Bessie Smith

During The Voice of the Prairie, Leon Schwab cuts to a song by Bessie Smith. Bessie Smith was in fact a real singer and quite extraordinary. From Biography.com: 

Bessie Smith was born on April 15, 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She was one of seven children. Her father, a Baptist minister, died soon after her birth, leaving her mother to raise her and her siblings. Around 1906, her mother and two of her brothers died and Smith and her remaining siblings were raised by their aunt. It was around this time that Smith began to perform as a street singer, accompanied on the guitar by one of her younger brothers. In 1912, Smith began performing as a dancer in the Moses Stokes minstrel show, and soon thereafter in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, of which blues vocalist Ma Rainey was a member. Rainey took Smith under her wing, and over the next decade Smith continued to perform at various theaters and on the vaudeville circuit. 

By the early 1920s, Smith had settled down and was living in Philadelphia, and in 1923 she met and married a man named Jack Gee. That same year, she was discovered by a representative from Columbia Records, with whom she signed a contract and made her first song recordings. Among them was a track titled "Downhearted Blues," which was wildly popular and sold an estimated 800,000 copies, propelling Smith into the blues spotlight. With her rich, powerful voice, Smith soon became a successful recording artist and toured extensively. Going forward with an idea presented by her brother and business manager Clarence, Smith eventually bought a custom railroad car for her traveling troupe to travel and sleep in. 

In her recording career, Bessie Smith worked with many important jazz performers, such as saxophonist Sidney Bechet and pianists Fletcher Henderson and James P. Johnson. With Johnson, she recorded one of her most famous songs, "Backwater Blues." Smith also collaborated with the legendary jazz artist Louis Armstrong on several tunes, including "Cold in Hand Blues" and "I Ain't Gonna Play No Second Fiddle." By the end of the 1920s, Smith was the highest-paid black performer of her day, and had earned herself the title "Empress of the Blues."

So she would have been popular in the times of Davey and Leon's traveling radio show. If you'd like to hear her for yourself. here's Bessie Smith singing perhaps her biggest hit, "Downhearted Blues."

Radio Station Naming Conventions

Growing up in St. Louis, Missouri I was aware that AM radio stations on "my" side of the Mississippi river began with the letter K and on the other side of the river started with the letter "W" but I never really knew WHY. So for The Voice of the Prairie I did a little digging.

It turns out it actually started with telegrams. Telegram operators created a series of short abbreviated call signs to identify the locations of telegrams - often to military and commercial ships. But because there was no standardization on these call signs, things got super confusing - operators could just make up their own call signs and some got re-used and it got messy. To attempt to alleviate the problem, the Bureau of Navigation (part of the Department of Commerce), began assigning three-letter call signs to American ships in the early 1910s. Ships in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico got a K prefix and in the Pacific and the Great Lakes got a W. Why the letters W and K? Nobody actually seems to know any more.

In any case, in 1912 there was a big conference called the London International Radiotelegraphic Convention, and ranges of letters were assigned to each of the participating nations. The U.S. was told to keep using the W and most of the K range, as well as N and A (largely for military communications). Canada was assigned C and Mexico was given X. The call sign combination was allowed to be 3 or 4 letters in length.

It's at around this time that AM radio started to gain traction. Like we see in The Voice of the Prairie, some upstart mavericks began to set up radio towers and start their own radio stations. So in 1928 the Federal Radio Commission (now called the FCC - Federal Communications Commission)  planned to assign licensed ground based commercial radio stations in the same way, except the directions somehow got flipped. Eastern stations got W call signs and the Western ones got Ks. Where exactly did the FRC draw the line between East and West? For a while it ran north from the Texas-New Mexico border, but shifted in 1923 to follow the Mississippi River and more accurately split the country in half.

It's never been a totally strictly regulated standard and a number of old radio stations got grandfathered in, but going forward radio stations have tended to follow in that standard. For about a year in the 1920s, the Bureau of Navigation that decided that all new stations were going to get a K call sign no matter where they were located. Still other exceptions were made by special request, station relocations, ownership changes, and even human error. So, it's a standard except for when it's not.

The letters after the W or K? They're a bit more nonsensical. Some are named after their parent company, like WABC or KCBS. Chicago's WGN stands for "World's Greatest Newspaper"  and Chicago's WTTW stands for  “Windows to the World.” Some in the east actually reference the heir station's number, like KTWO and KFOR or the Roman numerals in call names like KXII or WIXT.

Kansas First, Kansas Best!

During the play The Voice of the Prairie, the characters reference a mighty Kansas radio station called KFKB - Kansas First, Kansas Best. I got curious about this since I'm from St. Louis and I'd never heard of this radio station before. I did some research and there's actually a pretty hilariously weird story behind the creation of KFKB.

