Radio
Legends:
Matinee with Bob and Ray
Liner notes written by Elizabeth McLeod
Two
guys from Boston, just fooling around together on the air -- the birth of a
comedy legend. It’s Bob and Ray, in their earliest, most freewheeling
incarnation, coming to you in this Radio Legends collection from Radio Archives.
Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding met in the mid-1940s when both were staffers at
station WHDH in Boston, a 5000 watt independent station with a schedule full of
recorded music programs, syndicated transcriptions, local newscasts, occasional
live music spots, Red Sox and Braves baseball, Bruins hockey, Harvard football,
and reports on market prices at Massachusetts fish piers. Not a promising
environment for two creative young men -- and indeed, when Bob and Ray met as
fellow staff announcers, comedy was the furthest thing from their minds. But
they gradually began to fool around together on the air, to interact with each
other in unscripted, spontaneous humorous comments, and before they knew it,
they'd become a full-fledged local phenomenon. "Matinee with Bob and Ray" soon
became a regularly scheduled weekday feature, and Elliot and Goulding soon found
their niche as the most innovative satiric team to hit radio since Stoopnagle
and Budd.
Bob and Ray made their names parodying the inanity of radio itself and, by the
late forties, there was more than enough inanity to parody. The "Matinee"
programs featured outrageous lampoons of soap operas, home-economics programs,
special events interviews, and all the other effluvia of daytime broadcasting,
all delivered in that matter-of-fact New England manner that made the pair so
distinctive.
Here are 20 complete "Matinee" programs from the fall of 1948 and summer of 1949
- ten full hours of entertainment - with Bob and Ray supported by WHDH staff
musicians Ken Wilson and Bill Green, and presented by such fine sponsors as
Mission Bell Wine, Fatima Cigarettes, the West Peabody Speedway, and the
Wonderland-Revere dog track. (The sponsors, incidentally, are not spared the
satiric lash in these programs.) It's a collection that demonstrates just how
innovative local radio could be when creative people were given free rein.
Here is the complete content of this 10-CD Radio Legends collection:
Tuesday, September 14, 1948 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Wednesday, September 15, 1948 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Wednesday, October 13, 1948 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Thursday, October 14, 1948 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Monday, December 27, 1948 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Wednesday, July 27, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Thursday, July 28, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Friday, July 29, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Thursday, August 4, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Friday, August 5, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Saturday, August 6, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Monday, August 8, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Tuesday, August 9, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Wednesday, August 10, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Saturday, August 13, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Tuesday, August 16, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Wednesday, August 17, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Thursday, August 18, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Saturday, September 10, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
Wednesday, September 14, 1949 - 30:00 - WHDH
Local commercials
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