WXYZ Radio, Detroit, MI

on


Brace Beemer as the Lone Ranger
I was born outside Detroit and lived in that area until I was 5 (I think). No matter. We had a radio in the front room and no TV so the big evening entertainment was to listen to the serials. 

My dad was friends with a fella name Brace Beemer who was an announcer with WXYZ radio and, amazingly, the radio voice of the Lone Ranger. When the series ended on radio and went to TV Beemer then became the voice of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, a series that started in the late 30s and ended when the TV version hit the air in the middle 50s.

I'm not sure why that came to mind this morning other than last
night I was up for some unknown reason - an undigested morsel as Scrooge put it - and the Donna Diana Overture was on the radio. That was the Preston Theme Song (just as the William Tell Overture was the Lone Ranger).

I'll play it below. You can think of Yukon King (the dog), and "On King, on you huskies" bellowing across some wilderness on the way to Yellowknife from Dawson....