©
2002-2023
Man From Mars Productions
|
|
WDRC
went to Allentown, PA to find Kenny
Reeth and Eddie King. The
pair had been friends since high school and were popular on the
nightclub circuit. The exact date they took over is unclear but
newspapers first listed the pair as WDRC's wakeup team on
Friday, January 8, 1960.
In February,
2002 Reeth agreed to an interview which sheds a great deal of light
on the important transitional months prior to WDRC's full-tilt
switch to Top 40 programming (on August 18, 1960).
It is ironic
to note that Reeth & King's run was even shorter than Bacon
& Fay's. By late April, 1960
they had been replaced by Ron Landry
who settled in for a six-year run on WDRC's morning show.
Q:
First, some factual stuff. Where were you from and where had your
radio travels brought you before (and after) WDRC?
|
(l-r:)
Kenny Reeth & Eddie King
|
|
|
|
A: I was born
in the Bronx, where I lived until the age of 14, when my family
moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania. My future partner, Eddie King
(real name, Charles Potts) was in my 9th grade class and we became
close friends.
As members
of the school drama club, we appeared in several plays, then auditioned
for and became the youngest members of an acting ensemble called
the WSAN Drama Workshop Group, appearing in live weekly radio plays
every Monday night on the NBC affiliate, preceding the Carnation
Hour. No salary, but it was great fun, playing different characters
each week, with live organ music and live sound effects. We stayed
with the show until it's demise after three years.
In high school,
we formed a knockabout tumbling act called, The Martini Brothers",
in which we pretended to be two drunks, staggering around and falling
on our faces, while trying to do a serious tumbling act.
At that time,
before Rock and Roll groups took over in the small clubs, entertainers
could make a decent living in Pennsylvania and we actually picked
up some agents and paid bookings. Since a lot of traveling was involved,
I was soon skipping high school to do shows. The Martini Brothers
act ended when Eddie dropped me on my head and we became a less
dangerous Martin and Lewis/Abbott and Costello type comedy team.
We talked, sang, danced and did many impressions. Soon, we quit
school to work night clubs and supper clubs all over the country.
|
|
|
The Korean War
interupted our show-bizz careers but, in 1954, we re-formed the
act and continued where we left off, traveling the country, doing
shows. When we wanted a break, we returned to Allentown where we
made pretty good money writing and producing comedy commercials
on spec, for a friend of ours who programmed WHOL. As a result,
we were offered and accepted the morning show. The only thing was,
we really missed the night clubs and left WHOL, with a standing
offer to return to the morning show whenever we wanted to. Over
the next few years, we did this four or five times. A truly unique
situation indeed, rare in it's time and one which would be unheard
of in modern radio.
By 1959, Rock
and Roll groups appeared in many of the night clubs and, while we
still had plenty of work, we saw the handwriting on the wall and
decided to see if we could land a good, steady radio job. We made
an audition tape and answered several ads in Broadcasting Magazine.
One turned out to be a blind ad for WDRC. John Jaeger and
Dick Buckley had recently sold WNEW in New York and were buying
radio properties.
|
|
|
|
|