November 2024

The Superflex

A Publication of the Alabama Historical Radio Society November 2024

NOTE FROM PRESIDENT WAG

Members,

Mark your calendars!

This is the date and link for upcoming AHRS Business meeting to be held on Monday, November 25^th, 2024 at 7:00 PM. Details of the December meeting on Dec 30^th (which is in-person at the Shop and is also our annual holiday social) will be sent prior to the event.

DATE: Nov 25, 2024

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86330579924?pwd=ckZLWEJMb0V2ajhBUzh0S2liQnlmZz09

Meeting ID: 863 3057 9924
Passcode: 631140

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We are planning our annual year-end business meeting and Holiday party on Monday, December 30^th. John Outland is chairing the nominating CMTE which includes members Willie Henderson, Dave Johnson, Ray Giles, and Maurice Hill. All officers (Pres, VP, Secy, Treas) serve 1-year terms and are eligible for re-election; we will have three Board members rotating off: Willie Henderson, Jim Cawthon, and Ray Giles. Ray and Jim are not seeking re-election. Willie is eligible for re-election to another 3-year term so there are at least two open positions. Details and a slate of nominees will follow but if anyone wishes to be considered for a leadership position, let us know or contact John directly. Part of our agenda will include an update of the Society’s financial status and members are welcome to raise any questions or concerns in this regard.

Boyd Bailey’selectronics class will be deferred until January at the Shop and via the web; the date will be set soon. A separate email will go out from Boyd and Steven.

Note:

The following link should work for future classes in perpetuity (or until otherwise notified):

Topic: AHRS Radio Restoration Class

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88180351990?pwd=N2lucjB3WVhtR05nTSs5S0xGcURadz09

Officers Steven Westbrook (VP), Treasurer Mike Woodruff, and I met with our accountant recently to assure our practices are in order as a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. We are happy to report that except for a few minor tweaks, we are complying in that regard and with our bylaws. As part of our self-assessment, leadership reviewed our bylaws and concluded no revisions are needed.

We are sponsoring a radio history exhibit at the Homewood Public Library during November. Steven Westbrook and Grady Shook planned and set up the items in the viewing space.

Closeup of Birmingham’s own Superflex radio

Case with various novelty radios, including Charlie McCarthy, Micky Mouse & Hopalong Cassidy with Hopalong Cassidy Watch

Display of early radio history, with a section on DeForest and a stock certificate of the DeForest Radio company. At the bottom is the Superflex section.

These are all items in the AHRS collection.

During our October business meeting, Dave Cisco presented a program about Grace King and her relationship to early Birmingham broadcast radio, both as a singer and wife of a radio pioneer working at WBRC. We will have an audio recording available online soon and have transcribed it. The program is included in this edition of Superflex.

We have applied for, and received, a grant from the Holle Family Foundation to help finance publication of the 2^nd Edition of Harry Butler’s History of Alabama Broadcast Radio 1920-1960. There is quite a bit of work to bring the project to fruition and we will keep you informed on how things are progressing.

Dave Johnson, as one of our long-standing Board members and a past-president, has volunteered to author a brief bio for an upcoming newsletter. In keeping with prior contributors, he will focus on how his interest in radio and electronics developed and continued over the years.

One of our initiatives has been gathering information relevant to AHRS and its mission and archiving it. For example, current and past leadership has been contacted to assure nothing was stored on a personal basis that we need to keep as a Society. We also have legacy materials like video and audio recordings that are being consolidated and archived with backups.

We identified an issue with grounding of our workstations and potentially our outside antenna at the Shop. Thanks to the diligence of members Dave Cisco, John Herndon, Dave Johnson, Dee Haynes, and Rick Curl, we believe the issue has been resolved and any potential for misadventure rectified.

We cannot approach year’s end without hinting about dues being due in January. They remain a bargain at $25 annually. They ca be paid in person, mby mail or by Paypal through the AHRS website.

In closing, let me wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and the best of the Holiday season!

Respectfully submitted,

Wag

President, AHRS

drminims@aol.com

Leonard's Loser? In an Upset…………………

Leonard Anthony Postero, Sr. (December 11, 1922 – July 20, 2001) was a native of Athens, Georgia, USA, known for his syndicated radio show, Leonard's Losers. He was a 1943 graduate of the University of Georgia and was an aviator in the United States Navy from 1943 to 1945.

In 1958, Postero taped his first Leonard's Losers radio show at WRFC-AM in Athens. The show described college football matchups and then predicted which team would lose. Postero taped his show using a pseudonym of "Leonard Postoasties" and was introduced by his sidekick "Percy Peabody" (also voiced by Postero). The show's "schtick" was a rural delivery style (à la Jerry Clower) and comedic scripts using alternate team nicknames related to the school mascot or the school itself. Some of these references included "riflemen" for the University of Tennessee Volunteers, "red clay hounds" for the University of Georgia Bulldogs, "Pickens pussycats" for the Clemson University Tigers, "giant water lizards" for the University of Florida Gators, "pachyderms" for the University of Alabama (because of their elephant mascot), and "the Pope's pupils" for the University of Notre Dame (for its status as a Catholic university). Leonard claimed that he possessed a "little smart pill machine" to come up with his prognostications and always closed his broadcast with a plea to his sidekick to "get me outta here, Percy." A game might be described as follows:

