Acousticon Hour

Last updated November 09, 2019

Acousticon Hour was a "musicale" radio program aired during 1927 and 1928 on NBC. It offered selections from classical music, orchestral favorites, operas and operettas.

The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial terrestrial radio and television networks that is a flagship property of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. The network is headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, with additional major offices near Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia. The network is one of the Big Three television networks. NBC is sometimes referred to as the "Peacock Network", in reference to its stylized peacock logo, introduced in 1956 to promote the company's innovations in early color broadcasting. It became the network's official emblem in 1979.

History

The show was sponsored by the company that marketed the Acousticon brand hearing aid, invented by Miller Reese Hutchison.^[1] As broadcast historian Elizabeth McLeod has noted, in the 1920s a product name used in a show's title was considered a more acceptable form of advertising than the use of intrusive commercial messages:

A hearing aid is a device designed to improve hearing by making sound audible to a person with hearing loss. Hearing aids are classified as medical devices in most countries, and regulated by the respective regulations. Small audio amplifiers such as PSAPs or other plain sound reinforcing systems cannot be sold as "hearing aids".

Miller Reese Hutchison was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He developed some of the first portable electric devices, such as a vehicle horn and a hearing aid.

Elizabeth McLeod is a journalist and broadcast historian who lives and works on the coast of Maine. She is best known for her extensive research into the origin and history of Amos 'n' Andy, an authoritative study first available on the Internet and then in her book, The Original Amos ’n’ Andy: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll and the 1928–1943 Radio Serial.

The most popular program format of the late twenties was the sponsored musical feature. It could be a large symphonic group, a dance orchestra, or a song-and-patter team — and it would usually carry the sponsor's name. The A&P Gypsies, for example — a large, genre-crossing orchestra conducted by Harry Horlick. The Ipana Troubadors — a hot dance band directed by Sam Lanin. The Goodrich Zippers — a banjo-driven orchestra conducted by Harry Reser, when he wasn't leading the same group under the name of The Clicquot Club Eskimos. Everyone remembers The Happiness Boys, Billy Jones and Ernie Hare -- but what about Scrappy Lambert and Billy Hillpot, who performed exactly the same sort of material as Trade and Mark, The Smith Brothers. The list is endless: The Silvertown Cord Orchestra, featuring the Silver Masked Tenor. The Sylvania Foresters. The Flit Soldiers -- yet another Harry Reser group. The Champion Sparkers. The Fox Fur Trappers. The Ingram Shavers, who were the Ipana Troubadours on alternate Wednesdays. The Yeast Foamers. The Planters Pickers. And, the magnificently named Freed-Eisemann Orchestradians. All playing pretty much the same sorts of music, all announced by Phillips Carlin or John S. Young or Alwyn Bach or Milton Cross in pretty much the same sort of stiffly formal style.^[2]

The Acousticon Hour was not a 60-minute show as the title suggests. It was a 30-minute program which NBC broadcast from 5:30 to 6 p.m. on Sunday afternoons. In 1928, the Acousticon male quartet sang "The Palms" in recognition of Palm Sunday. The singer-songwriter Jack Norworth was a guest in March 1928, and the pianist-songwriter Jean Schwartz appeared as a guest the following month. Selections from the operas Carmen and La Gioconda were included in the April 1928 schedule.

John Godfrey Knauff, known professionally as Jack Norworth, was an American songwriter, singer and vaudeville performer.

Jean Schwartz was a Hungarian-born American songwriter.

Carmen[kaʁ.mɛn] is an opera in four acts by French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on a novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875, where its breaking of conventions shocked and scandalized its first audiences.

Jack Burton was the program's announcer, director, and writer. Performers who made their network premieres on the show included Lina Abarbanell, Donald Brian, Shelton Brooks, Victor Moore, Jack Norworth, Blanche Ring, Julia Sanderson, Jean Schwartz, Six Brown Brothers, and Sophie Tucker.^[3] Broadcasts also featured the Acousticon orchestra and the Acousticon male quartet.^[4]

Lina Abarbanell was a German-American soprano singer who performed in grand and light opera and musical comedy. She made her debut at sixteen at the Neues Theatre, Berlin and was first introduced to American theatergoers in 1905 as the soubrette in the Josef Strauss operetta Frühlingsluft. Abarbanell made opera history later that year as Hänsel in The Met's debut production of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel. Abarbanell spent the following near thirty years performing on Broadway and at venues across America. After her husband's death in 1934, Abarbanell left the stage, but remained active over virtually the remainder of her life as a Broadway casting director, producer, and stage director.

Donald Brian was an actor, dancer and singer born in St. John's, Newfoundland. In 1907, he starred in the hit operetta The Merry Widow.

Shelton Brooks was a Canadian-born African American composer of popular music and jazz. He wrote some of the biggest hits of the first third of the 20th century.

The show's final broadcast occurred on April 22, 1928.^[4]

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References

↑ Bennett Chapple (April 1903). "Curing the Deaf by Electricity". The National magazine. 18. pp. 129–131. Retrieved February 5, 2011.
↑ McLeod, Elizabeth. "Radio's Forgotten Years" Archived 2009-03-03 at the Wayback Machine
↑ "Burton's BB Bios & New Pieces in Book". Billboard. November 11, 1950. p. 13. Retrieved November 5, 2019.
1 2 "Many Stars in Final Acousticon Hour". The Decatur Herald. Illinois, Decatur. April 22, 1928. p. 15. Retrieved November 5, 2019– via Newspapers.com.

Listen to

Jack Norworth (five songs)

External links

Associated Press radio schedule for Sunday, December 9, 1928. (Archived 2009-10-24)

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[1] Bennett Chapple (April 1903). "Curing the Deaf by Electricity". The National magazine. 18. pp. 129–131. Retrieved February 5, 2011.

[2] McLeod, Elizabeth. "Radio's Forgotten Years" Archived 2009-03-03 at the Wayback Machine

[bb-3] "Burton's BB Bios & New Pieces in Book". Billboard. November 11, 1950. p. 13. Retrieved November 5, 2019.

[dh-4] 1 2 "Many Stars in Final Acousticon Hour". The Decatur Herald. Illinois, Decatur. April 22, 1928. p. 15. Retrieved November 5, 2019– via Newspapers.com.