KFKB Radio was in fact a real radio station. It operated at 1,050 kilocycles with 5,000 watts power, which for the time was immense. The station was licensed on September 20, 1923, to the Brinkley-Jones Hospital Association, and operated until June 3, 1925. On October 23, 1926, it was relicensed to J. R. Brinkley.

"Doctor" John Brinkley

John R. Brinkley was a doctor practicing in Milford, Kansas. He created a radio station that he hoped would entertain his patients. While not the first station licensed in Kansas, KFKB was groundbreaking in many ways. Brinkley promoted his medical activities and provided entertainment to his listening audience in several states, as well as the hospital. He was a pioneer in radio entertainment. as they say in the play, the station became quite popular for its entertainment schedule. Music, lectures, weather, politics, baseball, and national events were among the programs. 

Here's where the story starts to get weird though. On the station Brinkley promoted his goat gland surgeries and read letters of testimonials on air. What are goat gland surgeries you ask?  Here's where it gets hilariously weird. From Quackwatch.org we learn the following:

... after Brinkley had gone into private practice in Milford, Kansas, a farmer named Stittsworth came to see him. Stittsworth complained of a sagging libido. Recalling the goats' frantic antics, the doctor semi-jokingly told his patient that what he needed was some goat glands. Stittsworth quickly responded, "So, Doc, put 'em in. Transplant 'em." 

Most doctors would have ignored the bizarre request, but Brinkley was not like most doctors. In fact, he wasn't a doctor at all. Although he had spent three years at Bennet Medical College in Chicago, he'd never graduated. He called himself a doctor on the basis of a $500 diploma he had purchased from the Eclectic Medical University of Kansas City, Missouri. As absurd as it sounds, this piece of paper gave him the right to practice medicine in Arkansas, Kansas, and a few other states.

Buying a degree from a diploma mill was not out of character for Brinkley. He had worked as a snake-oil salesman in a road show, and then, with Chicago con man James Crawford, established Greenville Electro Medical Doctors. Under this name the pair injected people with colored distilled water for $25 a shot. And that was big money in those days. Brinkley, therefore, had all he needed to capitalize on the farmer's idea of goat-gland transplants: he was unethical, he had a wobbly knowledge of medicine, and he had witnessed the rambunctious behavior of goats. And he possessed one more thing: knowledge of experiments carried out in Europe beginning in the late 1800s. 

Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard, a noted French physiologist, had shocked the medical community by injecting himself with the crushed testicles of young dogs and guinea pigs. Afterwards he claimed that he had regained the physical stamina and intellectual vigor of his youth. Many men availed themselves of La Méthode Sequardienne, but once the placebo effect was filtered out little remained. In Vienna physiologist Eugen Steinach proposed that youthful vitality could be restored by increasing levels of testosterone. The easiest way to do this, Steinach said, was through vasectomy. Sperm production wasted testosterone, and if the channel leading from the testes to the ejaculatory duct were tied off, then blood levels of testosterone would rise. Brinkley may also have heard of the work of Serge Voronoff, a French doctor who was stirring up a storm of controversy with his experimental gland transplants. Voronoff had been a physician in the court of the King of Egypt, and there he had spent a great deal of time treating the court eunuchs, who suffered from a variety of illnesses. He hypothesized that maintaining active genital glands was the secret to health. As proof, he cited his experiments with an aging ram into which he had transplanted the testicles of a young lamb. The ram's wool got thicker, and his sexual vigor returned. Voronoff then went on to transplant bits of monkey testes into aging men; he claimed success, although he could offer no scientific validation of his claim. In America the stage was set for the meteoric rise of J.R. Brinkley.

Brinkley went to work, implanting a bit of goat gonad in Stittsworth's testicle. Within weeks the farmer was back to thank the doctor for giving him back his libido. And when his wife gave birth to a boy, whom they appropriately named Billy, Stittsworth spread the word about Brinkley. Soon Brinkley's business was booming. The testimonials poured in and so did the money. Brinkley was charging $750 per transplant, and he couldn't keep up with the demand. All men needed the Brinkley operation, he declared, but the procedure was most suited to the intelligent and least suited to the "stupid type." This, of course, ensured that few of his patients would admit that they had not benefited from the operation.

There were a few problems. Like when Brinkley decided to use angora goat testicles instead of those from the more common Toggenberg goat. Recipients of the angora testicles were decidedly unhappy—Brinkley himself noted that they reeked like a steamy barn in midsummer. But Brinkley's major problem was that as his fame increased so did the criticism leveled against him by the medical community. Morris Fishbein, editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association, called Brinkley a smooth-tongued charlatan and urged the authorities to revoke his right to practice. Brinkley's assertion that his procedure could cure conditions ranging from insanity and acne to influenza and high blood pressure amounted to quackery, Fishbein said. In response to this Brinkley called the American Medical Association a "meat-cutters union" and charged that its members were jealous of him because they were losing business. He then went to California and performed a transplant on Harry Chandler, the owner of The Los Angeles Times; the satisfied Chandler rewarded Brinkley with lots of free publicity.