"Phillip Fulmer leads his Rifleman into the Athens Kennel for a shooting match with Jim Donnan's Pack of Drool Dogs. The Volunteer Army has owned the K-9s of late, while the Red Clay Hounds think it's about time to sink their teeth into the Big Orange Rifle Brigade. The Knoxville Army is angry after last week, but the Athens Dawgs will get the job done. Leonard's Loser? Tennessee"

At the height of its popularity, Leonard's Losers was carried on over 1400 radio stations, including Armed Forces Radio. Postero also published a weekly newsletter called Leonard's Losers.^[1]

Postero retired in 1999 and a group of Athens businessmen purchased the show.^[1] As part of the transition, the new voice of Leonard Postosties was introduced as Leonard's nephew though there was no relation between the two.

After the 2005 season, a message appeared on the website saying that for personal reasons Leonard was unable to make his predictions and hoped to return. This message remained on the website until 2007 when the website closed.

Leonard Postero was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame on Saturday, October 19, 2013 as a legacy inductee for his show Leonard's Losers.

Check Youtube for several Leonards Loser radio broadcast.

-Wikipedia (Edited)

The Story of Grace King, as told by AHRS Member Dave Cisco at the October 2024 Alabama Historical Radio Society business meeting

1924 was dead, so if you had a radio you had to listen to Chicago at night or something like that. So, when 1925 came along, there was a young man named John Carlyle Bel who didn’t realize how young he was, but at 23 he applied for, and received, the WBRC call letters to broadcast. There’re various stories about how all of that started: Some people said that his helper at his radio shop, Dudley “Dud” Connolly finally built a radio and put it on the air without his knowing. It was broadcasting from their workshop over on 5^th Ave., North; that has been refuted sometimes but we do know that Carlyle Bell had a home-built transmitter probably running 20 W or something on that order. His wife was the announcer, and he had the radio at home with the antenna in the backyard. We do know that was WBRC in 1925.

In 1926, we also know that “Pop” Ansley put a home-build transmitter on the air and finally got the call letters WBRC. Birmingham struggled over that period of time. Well, along came 1928 and everything seemed to happen: Our buddy Carlyle Bell got a $2000 donation from a man named M.D. Smith, who owned Birmingham Tent & Awning Company. That’s $40,000 in today’s dollars, a lot of money. Then, he immediately bought a commercial transmitter running 500 W and started the studio in the Bankhead Hotel; he put up some wire antennas out in an open space close to where his company was located, so now he really was in business.

“Pop” was frustrated with the broadcasting so, in 1928, he sold out to the R. B. Broyles Furniture Company. They put 100 W transmitter on the air; the station that WSY donated to Auburn University (then Alabama Polytechnic Institute) came back to Birmingham in 1928 as WAPI. I think it was located on the top floor of the Bank for Savings Building. They had a commercial kilowatt transmitter, so we had a kilowatt, a 500 W, and a 100 W station now on the air.

Along came a little girl named Grace King. Grace started singing on WBRC and became known as the “sweetest voice this side of heaven”. She was 11 years old at the time and over the next few years sang with, and for, Stanleigh Malotte, at the Alabama Theater. She sang on WBRC many times and she even joined the Happy Wappies. Where do you think that name came from? She was very well known in the Birmingham area as a singer and when two big bands came to town, each invited her to sing.

OK, let’s move up to 1932: WBRC hired a young man out of Montgomery, Samuel Jefferson “Jeff” Bayne Jr, to be its chief engineer. Jeff was 25 years old and very smart; he was recognized as being one of the top graduates of the school and WBRC was very fortunate to get him. Every time Grace King came to the studio, Jeff Bain could not wait to get a microphone and get the audio board tuned up where he could listen to her. Actually, he was enamored with this little girl, but she was only 15 years old at the time. Her daddy quickly made sure that nothing was going to happen between the two of them and things rocked along just fine.

Jeff was an interesting guy to know. In 1928, he got one of the first W4 letters that was issued when Alabama W4 became instead of W5, he got W4AAQ. He became very active in the Birmingham Amateur Radio Club (BARC) and became president of the club. By the way, we have pictures of him and Carlyle Bell along with a couple of other guys with their WBRC baseball uniforms on. WBRC had a baseball team, so things were really booming at the time.

In an experiment, they leased some land on the very peak of Red Mountain thinking that with all the iron ore this would allow one of the most fantastic systems for an a.m. broadcast station. When they built the quarter wave tower right on top of Red Mountain, this did not work well. More than anything else, the particles of iron that were in the ore were not really tied together, so there was not a base for the radio station. So, very quickly they found out that this was not working and moved the tower out to Arkadelphia Road. I think it is still there today and it was pretty much in a swamp. All of a sudden, WBRC with their 500 W station goes back on the air with a pretty substantial signal.

