REMEMBERING RADIO
A song that makes you want to jump for joy is radio star Cliff (Ukulele Ike) Edwards' 1929 hit - "Singing In the Rain."
Here's radio stars Bing Crosby and Mary Martin in a snappy song from the 1941 film "Birth of the Blues" - "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie."
A 1939 song by country radio star and Louisiana governor (1944-48 and 1960-64) Jimmie Davis gets us in a happy mood on a sunny day. The song has been recorded so often that it is "one of the most commercially programmed numbers in American popular music - "You Are My Sunshine."
To put yourself in a happy mood, sing a 1929 song that was a hit for radio star Leo Reisman and His Orchestra (Lou Levin, vocal), then was featured in the 1930 film “Chasing Rainbows”) and then was used as the campaign song for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s successful 1932 presidential campaign … a song sung by virtually every interpreter since the 1940s … “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
Following up great movie success, 21-year-old Judy Garland goes worldwide on the "Command Performance" radio show to sing her biggest hit - "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
Often when we think about America, we think about it via the words of Woody Guthrie's 1940 radio hit - "This Land Is Your Land."
Oscar Levant, one of radio's favorite wits, was first and foremost a fabulous pianist. A friend of George Gershwin, he helped popularize "Rhapsody in Blue."
