Don McNeill's "Breakfast Club"
1933
[From "Twenty
Years of Corn"]
 |
Chicago's
Century of Progress was news when Don McNeill took over an ugly-duckling early
morning radio show on June 23. He introduced a new format, four calls to breakfast,
March Time and Memory Time, sprinkled it with corn and his personality, and called
it Breakfast Club. Starting with a few pages of notes which he laughingly called a script, Don handled the show "purely catch as catch can with 16 messers of ceremonies." These included: singer Dick Teela, Walter Blaufuss, 12 musicians and announcer Bill Kephart. In the absence of an audience, Don invented characters like "Homer", the hero of his one-man, one-act plays, and "Juliet", the dumb dame. Listeners were also introduced to Bill Krenz, the tallest piano player in captivity, and "Elmer" (Bill Short), the man of many romances. |
| Right: Walter Blaufuss, composer ofpopular songs and a boy prodigy of Milwaukee, conducted the orchestra until 1942. |  |
 |
Left: Bill Krenz still captivates audiences with his original piano compositions. Eddie Ballentine, present conductor, is the only other 20 year veteran of Breakfast Club music. |
| Right: Dick Teela and The Originalities, a group of B.C. musiciansm presented in this picture in 1933. Left to right: Jean Cafarelli, Bill Giese, Dick Teela, Bill Short and Jack Rose. |  |
Return to the "Twenty Years of Corn" index
Comments or suggestions? click here to send them to Rich Samuels