[78-L] Ford (remove ^ - back on 78 content

[David Sanderson]

On 2/3/2012 4:54 PM, Rod Brown wrote:
> I vividly recall, the first time I acquired one of Henry Ford's dance
> records, how tickled I was to hear a hammered dulcimer and a tuba in the
> same piece of music. As a fairly devout folkie, this was a combination I
> never anticipated hearing in this life. But 78s do tend to broaden my
> horizons. And now I learn they may in fact have been a cymbalom and a
> souzaphone.
>
> Thanks David, and 78-L!
>
> Rod
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>
>

Here's a dose of material via Google Books; note the mention of the 
recording studio, though it's 1940's:

    The company also cancelled its two other network radio programs, 
"Green-
field Village Chapel Service" and "Early American Dance Music," during the
summer of 1945. For many months after their debut in January 1944, Henry 
Ford took
a personal interest in these shows, often commenting on their quality 
and making
suggestions for their improvement. Both programs were essentially 
noncommercial.
The chapel service was broadcast from Ford chapels at the Wayside Inn, 
Richmond
Hill, Georgia, and Macon, Michigan, as well as Greenfield Village. 
Variety lam-
pooned the program, calling it "a folksy-religious stanza by the kid 
choir of Green-
field Village." The magazine added that "since it obviously pleases the 
sponsor, it
probably doesn't matter that many people who find it boring, or who 
regard all
commercialized religion askance, will string along with Edgar Bergen." 
The Ford
program was tuned in by only 3 percent of the 8 to 8:15 P.M. Sunday 
listening
audience, while Edgar Bergen's "Charlie McCarthy Show," the third most 
popular
program on radio, drew 67 percent of listeners at that time. Noting 
these figures, the
ABC network, which wanted to schedule a strong program opposite Bergen, 
pleaded
with the Ford Company in the spring of 1944 to switch the chapel service 
to Sunday
afternoons. The company refused. In March 1945, however, the network 
made the
switch over Ford's objection. The program died a "natural death" in July 
1945, as the
company turned to a radio schedule offering greater commercial promise."
    "Early American Dance Music," a half-hour program featuring Henry 
Ford's
old-fashioned dance orchestra (consisting at this time of a dulcimer 
player, a cym-
balist, a violinist, and a bass violinist) and with Benjamin B. Lovett 
calling, was
broadcast from the company's recording studio in the Engineering 
Laboratory. The
only reference to Ford on the show was the opening statement: "Mr. and 
Mrs. Henry
Ford present early American dance music." In January 1945, the Fords 
asked that
their names no longer be associated with the program; the opening line 
was then
changed to: "The Ford Motor Company, builder of cars and trucks, 
presents early
American dance music by the Ford Early American Dance Orchestra." The 
program
attained a fair audience rating, having almost twice as many listeners 
in early 1944 as
"Stars of the Future" and ranking fourteenth among the twenty orchestras 
on network
radio during the 1944-45 season. But most of its listeners, according to 
its fan mail,
were retired or inactive people, many of them hospitalized—scarcely a 
car-buying
audience. Acknowledging that the program was "not suitable for 
advertising au-
tomobiles," the company dropped it upon resuming civilian vehicle 
production in
July 1945.


It was originally Lovett and Ford who decided on the makeup of the 
orchestra, which originally included a sousaphone, cimbalom, and regular 
hammered dulcimer, as having the sound they wanted. The use of hammered 
dulcimers in traditional dance bands seems to have been common in the 
Midwest, a result of Eastern European immigration.

-- 
David Sanderson
East Waterford Maine
dwsanderson685 at roadrunner.com
http://www.dwsanderson.com