Radio Legend Bob Poole
by Billy Ingram
Bob attended Guilford College in 1934 and at the same time went to work for Major Edney Ridge's new radio venture WBIG ('We Believe in Greensboro') where he emceed a 6:30 am show for the Southern Pioneers country group. After two years at Guilford he transferred to UNC in Chapel Hill, hitchhiking back to the Gate City for his radio shifts.
After dropping out of college he went on full time at WBIG where he provided color commentary for the first GGO. That's when Bob landed his first network program. As he told it, “After I had been working for WBIG about a year I got to wondering what the the world was like outside of North Carolina. So I went to New York. My boss knew some fellows in the broadcasting business up there.
"I only wanted to visit... but both CBS and NBC shoved me into a studio with a stack of records in front of me and told me to do my stuff. There was nothing to do but take the audition as a good natured joke and go through with it. So for an hour and a half I made up spontaneous wisecracks, referring to programs on other stations and to the station manager as a flop-eared animal."
CBS liked what they heard, summoning Bob back to New York City to star in 'A Southern Boy and a Southern Girl,' a light comedy costarring a budding new musical talent, Dinah Shore. After 13 weeks they were dropped for being, "too Southern."
Stationed at the Naval Air Station in New Orleans during WWII Bob's baritone vocals gave weight to 'Sky Wave to Victory' and other patriotic broadcasts heard over 50,000 watt WWL, a free channel station with a nationwide reach. After his stint in the Navy Bob remained at WWL to launch the show in 1945 he would do for the rest of his life, 'Poole's Paradise,' a combustible mix of celebrity interviews, live acts, phone calls, crazy sound effects, all providing a frenetic framework for Bob Poole's down-home, natural wit.
He became a broadcast sensation, the template for every radio DJ that followed.
These clips are from his stint on the Mutual Broadcasting System from 1948-1952 where Poole's Paradise was a hit around the country at 3:00-4:00 weekday afternoons from 1948-1952. While the broadcast emenated from NYC it did not air there.
Poole's Parlor aired on WOR in New York. This was an evening variety show that I think lasted one season. They made Bob out to be a ladies man - news to his wife Gloria and daughter Ashley who were listening at home!
Charmer in the Dell was a Sunday morning music program that aired in the summer of '49. A bit like The Lawrence Welk Show.
More from Poole's Paradise, including a mash-up with different versions of 'Jingle Bells.'
More Poole's Parlor, a half-hour program on Wednesday nights over WOR in New York. I believe this program aired from the fall of 1948 until January 1949.
By the time Bob left in 1952 the Mutual network was beginning to unravel. Imitators were flooding the airwaves all around the USA in favor of expensive network programs. That's when Bob made the decision to return to his radio roots, WBIG.
Take the ratings for every locally produced morning radio program, total them all together and you still won't come close to the audience share 'Poole's Paradise' enjoyed for a quarter of a century in Greensboro.
THE END...
Bob Poole was teamed with kiddie host George Perry for a live broadcast on Saturday mornings from the Carolina Circle Mall in 1977. Bob was having serious health problems and The Old Rebel's TV show had been cancelled. George Perry had been doing occasional segments on the Channel 2 news (Charles Kuralt kind of things) but neither of them looked terribly comfortable in this format. Bob Poole was a radio guy in ill-health suddenly working with an audience, The Old Rebel was a children's host with an audience full of old people.
Dusty Dunn recalls, "It was like something you would do on TV, they had a girl out there who held up cards telling people when to clap, it was a well produced show. It was a theatrical kind of a deal, they talked about what was going on, told jokes and gave away sausage and gravy biscuits.
"I had been working afternoons at WCOG and I went to WRQK, the morning guy left and they gave me the morning show. He found out about it somehow, he said to me in that gravelly voice, 'Dusty, this morning thing—the whole secret is, you gotta take a bath every day.' He was just as friendly as he could be."
After Bob passed away in January of 1978 Dusty Dunn stepped into the role of Greensboro's morning go-to guy. "When I was negotiating my contract at BIG the girl was going over what I was to get, what I needed, and she asked, 'Do you want batteries? Would that be included in your package?' I said, 'Batteries? Batteries for what?' She said, 'Well, we gave Bob Poole batteries for his flashlight when he wakes up in the morning so he didn't have to turn on the lights and wake his wife up.' I couldn't believe it."
The property WBIG occupied above a rapidly expanding Battleground Avenue became infinitely more valuable to Jefferson Pilot than a radio signal that couldn't reach much past Greensboro city limits. On November 20, 1986, 3 months after WBIG's 60th anniversary with only a few hours notice, distraught morning man Dusty Dunn fielded calls over the air from disbelieving listeners before the station's signal went dead at 6:00pm.
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