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General Shep Related Chatter

Subject	Message	Replies
An early radio job?? Date: 03-13-2006 By: m10bob	We all take for granted Shep began his professional radio career in his hometown of Hammond Indiana, but according to Shep in two seperate stories, he worked in a small station in Toledo Ohio prior to going to Cinncy! Both stories which mention this tidbit indicate this is NOT a job he wished to brag about, and in the latter telling of the "locked out of the station" incident, he goes into detail about just how bad this station really was. Like his Hammond job, it was a one man operation and "Mr Grubbage" gave the news (with an upper-crust and very English slant), and one of the stations sponsers was White Castle, (or White Tower). One of the things I find very interesting is that Shep claims his original theme song was an old jazz standard called "Running Wild". In the second of these tales, he actually hums the song for his audience, underlining this claim. Shep was definitely into jazz in those days, which lends credibility to this tale. The dates of this tale are:04161960 and again on 09281965.(The former is labelled "Locked out of the station", the latter is called "A tale of old radio days." I suspect all of us have had jobs we prefer to keep secret, (or at least buried in the past), and I suspect this was one of them for Shep. Added later:BTW, Shep must not have stayed at this station long, as he sez he was living at one of those smaller hotels which is "just better than a flophouse", and rented by the week. He sez the hotel was on Huron street.Personally, I feel he left soon after being locked out of the station, (which involved the police!!)[:D] In Hoc Agricula Conc In Est Spittle Louk	3

Replies

Date	Member	Message
03-15-2006 ( Reply#: 402 )	Skoonj	He's mentioned Toledo, even the fact that he broadcast some Mudhens games. The Hammond-area jobs, however, would be pre-war, where the Toledo and Cincy jobs would be post-war. Since he was 20 years old in 1941, he could easily have had several stations under his belt by the time he arrived in Toledo after the war.
03-15-2006 ( Reply#: 403 )	m10bob	Yeah Skoonj, and if you look at the radio timeline on Jim Clavins' 1st Shep site, you can see Shep actually broadcast those Toledo Mudhen games after he had already made a name at WOR..One might then wonder what the attraction was? One may also consider that his brother was playing for a farm team, supposedly for the Cinncy Reds. I have already contacted the Indianapolis Indians who were the farm team for the Reds at that time, and they simply could not verify Randy's involvement there one way or another, and I was told if Randy was just a bench warmer, he would not appear on the team roster now. Could the Mudhens have had some significance for Shep, (especially since we know he LOVED the White Sox??) In Hoc Agricula Conc In Est Spittle Louk
03-24-2006 ( Reply#: 418 )	m10bob	Just heard another Shep broadcast from 1973-07-09, titled "Toledo heat", in which Shep again affirms he was living at the Lorrainne Hotel on Huron street in Toledo one summer with "a job he acquired by answering an ad.' He also retells the tale of the firemen coming thru the window of his room, dragging a hose behind them. Shep tels his story when New York City itself was in a summer heatwave, and according to Shep, he saved $2 by renting the only room in the Lorraine without air-conditioning, only to learn his 2nd floor room was directly over the steam boiler for the building! (He likened the heat to the 40-inch soaking pits!)[:p] BTW, Sheps claim that he first had a theme song called "Running Wild" might be true, as it was written by Bix Beiderbecke, one of Sheps' musical heroes of the twenties![?] In Hoc Agricula Conc In Est Spittle Louk