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The roots of radio, long before Roots Radio
KEEBLE McFARLANE
Saturday, July 11, 2009
The pioneering US broadcaster, Edward R Murrow, once described a radio as a "box full of lights and wires". It was accurate, since the radio in those days looked exactly like that - stuffed with glowing vacuum tubes connected by wires to capacitors, resistors, switches, transformers and the all-important loudspeaker. Today's radio typically consists of an electronic chip smaller than a stick of chewing gum and usually conveys its message to the listener by tiny earphones which nestle inside the ear. Often as not, it's combined with some other device, such as an MP3, iPod, even a small pocket flashlight.
KEEBLE McFARLANE
A recent exchange by two old colleagues, John Maxwell and Merrick Needham, over the advent of Jamaican voices on the airwaves prompted me to reflect on the development of my favourite medium in my native country.
For most Jamaicans, radio began with the onset of the Second World War when the pioneering station, ZQI, went on the air. Its beginning then was no coincidence - the law obliged people who owned private transmitting equipment to hand it over to the authorities for the duration of the war. ZQI was based on the ham radio gear and a house in the suburbs of Kingston donated by a Jamaican who had spent many years in the US and who figured the equipment would be more useful broadcasting information rather than sitting in storage gathering dust.
The station was a simple affair, broadcasting for just a couple of hours a day, beginning with the all-important war news transcribed from the BBC overseas service and government announcements. The announcing duties were handled by an English expat, Denis Gick, and Archie Lindo, a civil servant seconded from the health department.
After the war ended and Britain granted Jamaicans the full vote, the first chief minister, Alexander Bustamante, decided that the government should get out of the broadcasting business. A British company, Rediffusion, took up the invitation to start a commercial operation. The company had made a good business of renting out loudspeakers to relay BBC programmes - cable radio, if you wish. Ironically, it could not broadcast in the UK because the BBC had a monopoly, which was to remain until the 1960s. But it did have experience in radio, operating stations all over the then British empire.
The Jamaican operation began as Radio Jamaica and the Rediffusion Network in 1950, and initially used the old ZQI equipment, adding AM transmitters until the island was fully covered. Rediffusion covered the Corporate Area and parts of St Mary, eventually being dismantled in 1969.
The station became RJR in 1959 with the advent of the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation. This didn't result from a corporate decision, but rather from a new phenomenon on the local airwaves. In the face of the threat posed by JBC - the new kid on the block - the management at Radio Jamaica imported a bunch of Canadians to liven up their programming.
They were Hal Burns, George Antaya, Al Brooks and Charlie Babcock - whose trademark identification "CB - the Cool Fool with the Live Jive" became a legend in Jamaican show business. It was Al Brooks, I believe, who shortened the cumbersome call sign Radio Jamaica and Rediffusion to Aaarr-Jay-Aaaarrr!! This new breed of deejay propelled the station to new heights of popularity, even as the new entity clawed out territory of its own.
In its early days, Radio Jamaica was a stiff, formal operation taking its cue from British broadcasting.
The news was written at the Gleaner and sent by cab to the station at Lyndhurst Road. It relied heavily on foreign sources for programme material - the BBC transcription service, US commercial syndication services, and a prominent Australian source, Grace Gibson Productions, which supplied the extremely popular radio soap operas that many remember to this day.
Listeners in the 1950s and 60s were treated to such delights as Second Spring, Portia Faces Life, Life Can Be Beautiful and Doctor Paul. But there were also domestic productions using home-grown talent. The first was a drama written by the talented Ranny Williams, called Life with the Morgan Henrys. This was a play on the name of the sponsor, Captain Morgan Rums. Ranny was Morgan or "Morgie" and his co-star was "Putus", played by a young Alma Hylton (who later became MockYen and wrote a definitive book on the history of broadcasting in Jamaica). The programme aroused a fair deal of controversy because of the use of the dialect instead of "proper" English.
Another comedy of the time was Poppy Show, written by Fred and Cynthia Wilmot, and featuring an eclectic cast including Ken Maxwell, using his stage persona Pro Rata Powell, Alma Hylton (Fragrance Hambleton - "Fragrance by name, and Fragrance by nature"); the English expats Doris Duperly and Leslie Murray-Ainsley, Ranny Williams and new young talent such as Charles Hyatt and Louis Marriott. I still chuckle at the memory of Pro Rata Powell's explanation to a question by a visitor, played by Murray-Ainsley, "What is a macca?"
That was the foundation upon which the fledgling JBC built an impressive record in its early days. Its mandate was to foster home-grown talent and it certainly rose to the occasion. It did so on a broad front, from news and current affairs to popular entertainment and so-called "cultural" programming.
