ROCKABILLY HALL OF FAMEŽ MERCHANDISE & SERVICES




PAGE 7



ARKIE

Special honor goes to the Arkansas Woodchopper, chosen by vote of the listeners as one of the three most popular acts on WLS. Arkie came to WLS about eight years ago, having made his start in radio when he came out of the hills with a guitar and started singing in Kansas City. About seven years ago some of the boys found it was a lot of fun to make him laugh in the middle of a song, inventing the most outlandish stunts to accomplish this.

   

Since then Arkie's laugh has been heard from coast to coast and he never knows what is likely to happen when he starts to sing. A real country boy, has really chopped a lot of wood, loves to go coon hunting, is an amateur weather prophet.

 


Singing with his brother Pete.

 

When the Cowbells Ring Out on Saturday Night
conitnued from previous page
As WLS continued to beam farm programming throughout the Midwest through the 1940s and 50's, stars like Jenny Lou Carson, Arkie, Julie & Judy, Rex Allen and Homer & Jethro continued to entertain thousands of listeners. The Reverend Dr. John Holland, whose articles appeared in The Prairie Farmer, ministered on WLS via the Little Brown Church of the Air, which debuted back in 1925.  His regular service aired on Sundays and a Morning Devotion was heard daily at 7:00am.  School Time was a groundbreaking educational program that began in 1937.  Airing every weekday in the classroom, the program proved that radio could be used as an educational tool.  Topics including current events, music appreciation, geography and business were broadcast to students in more than 1000 schools throughout the four-state area.

The National Barn Dance merrily rolled on from the Eighth Street Theatre every Saturday night, but the post-war world was quickly changing.  The American Broadcasting Company, which was spun off in 1945 by NBC (It was their less visible "Blue" Network) and Paramount Theatres bought out WENR as well as a controlling share of the WLS in 1954.  Faced with dwindling audiences, WLS reluctantly closed down the live version of the National Barn Dance.  The last audience filed into The Eighth Street Theatre on August 31st, 1957, although the program continued on-air in the WLS, and later WGN studios.  By 1959, it was clear that America was changing from a rural to an ever increasing urban and suburban society.  Movies and television had already made their inroads and the Prairie Farmer folks knew it was time to cash out. ABC, sensing that they could get their hands on the huge 50,000 watt clear channel signal from Chicago, was ready to buy.  They already had a television property in Chicago, WBKB-TV Channel 7, and were beginning to pursue a license for the new radio band - FM.   As a result, The Prairie Farmer Publishing Company and WLS Radio became a wholly owned subsidiary of ABC. Farm programming was soon to be a thing of the past on 890 kHz.

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