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brucesw

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Everything posted by brucesw

  1. That makes more sense. I remember reading in nightlife columns about (big) bands playing there, which doesn't look like it would work in the place pictured. I imagine 'Plantation' was a popular name for a night club in Houston. My first guess was South Main but then I thought I picked up a hint it was in the 300 block of Main.
  2. http://www.discoverhoustontours.com/Welcom...em%20020722.htm Google on 'Houston Tunnel Lady' for more possibilities.
  3. Doh! I looked up Deepwater in the Handbook several months ago after I first read about it but didn't find that entry. I must have entered Deep Water, which pulls up a long list of useless entries. Thanks for digging that out.
  4. Thanks. I was expecting it to be right on the ship channel. In that same area there's also a Deepwater Elementary and the subdivision between S. South (?) and the Beltway, south of 225, is Deepwater Terrace on the Key Map. I'll have to get over there and take a look at the KXYZ plant and see if it looks anything like the pics from the 30s; probably not.
  5. KPRC and KTRH had a joint transmitter plant at Deepwater in the late 30s; they were only the second two stations in the nation to have a joint site. Height of the antenna doesn't matter for AM but does for FM; FM waves don't follow the curvature of the earth so coverage depends on 'line-of-sight.' There were 4 FMs I think on the Tenneco bldg. in the late 60s. When 1 Shell was completed, it blocked the signals (to the northwest?). Broadcasters convinced Gerald Hines to allow a mast on top of 1 Shell that eventually held 8 FMs. The mast is still there but I don't know if any stations ever use it anymore. I was told many years ago that Hines was so pi$$ed at what the mast did to the aesthetics of his building plus dealing with one particular engineer that he vowed never to agree to let an antenna be put on top of one of his buildings again. Anyway, broadcasters realized Houston was still growing and it was only a matter of time before another building went up taller than 1 Shell that would create signal problems, so they began casting about for a site outside of the downtown area where tall towers could be put up. Just why Mo City - officially the Senior Road Tower Group - was chosen I don't know, but it has to do both with spacing of signals on the dial and geographically plus of course the need to not obstruct flight paths. FM stations in other cities were having the same problems and also moving to the country. BTW, does anybody know just where Deepwater was? I know it was on the La Porte - Houston highway and I find a Deepwater street in Pasadena just inside the Beltway -- was that where it was?
  6. Apparently there's a WACO-FM but not AM. http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/locat...tate=TX&x=0&y=0 A lot of the old heritage calls have been tossed in today's corporate broadcasting world.
  7. Shroeder's book is fascinating - he must've spent 15 years on the research - but it's not without errors. The first radio station in Houston was WEV, licensed to the Hurlburt-Still Electric Co., on the air before Daniel even got a license. Daniel always operated WCAK from his home, more like an amateur station than what we would think of as a broadcasting station, and he worked at WEV as announcer and engineer. When the radio station signed on in 1925 when the calls were originally selected the name of the paper was the Post-Dispatch; there was no Post Radio Co. or Post-Dispatch Radio Co. When Ross Sterling became governor and sold the newspaper and radio station, the company was named the Houston Printing Co., which I think it stayed until it became H&C Communications. So far as I know there never was a Post Radio Co. Ray Miller is one of my heros but I think he made a boo-boo. Westinghouse Broadcasting had a massive propaganda campaign for years to spread the claim that KDKA was the first radio station. In fact a guy named Elery Stone in the Bay area was broadcasting music and weather announcements several years before WWI; his operations eventually became KGO, San Francisco. There was also a station in Detroit that was on before KDKA -- can't remember the calls off hand. And there are other claims. When I worked for Westinghouse I was told one in every six workers in Pittsburgh worked in a Westinghouse facility. This was a couple of decades ago.
  8. Yes, the K was obligatory, but so what? KPRC was the first station in Houston and one of the first stations anywhere to request their calls instead of just taking an assigned call from a serial list; surely the writer of the front page story in the newspaper that owned the station knew what the calls were supposed to stand for. The fact it was obligatory did not prohibit broadcasters from finding ways to incorporate it into a slogan or nickname: KTRH - Kome to the Rice Hotel, You're Keyed to the Rice Hotel, (studios were on the 5th floor of the Rice) Keep Tuned Right Here, and, as some have suggested, Keep The Resume Handy. KTHT - Kome to Houston Texas, You're Keyed to Houston Texas. KRBE-FM, originally a classical music station - You're Keyed to Radio Broadcasting Excellence. KCOH - KiloCycles over Houston, You're Keyed to the City of Houston (Keying in on a station refers to the old crystal sets). WTAW (B/CS) - assigned by the Commerce Dept from a serial list, it was taken to mean "Watch the Aggies Win." Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, who signed all licenses, wrote to the owners of WBAP in Fort Worth in 1922 that their calls - assigned, not chosen - should stand for "We Bring a Program.' It was also said to stand for "We Bore All People" and, during Prohibition, "We Bring a Pint."
