New Year
Season 09, Episode 01
January 14, 2021
Looking Back. Looking Ahead.
Re-Imagined Radio samples New Year's Eve episodes of The Whistler and Guy Lombardo's New Year's Eve Party to celebrate the start of 2021.
Access the episode script
Background
January, named for Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, is noted for New Year's Eve, an opportunity to reflect and celebrate both the previous and upcoming years. The "New Year" episode of Re-Imagined Radio samples two stories, one from The Whistler the other from Guy Lombardo's New Year's Eve Party, about this unique opportunity.
The Whistler
From The Whistler we sample "The First Year," the December 31, 1947 episode in which a rich uncle decides to teach his niece, Lydia, the true value of matrimony by changing his will to require her and her husband, Elliott, to stay married for ten years before they inherit. If one of them dies, the other inherits everything. The story begins and ends on New Year's Eve of "The First Year" of their marriage.
The Whistler broadcast 692 episodes from 16 May 1942 to 22 September 1955. Each episode began with a 13-note theme composed by musical director Wilbur Hatch and whistled by Dorothy Roberts who worked at Lockheed. Roberts whistled the beginning of each episode of The Whistler the thirteen-year series. Additional compositions by Hatch added drama and transitions during the episodes. Hatch was also musical director and composed for other CBS radio programs like Suspense, Broadway Is My Beat, Our Miss Brooks, and others.
Ironically, most of America could not hear The Whistler as it was confined to the CBS Pacific Coast network where the program's sponsor, Signal Oil Company, had a presence. Despite this lack of national distribution, The Whistler was considered one of the most popular of all American radio mystery anthologies, and its whistled theme was known to millions. Each episode focused on criminal acts and their surprise undoing, narrated by the unnamed and omnipresent Whistler who often commented directly on the action like a Greek chorus.
Guy Lombardo's New Year's Eve Party
Gaetano and Lena Lombardo left Italy to open a tailor shop in London, Ontario, Canada. They did, and had five sons along the way. The oldest was Gaetano Jr., born 1902. Everyone calleded him Guy.
When each of his first four sons got old enough, the senior Lombardo gave them a musical instrument, hoping to eventually have an in-house orchestra to accompany his rich baritone singing voice.
"I got the violin because I was the oldest," Guy says. "And the violin player is always the leader. That's why I'm the leader." Brother Carmen played the alto saxophone (he would also pen many of the group's later hits), Victor handled the baritone and soprano sax, and Lebert became a trumpeter. When Guy convinced neighborhood pal Fred Kreitzer, who played the piano, to join in, the first Lombardo orchestra was formed. The rehearsed in the tailor shop and Gaetano arranged their first appearance at a church lawn party in 1914.
Their first paying gig was at Great Bend, Ontario, in 1919, and they realized they needed more brass and a guitar player. With these additions made, they wore red blazers and adopted the name "The Royal Canadians" in honor of their homeland and traveled south to the United States seeking fame and fortune. They cut records for Gennett Studios in Indiana, 1924, and later for Brunswick and Vocalion. Lombardo signed the band with Brunswick and recorded prolifically from 1927 to 1931, and they switched labels to Brunswick from 1932 to 1935, then spent a year with Decca. Near the end of 1935, they recorded for Victor before resigning with Decca in 1938. The same year, Guy became a naturalized American citizen.
Guy Lombaro and the Royal Canadians became synonymous with New Year's Eve celebrations, performing for live nationwide radio broadcasts for fifty years, beginning with "radio's first nationwide New Year's Eve broadcast" from New York's Roosevelt Hotel in 1928. Years later, Lombardo quipped that when he died he would take New Year's Eve with him.
In the 1929 broadcast, Lombardo introduced "Auld Lang Syne" which had been part of the repertoire since being a popular request among the Scottish community around London, Ontario. As the song became a part of the New Year's tradition, it was said that Guy was "the first Canadian to start an American tradition." Beginning in 1956, Guy Lombardo and The Royal Canadians began broadcasting their New Year's Eve Party on both radio and television with each celebration featuring a televised segment from New York's Times Square.
From these years of live performances, Lombardo is noted as "Mr. New Year's Eve" and is honored as providing the theme song for these celebrations, "Auld Lang Syne" a traditional Scottish folk song based on the poem of the same title written by Robert Burns in 1788. The poem-song is about two friends reflecting over drinks about their long and sometimes distant friendship. The title best translates as "Old long since," or "For the sake of old times."
Production
Content
"The First Year," the December 31, 1947 episode of The Whistler
Guy Lombardo's New Year's Eve Party broadcast live from The Grill Room
in the Roosevelt Hotel, New York City, December 31, 1957.
Featuring Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians (the big orchestraa) and the Twin Pianos
Songs sampled in Guy Lombardo's New Year's Eve Party include
"South Rampart Street on Parade"
"Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree"
"When the Saints Go Marchin' In"
"Auld Lang Syne"
Credits
Curated, Produced, and Hosted by John F. Barber
Post Production by Martin John Gallagher
Promotional Graphics by Holly Slocum
Social Media by Regina Carol Social Media Management and Photography
Producer's Notes
The first episode of Season 9
Many listeners will known the "Auld Lang Syne" song as traditional for New Year's celebrations. This
episode tells a bit of the backstory.
—John F. Barber
Promotion
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