Ain't That a Knee-Slapper: Rural Comedy in the Twentieth Century

Chapter Two: Radio Rules the Roost

- 36 Radio Rules the Roost W hile it may seem that the airwaves were so crowded with rural comedy teams of the Lum and Abner, Eb and Zeb, and Si and Elmer tradition that you couldn’t stir ’em with a stick, the fact is that many other types of drawling, overall-clad, pigtailed comedians existed. Actually, the idea of a yokel monologist goes back even further than radio, with roots deep in the American tradition. Most of the rural humorists of the nineteenth century supplemented their writing income with stage appearances and readings, but one of the first to develop strictly as an audio character was Uncle Josh. Interestingly, Uncle Josh never made an appearance on broadcast radio—mainly because the actor who played him, Cal Stewart, died at just about the time the possibilities of commercial broadcasting were first being realized. Uncle Josh was strictly a product of records intended for home use, and as such falls somewhat outside the scope of this book. However, since this funny fogey in many ways provided the inspiration for most of the stand-up country comedians who would follow, he deserves at least a brief mention here. Stewart developed his Uncle Josh characterization during his years on the vaudeville circuit in the late 1800s. Like many of the radio acts that would follow, Uncle Josh was supposed to be a typical New Englander, rooted in the fictional community of Punkin Center. In 1897, Thomas Edison got Stewart/Uncle Josh to make Chapter Two - 37 recordings of some of his vaudeville monologues, and the cylinders (predating flat records) became best sellers of their day, with such titles as Uncle Josh and the Photographer, Uncle Josh’s Arrival in New York, The County Fair at Punkin Center, and Uncle Josh on the Automobile. Stewart died on December 7, 1919, at the age of sixty-three; had he lived for another decade or so, he would probably have found a whole new career as a radio comedian. After radio got started, most of its monologue comedians (as opposed to those who played in comedy serials) came from the same vaudeville heritage as Stewart and his Uncle Josh persona. This was the background of Will Rogers, whose stage personality only barely fits the criteria for a rural comedian. With his chaps, ten-gallon hat, and rope tricks, the Oklahoma-born Rogers more closely fit the mold of a western character than a true rural one in the hillbilly or small-town sense. Rogers made many appearances on radio from the medium’s inception until his death in a plane crash in August 1935, but by and large they consisted of Rogers giving his own mildly bemused commentaries on the current political scene and other topics of the day. His “rural” attributes, when they could be said to be present, mostly consisted of his accent and the fact that he preferred to look at the shenanigans of the political elite with a common man’s practicality. Rogers’s more direct connection to the rest of rural comedy would come from his movies more than his radio work, as we shall see in the next chapter. Probably no rural comedian had a more sudden and rapid rise to the top of the heap than Bob Burns. It is also possible that no rural comedian in the years hence had to endure more loathing from his own hometown. Burns came from Van Buren, Arkansas, a fact that he mentioned often in his routines—precisely what seems to have made Van Buren hate him so. Burns had knocked around in vaudeville for years without really hitting on any successful formula. His main claim to fame was his oddball musical instrument he called the bazooka. Long before the word became applied to a World War II weapon or a brand of bubble gum, Burns’s bazooka was an odd conglomeration of two interlocking pieces of pipe and a whiskey funnel, played somewhat Radio Rules the Roost - 38 like a trombone. He used the bazooka as a part of his various vaudeville acts, but true fame eluded him until mid-1935, when he landed some successful appearances on Rudy Vallee’s radio variety show. In those spots, Burns patterned his monologues after those of Will Rogers, with a country philosopher’s view of politics and American life. After Rogers’s sudden demise, Burns’s career looked to be in...