The other thing that we found out was that Jeff was an avid photographer. In the mid 1930s, there were not that many photographers since cameras were very expensive and the film was also expensive to process. He did take a lot of pictures one of which we are very proud of, a picture of the Birmingham Amateur Radio Club station on Goat Hill overlooking Homewood. Goat Hill is where the Embassy Suites Hotel is located today on Red Mountain. The club members could ride the streetcar right to the turnaround at 21^st Ave South, get off, and walk right up to the club station.

Things rocked along until 1938 with our friends Jeff Bayne and Grace King. In 1939 she turned 21 and guess what happened? She and Jeff got married quite quickly. Let me tell you they really were a fantastic couple. In late 1939 or early 1940 he was made an offer he could not turn down to go to WBT in Charleston, SC. Later he was moved to Charlotte, NC with WBTV. He and his new bride either had a little girl at the time or she was well on the way to having their first child. Of course, it was wartime by then, but a lot happened. In 1944 they had a little boy, Jeff III, who lived into his 80s. I have had several conversations with him that are very interesting. In the meantime, WBRC continued on pretty well. Grace decided to raise her children as a single mother after the passing of her husband. This was very unusual for the time, although she did remarry later to a man named Masters, becoming Grace Masters.

In 2004, BARC was trying to find historical data on radio history In Birmingham. Members placed a request in a column called Good Neighbors in the newspaper. BARC was looking for radio history, specifically relating to the Birmingham Radio Club. The request was placed by Mike Thompson and Grace replied to it; out of the blue, we had a wonderful first-person source of historical information, especially for WBRC. I’ve mentioned the radio station on Goat Hill and the baseball uniforms. Jeff Bayne also had a hand in the building of the ham shack and transmitter at WBRC, so we have pictures of WBRC’s transmitter. All these pictures were taken by Jeff and ended up in a scrapbook. Grace was very proud of the book, so I went over and spent the morning with her in 2004 carrying a little copier that I had set it up on her dining room table. I made copies of many of her photographs which included pictures that we have in our history. The copies came from my laying that scrapbook directly on the printer and copying them and I thought we had an arrangement to keep that scrapbook in the name of AHRS. Unfortunately, one of the sisters threw it out, so the scrapbook itself is gone.

All of that’s gone, but their son Jeff sat right over there and gave me some stuff that he had. I have talked with him on several occasions, and he does not have any more information. He did tell me a little bit more about his mother, who was a very special person. She was very important to Radio history, especially regarding WBRC. I could not get over the Happy Wappies. I just feel the history that we are trying to find is hidden sometimes, and we do not expect that all of a sudden, it pops out at us into our awareness. If you are interested in the history of this organization and radio in general, keep your ears open, hoping things will pop up and lead to people like Sally Gates (who led us to “Pop” Ansley) and the story we got from Grace King Masters.

Question from the audience: How far did Grace go with her music career? She went as far as she could go as a single mother trying to raise three kids, and that restricted what she could do with her music career.

AS TOLD AND FINALIZED BY DAVE CISCO, with transcription and editing by Steven Westbrook and Wag.

WBRC baseball team Carlyle Bell, owner of WBRC top left and Jeff Bayne bottom right

Quote of the Month

“I intend to live forever or die trying.”

- Groucho Marx

“A black cat crossing your path signifies the animal is going somewhere”

- Groucho Marx

**Happy Thanksgiving All you NBC Fans!**

We meet every Saturday (unless a Holiday weekend) at 8:30 A.M. until around 11:30 A.M., at the one-story AHRS Shop at the corner of 8th Avenue North and 18th Street, (1801 8th Avenue North, Birmingham, AL 35203). Please use the rear (Southeast) entrance.

The Shop is open on Tuesdays at 8:30 A.M. until around 11:30 A.M. Note that parking can be a problem on Tuesdays, so you may have to find street parking occasionally.

Regular monthly members meetings are on the fourth Monday night starting at 7:00 PM with the Executive Meeting starting at 6:30 PM

Please come join us!

The electronics classes are generally on “Zoom” and “in-person” at the AHRS Shop, typically the first Saturday of each month (except when something special is taking place, then we agree on an alternative Saturday)

Check your emails for the schedule and how to participate.

We start from the beginning Ohms Law, inductors, resistor and Capacitors color codes, as well as what each component does within the radio circuits. We also teach how to use test equipment used in the repairing of radios. We teach troubleshooting radio troubles, as well as how to read a radio diagram.

Currently the class is studying advance topics relating to troubleshooting and project radio repair. We are retooling our website in hopes of archiving prior classes for those who may have missed a prior class. Email will provide timely details on date, topics & links.

There are coil winding classes, and one-on-one repair help. Come join these classes!

Membership dues are $25.00 a year, payable beginning in January. If you have questions about your dues, you can contact Treasurer Mike Woodruff at 205-823-7204. Dues can be mailed to AHRS at P.O. Box 131418, Birmingham, Alabama 35213 or paid on-line at https://alhrs.org

Be sure and check out our website at https://alhrs.org, which has copies of all newsletters from 2006 to the present (click on News), videos, photo galleries, museum, Old Time Radio columns, Projects, Reading Rooms, Archives, and Contact Information. Within the next few months we hope to update our website and add additional content and new capabilities