  9. Some of the info in my post above was from the Shroeder book; I see that I neglected to credit it. It's a much better book than the Harris - better researched and documented. There's an amazing amount of information in that little book, although he necessarily leaves out a lot of stuff in such a broad survey.
  10. For 57Tbird... I checked the papers for contemporary accounts and they confirm the story above. However, the schedule for KLEE-TV Sunday eve, 1/2/49, included 'Cotton Bowl' at 7pm. It was only a :30 minute program which the paper described as 'scenes from yesterday's Cotton Bowl game at Dallas (SMU 21 vs. Oregon 13), I guess what we would call a highlight reel. In addition, the game was filmed in entirety and many copies made to be distributed across the state for theatrical exhibition. In Houston the Metropolitan, Tower and Kirby theatres all had screenings scheduled for Monday eve, 1/3/49.
  11. Hmmm. City about 2 million; metro about 3.5-4 million -- you find a bar owner who's been able to create this place and I'd like to meet him.
  12. I think the Enron tour by itself would be kind of boring. If she combined the Enron tour and the Blood and Money tour that would be worth it. I wonder if she includes the house where Frank Lorenzo lived and where Dean Corll lived?
  13. You have noted a trend that probably will continue. Up until 10 or 12 years ago, HLSR was the biggest venue a country artist could expect to play. It was very prestigious for the top acts and even more so if you were an up and coming act to be invited. That's not true anymore, and not thru any fault of HLSR or the big bad meanies in the media elsewhere who don't say enough nice things about Houston. Following on the enormous success of Garth Brooks in the early and mid-90s, the biggest country stars began to realize they could stage the big stadium tours that pop and rock acts had been doing for years. George Strait was one of the first if not the first to do it, right here in Houston at Rice Stadium. He bypassed the Rodeo one year, to much caterwauling of fans, but came to town with his 'George Strait Music Festival' around the 4th of July. It started in the afternoon and went on until late at night, with local acts, regional acts, up and coming national acts, etc. Tim McGraw played right before George, before Tim himself was a superstar. There are only a handful of country artists who can do this but the plusses for them are enormous: 'total artistic control,' whatever that means; the ability to get up on stage and play for 2 and a half hours if they want, not 45 minutes; the ability to present their act to 100s of thousands of fans all over the country in a one day festival atmosphere, impacting CD sales, merchandising and name awareness, and then go back home after 3 or 4 months and take the rest of the year off, instead of touring nonstop 200 nites a year at honky-tonks and smaller arenas. In addition, some artists have financial interests in up and coming acts; they invite them on the tour and make money that way, too. The top touring country acts now rival the top pop and rock acts in terms of ticket sales and gross, etc. It's a win, win, win, win situation for the artist and hard for HLSR to compete with with a brief one-night gig that doesn't fit the artist's schedule. It's very prestigious to be a big enough superstar to stage one of these tours or to be one of the artists invited to the tour. In addition I understand HLSR was creating a problem for itself by insisting on a rather long non-compete window before and after an artist's appearance. Some country acts, and other artists too, didn't mind the constraints of a rodeo appearance but wanted to be able to come back to town later in the summer to appear at the Woodlands or whatever. A new talent coordinator was installed last year and was supposed to address this issue, so I understand. Some country artists are very much into tradition and will continue to play HLSR; for others, its a just a question of what's best for business. I think you'll see fewer big name country acts as the years go on; not necessarily fewer than this year, but fewer than in the past. Possibily part of what is happening is that in order to get a couple of the biggest names, they have to spend so much they don't have a lot less left over to spend on other acts -- that's just a guess on my part. As to your second point: Martina McBride was Female Vocalist of the Year for both Country Music associations for several years (don't know what happened this year -- Gretchen Wilson may have copped one or both of the awards). But I don't think she ever sold out a show at the Rodeo, even at the Dome. The rodeo people are not dumb; I'm sure they have no illusions about selling out Tricia Yearwood, Sheryl Crow or Lee Ann Womack or some of the other non-country acts. Sorry for the long post.
