Skip Weshner’s Accent On Sound – One Sheridan Square – Peter and Isabel Gardner – 1959 – KRHM-FM, Los Angeles – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Folk Music of the 50s tonight with a sample of FM radio in Los Angeles from 1959. Folk Music, Jazz and Classical were staples of the FM diet at the time (when the stations weren’t affiliated with their AM counterparts) – these stations specialized in Hi-Fi – it was radio you could show off your Hi-Fi components with. Although FM had been around a while, the independent stations carved out a niche with the audiophile crowd – pricey systems that bore no resemblance to the behemoths in the living room (pre-Television days) or the smaller “table radio” in most kitchens and bedrooms. Hi-Fi stores sprang up all over the country, with living room sized showrooms and components lovingly crafted by companies with names like Scott and Fisher and Harmon-Kardon – and wall-sized speaker systems that could shake the plaster off an average house during an Art Blakey solo.
This was very serious hardware for very serious people. So of course, FM radio was the perfect compliment to all this seriousness by supplying Disc Jockeys with stentorian voices – or personalities who were a plus-10 on the hipness scale. And on any given evening the living room of audio devotees homes were filled with programs just like this one.
Skip Weshner was one of the mainstays of FM radio during the 1950s – his shows, live from One Sheridan Square in New York or the Ash Grove in Los Angeles were ground Zero for much talent of the period, including the earliest performances by a certain Bob Dylan.
One of the side benefits to this explosion of high-end Audio was the introduction of the semi-professional Reel to Reel Tape recorder. Many of these stations were well aware of it, even to the point of broadcasting tones so that home tapers could adjust their machines. So many of these performances have been preserved, some have been tossed and some have been erased to make way for the latest Roger Williams album. Those that have survived yield an amazing glimpse of the Folk scene at the time and the plethora of names, both known and unknown who helped create an interest in what was to become a largely influential genre during the coming hailstorm of rock n’ roll.
Fascinating stuff from a bygone era, during a time when it was all very new and very interesting and did much to provide a springboard for events to come.
This program features the husband and wife duo of Peter and Isabel Gardner, who gave us two albums on Prestige before relocating to Texas, splitting up and taking different paths. At the time they were at the threshold of becoming household names.
Enjoy the next hour and stick around for the end because one of those cavern throated disc-jockeys comes on with a Midnight Jazz program that mixes very well with copious amounts of Johnnie Walker. Not suggesting . . . . .
