho. We had a fine arrangement of “Beautiful Savior” as our theme music. 

Following my discharge in 1951, I taught Junior High music in Winona Minnesota for eight years. To concentrate on high school choral music, I got a job teaching in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Another of these essays tells about gathering with six or more high school choirs in Brown County Arena to sing a glorious concert of Christmas music over WBAY. We had to wait, and then wait some more for the Packer game to be over before we could sully the air with mere high school choirs. 

There were, occasionally, live television shows in which local groups were asked to perform. I dimly remember a Green Bay church choir and my Skagit Valley Community choir singing on live TV, but my objection to it was mostly with all the fussing about appearance, and not much fussing about sound. (I started teaching at Skagit Valley Community College in 1968.)

After five years of teaching at West High in Green Bay, I moved to the state of Washington for further study at the University of Washington. While living in Green Bay I had been puzzled as to why there were no sailboats on the water of Green Bay. The conditions were right for sailing, and I believe today there are lots of sailboats there. Living in Washington on Puget Sound, I got a chance to go for a week-long sailing trip. I was hooked on sailing and eventually bought my own sailboat, the first of three. When Margaret and I bought “Greta” we were so thrilled with it that we sailed up the Inside Passage to Southeast Alaska three times. The fourth trip up the Passage was the last, as we stayed in Haines. By this time I had retired from teaching.

Haines appealed to us in part because of the promise of a new library, and to me because of Haines radio, KHNS. This public radio station, I was to discover, was suffering through a series of managers that changed often, plus volunteers to host local (recorded) programs. As KHNS was virtually the only radio in town, I went up the stairs at the Chilkat Center to the studio and presented myself to Byrne Power hoping there would be a place for me in classical music.

The place I got was minimal. I could substitute for Constance Griffith if there happened to be a time when she couldn’t do it. Constance was doing a weekly three-hour show of classical music, a kind of show that I really wanted to do. Russ Lyman had me watching him in the broadcast studio for several sessions before I was allowed to touch the control board.

But where were all the assistants? The engineers? The producers and directors? The research engineers? I found that I would be on my own for program selection, for script, for operating the CD and LP players, everything necessary to get on the air.

The Chilkat Center for the Arts is a large wooden building that had been moved to its present location in Ft. Seward in the 1920’s. It had been a salmon canning factory, and then it became a gym and fitness center for the Ft. Seward troops. When the fort was closed in about 1948, it was drastically remodeled to become a theater, dance studio, home for a couple of churches and KHNS on the upper floor, actually a kind of balcony.

KHNS Haines, AK

Some twenty five years ago when KHNS first went on the air, a three-hour slot for classical music was reserved, Tuesday nights, 8:00 to 11:00. Margaret Piggott and Constance Griffith named the show “Allegro ma non troppo” – cheerfully fast, but not too much. I have always disliked this name, but after 25 years, people recognize it, and know what is coming. Besides, I can’t think of a name that would be better. In recent years the PBS radio network program “Performance Today” is aired at 7:00 pm, “Allegro” at 8:00, and another classical music program is usually scheduled after 10:00. So, all of Tuesday night is a classical music night.

When I first started at KHNS I didn’t know Margaret Piggott existed. She was traveling all over this huge state working as a physical therapist. I thought when she came back to Haines that I would be out of a job, as she and Constance had been alternating Tuesday nights. This did not happen, and so I alternated with Constance until she joined her son on the East Coast.

Others have been interested from time to time in sharing “Allegro” with me. One lady came and sat with me on a Tuesday night, but never returned, too confused by the array of buttons, switches, CD players and turntables. Another lady was interested and probably could have handled the job. Then she had a baby, tried to do the show with baby on lap, but of course this required the skill of a juggler. Probably the baby would have objected loudly, over the air. A fellow was interested who knew a good bit about classical music and its composers. He cooled off immediately when he realized that he could not wait until 9:00 pm to even start the two-hour show. He had a wife and several small children living in an RV some distance “up the road.”

Margaret Piggott is back at her home in Haines, but was prevented by a serious illness from going back to KHNS. So it has come to be my responsibility to do the show, and on the few occasions when I cannot, one of the paid staff will step in, or Alaska Public Radio will fill up the slack. 

And yes, there are plenty of problems. The supply of CDs is limited and few classical ones come in compared to rock, country rock and other popular music. There are many classical LP records, but they are old and of dubious quality, what with scratches, surface noise, and some are so old they are not even stereo. Our CD collection runs strongly to Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner and Mahler, plus Mozart, Schubert and Dvorak. 

The KHNS fund drives have been quite successful in the last several years and much has been invested in new equipment. This seems like a good thing, right? But confronted with three new CD players of three different brands, each with controls that might have been terrific if I could have figured out what the symbols meant, I am not so sure. You punch “eject” when you want to close the door on the CD so it can play. Surely everyone has marveled at the computers which can be turned off only by punching “start.” Even the two new LP turntables have some snares and pitfalls that can hardly be described on paper. However, it is satisfying and fun when you can be confident that the buttons you push and switches you turn will result in the sounds that you want to go out over the air, actually do so.  
 

Caution!! Turn off the microphone when you are not actively using it. 

I must mention fund drives again. They happen only once a year, but the drive consists of two hours of finding different ways of asking for money and telling the audience how devastated their lives would be without community radio. These drives pre-empt all regular programming.

Elections – local, state, and national – are likely to interrupt or pre-empt all programming. Broadcasts of local high school basketball have precedence over everything, and in tournament season the teams don’t even have to be local.

The timing of “Allegro” requires that weather and road conditions, ferry schedules, and local personal messages come first. Then comes two hours of music with a station break (and messages) at the top of the hour ending the show at the end of the second hour with the music at a logical stopping place. For my part, I truly hate to play music that is not complete. I want all three or four movements of a symphony, concerto or string quartet – all of a Schubert or Schumann song cycle. A three or four-hour opera simply has to be taken in chunks; not often do we program these very long works.

“Allegro” has been scheduled for different times over the years, from three-hour duration to two, and now from eight to ten o’clock instead of nine to eleven. The show “Allegro ma non Troppo” seems to have become my show. Three years ago at a KHNS Board of Director’s meeting, I was presented with a certificate, labeling me KING OF THE CLASSICS.

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