Reggae is one of the outstanding outcomes of the early work of the JBC. The grand old man of Jamaican music, Sonny Bradshaw, created and oversaw the Jamaican Hit Parade, which tracked the sales of locally produced records and gave them extensive exposure on the air. Bradshaw also devised and produced the landmark Teen Age Dance Party, a programme which ran in the later afternoon five days a week and which showcased local music. The teenagers who took part in the show actually had a hand in running it.
Early in its existence, the station broadcast a serial called Shadows of the Great House, portraying plantation life in early Jamaica, supplying the template for the much more recent TV series Royal Palm. Ranny Williams and Louise Bennett teamed up for the weekly Lou and Ranny Show, broadcast live from the stage of the Carib Theatre every Wednesday evening just before the main movie. It featured the misadventures of a couple, Lou and Ranny, with their side-kicks Maude Fuller and Tony Henry. Audiences were treated to the onstage antics of the main characters plus the sound-effects people who bashed car seats to create the sound of Ranny on the receiving end of Miss Lou's flat board.
JBC broadcast live and recorded jazz from locations all over the island, put the voices of country people on the air every week on Rural Report (started by ambassador to Washington Anthony Johnson) and featured Charlie Hyatt in a weekly bravura comedy production, Here Comes Charley (sponsored by the eponymous Charley's Rum). Hyatt wrote the scripts and performed all the voices - Charlie, his girlfriend Sweetie, his landlady Miss Becca and his clumsy friend Man-monkey, in addition to the odd new character to round out the week's situation.
Current affairs programmes like the weekly debate show The Verdict is Yours tackled serious questions of the day and the news department at one time produced two Radio Newsreels a day bringing the news of the world in the reporters' own voices. On Sunday evenings the editors were encouraged to stretch their talents by doing mini-documentaries about various slices of life on Sunday News Special. My friend Maxwell introduced the commentary programme The Week in Perspective, which occasionally featured a current stalwart of talk radio, Wilmot Perkins.
JBC's star burned brightly for a few years, but unfortunately, the politicians just couldn't keep their interfering hands away and it died an ignominious death years later. The most unfortunate aspect of the whole business is that very little of all that lovingly prepared material was preserved for posterity, and the memory exists only in the minds of a dwindling number of ageing people like Maxwell, Needham and me.
keeble.mack@sympatico.ca
KEEBLE McFARLANE
Saturday, July 11, 2009
The pioneering US broadcaster, Edward R Murrow, once described a radio as a "box full of lights and wires". It was accurate, since the radio in those days looked exactly like that - stuffed with glowing vacuum tubes connected by wires to capacitors, resistors, switches, transformers and the all-important loudspeaker. Today's radio typically consists of an electronic chip smaller than a stick of chewing gum and usually conveys its message to the listener by tiny earphones which nestle inside the ear. Often as not, it's combined with some other device, such as an MP3, iPod, even a small pocket flashlight.
KEEBLE McFARLANE
A recent exchange by two old colleagues, John Maxwell and Merrick Needham, over the advent of Jamaican voices on the airwaves prompted me to reflect on the development of my favourite medium in my native country.
For most Jamaicans, radio began with the onset of the Second World War when the pioneering station, ZQI, went on the air. Its beginning then was no coincidence - the law obliged people who owned private transmitting equipment to hand it over to the authorities for the duration of the war. ZQI was based on the ham radio gear and a house in the suburbs of Kingston donated by a Jamaican who had spent many years in the US and who figured the equipment would be more useful broadcasting information rather than sitting in storage gathering dust.
The station was a simple affair, broadcasting for just a couple of hours a day, beginning with the all-important war news transcribed from the BBC overseas service and government announcements. The announcing duties were handled by an English expat, Denis Gick, and Archie Lindo, a civil servant seconded from the health department.
After the war ended and Britain granted Jamaicans the full vote, the first chief minister, Alexander Bustamante, decided that the government should get out of the broadcasting business. A British company, Rediffusion, took up the invitation to start a commercial operation. The company had made a good business of renting out loudspeakers to relay BBC programmes - cable radio, if you wish. Ironically, it could not broadcast in the UK because the BBC had a monopoly, which was to remain until the 1960s. But it did have experience in radio, operating stations all over the then British empire.
The Jamaican operation began as Radio Jamaica and the Rediffusion Network in 1950, and initially used the old ZQI equipment, adding AM transmitters until the island was fully covered. Rediffusion covered the Corporate Area and parts of St Mary, eventually being dismantled in 1969.
