[78-L] National Barn Dance documentary on PBS

[Michael Biel]

I found where this message disappeared to, so disregard my previous
request for reposting.  


Much of the information on Elizabeth McLoud's listing of early surviving
broadcast recordings is from me, and she has not updated that listing in
too many years.  No early Nat'l Barn Dance programs have been found,
although there is a re-creation of The WLS Showboat on Silvertone from
1928 that includes some people who were on the Barn Dance including
Bradley Kincaid.  I was friends with the announcer who replaced George
D. Hay on the Barn Dance, the late Steve Cisler, so I especially eager
to find some recordings.  Got some photos of Steve with the program's
cast, including one of him and Artie the Arkansas Woodchopper by a
microphone with a movie camera in the picture.  The movie might have
been an Illinois Agriculture Dept SILENT film.  I did tell the producers
of the documentary about this but didn't know the documentary was on, so
I don't know if they found it. I also told them to check the WLS 75th
anniversary program for recordings of Geo Hay doing WLS IDs from 1925
Columbia Records, and a segment of an interview with Steve I did.  I
understand that there are some recordings of the program from the late
30s with Henry Burr and Billy Murray.  

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com  





  -------- Original Message --------
 Subject: [78-L] National Barn Dance documentary on PBS
 From: Harold Aherne <leotolstoy_75 at yahoo.com>
 Date: Wed, October 05, 2011 11:45 am
 To: 78-L at 78online.com
 
 I watched part of the last episode of "Prohibition" last night, but the
program that followed,
 at least on my own PBS station, was considerably more interesting. "The
Hayloft Gang:
 the Story of the National Barn Dance" has apparently not been mentioned
here, at least
 not in the last couple months, but many of the program's performers
were regulars 
 on shellac as well as on the radio.
  
 I'll confess an ulterior motive for watching: I hoped that Henry Burr
would be mentioned 
 at least briefly, as he was a regular on the broadcast for several
years until his 1941 
 passing. But no such luck; still, I think the documentary did a pretty
good job of covering
 the popularity and social impact of the National Barn Dance. It was
interesting to hear 
 George Gobel as an adolescent singer; I had known that he recorded for
ARC in 1933 but
 didn't know (or forgot) that he was a Barn Dance regular. 
  
 Speaking of which, about how much of NBD was preserved? Elizabeth
McLeod doesn't 
 list any NBD programs among the surviving pre-1932 broadcasts, and I
wonder if in later
 decades the entire local program was recorded or only the network hour.
In addition, 
 different sources are sketchy about when the program ended; the
documentary cited 
 April 1960, Wikipedia says 1968, John Dunning's encyclopedia says 1970.

  
 Here's the official PBS site:
 http://www.pbs.org/programs/hayloft-gang/
  
 -HA