A hundred years ago tonight on the radio, you could listen to the California Ramblers performing over WEAF, New York.  But it wasn’t just any broadcast, as seen from the clipping above, from the January 1923 issue of Talking Machine World.  Due to the radio. Columbia records noted that the lid of many a long forgotten phonograph had been frozen.  They fought back with radio, and purchased time on WEAF every Tuesday and Thursday at 9:15.  Each broadcast featured a Columbia recording artist, and was broadcast right from the recording studio.  If people liked what they heard, they could buy a record, enabling them to listen to it whenever they liked.

According to Columbia, listeners around the country had tuned in.  The group is shown here, in 1931, in the June 1931 issue of What’s On The Air.  You can hear them in their 1925 recording of “Five Foot Two Eyes of Blue”, below.

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