In California Brinkley also learned about the potential of radio. Returning home, in 1923, he started up the radio station KFKB With 1,000 watts - an amazing number for the time - and broadcast music, his lectures on rejuvenation, political features, and the "Medical Question Box," during which Brinkley himself answered listeners' questions. It was perhaps radio's earliest advice show. But the advice Brinkley dispensed was ridiculous, and he usually gave listeners prescriptions to which he assigned a number. These they could fill at a local pharmacy; Brinkley had set up the National Dr. Brinkley Pharmaceutical Association in collusion with pharmacists who relished making lots of money selling water colored with indigo.

Kickbacks from this operation and revenues from the transplant surgeries made Brinkley an immensely wealthy man. For $5,000, he would even implant genuine human glands, which he obtained from prisoners on death row. He had mansions, a fleet of Cadillacs, airplanes, and yachts. What he did not have was scientific respect. The American Medical Association finally prevailed upon the Kansas Board of Medical Registration to revoke Brinkley's license on the grounds of immorality and unprofessional conduct, and the Federal Radio Commission shut down KFKB for promoting fraud. Still Brinkley did not capitulate. He claimed he was being crucified by the authorities and kept his hospital going by hiring licensed physicians to work there. He also purchased radio station XERA in Mexico and began beaming his message into the United States with the power of one hundred thousand watts. 

The "doctor" then decided that the only way to get his license back was to become governor. So in 1930 he organized a massive write-in campaign, and he almost won. By insisting that he was being persecuted by elitist doctors and politicians he won the support of ordinary citizens; and his promise to build free clinics and cure virtually all diseases boosted his appeal even further. But Brinkley couldn't even cure himself. The Milford Messiah—as he was sometimes called—the man who had performed over 16,000 goat testicle transplants, the man who appropriately wore a goatee all his life, developed a blood clot, and doctors had to amputate his leg. Till the very end, Brinkley's scheming mind remained active. Confined to bed, he decided to study for the ministry and had visions of becoming a big-time preacher, He never made it. His last words were reported to have been, "If Dr. Fishbein goes to heaven, I want to go the other way." If there is any justice in the world, he did.

Brinkley’s license renewal was denied in 1931 after claims of indecency had been filed against the doctor. The state medical board revoked Brinkley’s license for unprofessional conduct. KFKB radio folded and there's now a KFKB AM radio station in Forks, Washington. The story does show that Leon Schwab's hijinks in The Voice of the Prairie weren't all that far of the mark of those early days of radio. 

Who Is John Olive?

John Olive is a widely-produced and award-winning playwright.His plays include Standing on my Knees, Minnesota Moon, The Voice of the Prairie, Evelyn and the Polka King, Killers, The Summer Moon, The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, Careless Love, God Fire, and Singapore. He's had his works produced at such prestigious theaters as the Manhattan Theatre Club, Old Globe, Steppenwolf, Wisdom Bridge, South Coast Rep, Alley Theater, the Guthrie, Actors Theatre Of Louisville, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ACT/Seattle. 

Playwright John Olive

Lately, he has written extensively in the area of Theater For Young Audiences for Seattle Childrens, the Arden, Peoples Light, First Stage Milwaukee, Oregon Childrens, among others. Plays include  Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Johnny Tremain, Jason and the Golden Fleece, The Magic Bicycle, Pharaoh Serket and the Lost Stone of Fire, and Water Babies. He is currently working on an adaptation of Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s The Sisters Eight.

Awards include: a Jerome Fellowship, three McKnight Fellowships, a National Endowment For The Arts Fellowship, two Bush Fellowships, the Society of Midland Authors Award For Drama (Standing on my Knees), Kennedy Center Award For New Plays (The Summer Moon), and a Rockefeller Residency (Wisdom Bridge). John has written screen and teleplays for: Disney, Amblin Entertainment, ShadowCatcher Entertainment, Yorktown Productions, Lorimar Television, among others. His screenplay A Slaying Song Tonight has just been finished.

Mr. Oliver's book about bedtime stories, Tell Me A Story In The Dark, will be published shortly by Familius. John has two YA novels going: Smartass and Deep River (in collaboration with David Grant). Audiobooks based on Johns novellas will shortly be available. John writes reviews and essays for HowWasTheShow.com and does voice acting through Talent Poole.

Husband to Mary, father to Michael, Mr. Oliver lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is currently a core writer at the Playwright's Center in Minneapolis.