The station became RJR in 1959 with the advent of the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation. This didn't result from a corporate decision, but rather from a new phenomenon on the local airwaves. In the face of the threat posed by JBC - the new kid on the block - the management at Radio Jamaica imported a bunch of Canadians to liven up their programming.
They were Hal Burns, George Antaya, Al Brooks and Charlie Babcock - whose trademark identification "CB - the Cool Fool with the Live Jive" became a legend in Jamaican show business. It was Al Brooks, I believe, who shortened the cumbersome call sign Radio Jamaica and Rediffusion to Aaarr-Jay-Aaaarrr!! This new breed of deejay propelled the station to new heights of popularity, even as the new entity clawed out territory of its own.
In its early days, Radio Jamaica was a stiff, formal operation taking its cue from British broadcasting.
The news was written at the Gleaner and sent by cab to the station at Lyndhurst Road. It relied heavily on foreign sources for programme material - the BBC transcription service, US commercial syndication services, and a prominent Australian source, Grace Gibson Productions, which supplied the extremely popular radio soap operas that many remember to this day.
Listeners in the 1950s and 60s were treated to such delights as Second Spring, Portia Faces Life, Life Can Be Beautiful and Doctor Paul. But there were also domestic productions using home-grown talent. The first was a drama written by the talented Ranny Williams, called Life with the Morgan Henrys. This was a play on the name of the sponsor, Captain Morgan Rums. Ranny was Morgan or "Morgie" and his co-star was "Putus", played by a young Alma Hylton (who later became MockYen and wrote a definitive book on the history of broadcasting in Jamaica). The programme aroused a fair deal of controversy because of the use of the dialect instead of "proper" English.
Another comedy of the time was Poppy Show, written by Fred and Cynthia Wilmot, and featuring an eclectic cast including Ken Maxwell, using his stage persona Pro Rata Powell, Alma Hylton (Fragrance Hambleton - "Fragrance by name, and Fragrance by nature"); the English expats Doris Duperly and Leslie Murray-Ainsley, Ranny Williams and new young talent such as Charles Hyatt and Louis Marriott. I still chuckle at the memory of Pro Rata Powell's explanation to a question by a visitor, played by Murray-Ainsley, "What is a macca?"
That was the foundation upon which the fledgling JBC built an impressive record in its early days. Its mandate was to foster home-grown talent and it certainly rose to the occasion. It did so on a broad front, from news and current affairs to popular entertainment and so-called "cultural" programming.
Reggae is one of the outstanding outcomes of the early work of the JBC. The grand old man of Jamaican music, Sonny Bradshaw, created and oversaw the Jamaican Hit Parade, which tracked the sales of locally produced records and gave them extensive exposure on the air. Bradshaw also devised and produced the landmark Teen Age Dance Party, a programme which ran in the later afternoon five days a week and which showcased local music. The teenagers who took part in the show actually had a hand in running it.
Early in its existence, the station broadcast a serial called Shadows of the Great House, portraying plantation life in early Jamaica, supplying the template for the much more recent TV series Royal Palm. Ranny Williams and Louise Bennett teamed up for the weekly Lou and Ranny Show, broadcast live from the stage of the Carib Theatre every Wednesday evening just before the main movie. It featured the misadventures of a couple, Lou and Ranny, with their side-kicks Maude Fuller and Tony Henry. Audiences were treated to the onstage antics of the main characters plus the sound-effects people who bashed car seats to create the sound of Ranny on the receiving end of Miss Lou's flat board.
JBC broadcast live and recorded jazz from locations all over the island, put the voices of country people on the air every week on Rural Report (started by ambassador to Washington Anthony Johnson) and featured Charlie Hyatt in a weekly bravura comedy production, Here Comes Charley (sponsored by the eponymous Charley's Rum). Hyatt wrote the scripts and performed all the voices - Charlie, his girlfriend Sweetie, his landlady Miss Becca and his clumsy friend Man-monkey, in addition to the odd new character to round out the week's situation.
Current affairs programmes like the weekly debate show The Verdict is Yours tackled serious questions of the day and the news department at one time produced two Radio Newsreels a day bringing the news of the world in the reporters' own voices. On Sunday evenings the editors were encouraged to stretch their talents by doing mini-documentaries about various slices of life on Sunday News Special. My friend Maxwell introduced the commentary programme The Week in Perspective, which occasionally featured a current stalwart of talk radio, Wilmot Perkins.
JBC's star burned brightly for a few years, but unfortunately, the politicians just couldn't keep their interfering hands away and it died an ignominious death years later. The most unfortunate aspect of the whole business is that very little of all that lovingly prepared material was preserved for posterity, and the memory exists only in the minds of a dwindling number of ageing people like Maxwell, Needham and me.
keeble.mack@sympatico.ca