  14. Yes. RodeoHouston does not have the entire entertainment industry under it's thumb. It has to scramble to put together a line-up and some years better talent is available than others. Of course, 'better talent' is very subjective and not everyone agrees on what that means. There have been years when the Rodeo was scrambling right up to the last minute and delayed an announcement of the lineup for a couple of weeks while they tried to find someone and one year, only a couple of years ago, they had already announced the line-up and then made a change when they convinced ZZ Top to appear. Keith Urban was one of the artists bumped that had already been announced -- perhaps why he was there last year.
  15. From the on-line index to the Baytown Sun at Sterling Municipal Library: 11/22/1949, Happy Harbor in LaPorte, home for the aged, sponsored by Rev. J. H. H. Ellis and, Page 10 (24728) ar Happy Harbor in LaPorte, home for the aged, sponsored by Reverend J. H. H. Ellis and daughter, Mrs. Rosa Lee Brown. Building was once the Bayshore Park Hotel. Its 27 rooms are being remodeled and equipped for the benefit of elderly people. Nurses will be on duty Current listing: Happy Harbor Methodist Home, 1106 Bayshore Drive, La Porte, one of the places that had to be evacuated for Rita. Probably looks little like the place in the 50s much less the 20s, if its even the same building. Not a bad resource for researching history in the area: http://www.sml.lib.tx.us/cgi-bin/database/..._sun/sun_ind.pl
  16. So it was close to Sylvan Beach? Was the book a local history or what? I'd like to look for it.
  17. In the 1920s, Bay Shore Park in La Porte advertised itself as Houston's Finest Playground. There was a pier extending into the bay, a dance pavilion, bandstand and an inn on the premises, plus other amenities. The park had it's own orchestra and singers. The ads for Bay Shore Park sometimes appeared adjacent to ads for Sylvan Beach Park in the newspapers but there was no suggestion the two were connected in any way. Anybody know anything of this or have any pictures? Where was it and what became of it? Are there any remnants? Edit: April 21, 1922
  18. All the accounts I have read, including that in Jack Harris' "The Fault Does Not Lie With Your Set," indicate KLEE-TV was scheduled to sign on at 6pm on New Year's Day, 1949, but was delayed by several hours due to last minute technical problems. The station finally got on the air around 9:30pm with the first words being "There's been trouble, plenty of trouble." The speaker was Paul Huhndorff, Chief Engineer. There were about 2000 sets in Houston; a crowd was gathered in front of the Fred Wyse Clothing Store at 912 Main, waiting. The first night's broadcast included Make Mine Music with the Tony Mottola Trio from CBS, an audience participation show, Winner Take All, with Bud Collier, Knobb's Korner, Lucky Pup (a children's show - kinda late at night for that!), Places, Please, a comedy show, a cooking demonstration, a fashion parade and a sports report. A test pattern had first been telecast on December 20, 1948. It took a three hour countdown to get all the equipment operating and get the station on the air, 5 days a week, evenings only. There was only one other station on the air in Texas at that time, WBAP/5 Fort Worth, which had signed on September 28, 1948. The claim that channel 2 was the 12th station in the nation was made in Harris' book but is not true; there were more than 40 stations already on the air, probably more than a dozen in NYC, LA and Chi alone. At the time of the freeze, there were applications in Houston for a KTRH-TV, KPRC-TV on Channel 4, KXYZ-TV, to be owned by Glenn McCarthy's Shamrock Broadcasting and operated from the Shamrock Hotel on Channel 7, and KTHT-TV. The original owner of KLEE-TV made a number of miscalculations that were costing him a lot of money; fearing he'd wind up with no network affiliation when the freeze was lifted (the fledgling TV networks had made it clear they wanted their TV affiliates to go to their long time AM radio affiliates), he sold the station to the Houston Post/Hobby family after about 14 months; they continued to operate it as KLEE for 4 months before flipping the calls to KPRC-TV and affiliating with NBC. There was very little network programming in the early days; there was lots of live, local stuff, even in prime time in the evening. Kotton Port, Rail Center was announced as the meaning of the calls for KPRC-AM when it signed on in May, 1925; that was also the phrase which led the story on the front page of the Houston Post-Dispatch, the newspaper which owned the station, the next morning and the phrase was used often on the air and in advertising for the station. The competing Chronicle was a big booster of local business and commerce (surprise, surprise, surprise) and ran frequent special sections on local industry, full page and double page ads touting Houston, etc. The slogan a couple of years earlier had been "Houston - Where 18 railroads meet the sea," but by 1925 we were down to a measly 17. It's been a long time since either cotton or railroads were considered a big part of the Houston economy I guess, but back then, they were the biggest industries in town. No way KPRC was the first radio station in Houston. By the time KPRC signed on, 15 licenses had been granted for radio stations in the Houston-Galveston area. A couple never made it to the air, a couple lasted only a few months, but there were several other stations on the air when KPRC signed on and one of them is still on the air today. The failure rate for early radio stations in Houston was very high, however. For the past several months, I have been researching the history of broadcasting in Houston. There are lots of fascinating stories to tell, most of which have been forgotten since this is Houston. Now that I've mastered all the software on my new computer and transferred all my files and data from the old computer to the new one safely and securely , I'm going to be working on launching a web site devoted to the history of broadcasting in Houston, hopefully in the next couple of months.
  19. Awesome stuff, Subdude. My parents said they took me there once but I was too young to remember. IIRC, Allen Parkway was called Buffalo Speedway or Buffalo Parkway back then, and of course Buffalo Bayou is 50 yards away.
  20. Thanks, Subdude, (and welcome back). I had driven by that intersection a couple of times of late trying to remember the Bill Williams there. I think that curved front strip center on both sides of MLK was there in the 50s. In my childhood memories I always confused that intersection with Waugh at what is now Allen Parkway, where the Buffalo House stood. Seeing the name Macgregor House on the Bill Williams helps me understand why. Re: your OST Motel thread - Alamo Plaza is still standing, now 'efficiency apartments.' Doesn't look too bad from the outside. Further east, at 5810, next to Fire Station 40 where OST becomes Wayside, stands the Big State Motel and not far away, around the corner on Telephone, the Sunset Motel. Both were there in the 50s IIRC and are still in operation. I saw another one between 288 and Griggs on OST that's real old, now shuttered, but can't find the scrap of paper I wrote it down on. Someday I'm going to get over there and get some pics.
  21. Produced by KUHT but for some reason not available for sale on their website and not listed at HPL either. I was amazed when watching it the names of all the well-known Houston families - civic, cultural, business leaders - that had lived in Riverside before the turnover and then it became the home to Black business, cultural, and civic leaders.
  22. I stopped shopping at Randalls years ago when it became apparent to me I was more likely to be charged a higher price than that advertised or posted on the shelves at Randalls than at all other chains combined. I understood that Randalls really botched the takeover of Collum (?) of Dallas, especially in Central Texas. If they were so well run, why did they have to bring in the Japanese takeover firm and then sell to Safeway? I suspect the chain was going downhill for a long time before the Onstead's bailed and they didn't have much choice in the matter. Don't know anything about them but I'll have to try that one. I used to have an HEB Pantry within a mile and I loved it for most shopping, with an occasional trip to Kroger Sig or CM for specialty items. I prefer to make several small trips rather than one big one. Now, there's an HEB Warehouse about 10 miles round trip. When you're shopping for one and buying mainly perishable fresh produce, bread, meats, etc., rather than a basketfull of canned stuff, warehouse stores are a big pain in the ___
  23. There's a Mickey Dee's at 20th and Yale; been there for years. Not to change the subject or anything -- but, anybody know how long Yale St. Pharmacy has been around? I think that current building has only been there since the 40s, but wasn't it across the street or something before? On Topic: I'd only been to Kaplan's a few times but my Mother, who grew up in the Heights, always raved about it and loved to get gifts from there. One of those institutions you think will be there forever.
  24. The first Cinerama movie was "This is Cinerama," produced in 1952 and premiered in NY. There were numerous other travelogs in the 50s; "How the West Was Won" was released in '62 according to IMDB. I saw "This is Cinerama" in LA in 1955, the same summer my step-granddad took my brother and I to the newly opened Disneyland. It opens with Lowell Thomas, an investor in the company, reading a narration. Only the center of the screen is exposed. At a certain point, the curtains begin to roll back, and back, and back, and back (146 degree arc). The audience gasps and the gasps turn to shrieks as the opening sequence bursts on the screen, accompanied by sound seeming to come from everywhere: a very realistic roller coaster sequence with every member of the audience sitting in the first car. It was great fun, and Cinerama may never have gotten any better. Wikipedia has a very good article on Cinerama including excerpts of Bosley Crowther's original NYT review.
  25. Perhaps named for R.E. "Bob" Smith, partner of Roy Hofheinz in the Houston Sports Assoc., thus in spearheading the drive to build the Astrodome and bring Major League BB to Houston. The Handbook of Texas says at one time he owned more land in Harris County than any one else, 11,000 acres. I'm wondering if the land where the Astrodome sits and the area around there was owned by him.
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