Last month we talked about a few websites where you could get all kinds of information on the old time radio show collecting hobby. From some of the e-mails I've received this month I'm figuring that a lot of you have gotten started and already have a number of shows in your collection, so let's focus a bit on the shows themselves this month.

As I've mentioned in each of the first two installments of Tuning In Time, there is no single item more useful to this hobby than John Dunning's fantastic reference guide, On The Air. Two things I should mention quickly: no, we have no advertising deal with Dunning and yes, I realize a CD burner is extremely important for anyone who doesn't want a houseful of cassettes. Look at it this way... what good is a wheelbarrow if you can't figure out what to put in it? Nuff said about that. Let's talk about some shows. The following listing is not even SORTA meant to be comprehensive. It's tiny. Tip of the tip of the iceberg. It's just a few suggestions to get you started.

COMEDY

Let's start with an easy one. Almost everyone knows who Jack Benny was, and many of you have probably heard his show. What you might not know is that the Benny show is one of the easiest and most rewarding to collect. Almost everybody in the hobby has a good sized chunk of his shows, and when you trade lists with people you're almost sure to discover you have some they don't have and vice versa. This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. They give you a list of shows they want, you do the same, each person burns a CD or two or three, and soon each gets a nice package in the mail. My own Jack Benny collection has just hit the 400 episode mark and there are still plenty more to find. The show is still fresh and funny all these years later (it ran from 1932 to 1955 and then continued on television). The secret? Benny himself was the butt of the jokes, and he had a fairly large and skilled cast firing the shots, each in different ways. With so many shows available for the snagging, you can easily become addicted to this program. Luckily, there aren't any health risks.

The Aldrich Family was a classic bit of Americana, innocent as can be but often very, very funny. It began with the voice of the mother shouting "Heeeeeenry? Heeeenry Aldrich!" and the teen's response, "Coming mother!" Years later, Firesign Theater would parody the show as Porgy & Mudhead on their classic album, Don't Crush That Dwarf... Hand Me The Pliers. Episodes of The Aldrich Family are out there in collectorland, so have at it. The Bickersons starred Don Ameche and Francis Langford as John and Blanche Bickerson, a couple who... well... bickered. Constantly. About anything and everything. Most episodes began with John snoring while Blanche suffered anything but quietly. She'd wake him up and the bickering would begin. Some of the episodes are nearly carbon copies of each other, but more often than not the writers came up with fresh material that is still funny today. The show is available in abundance all over the Internet. Damon Runyon Theater is one of the most charming shows anyone ever produced, radio OR television. Sure, it portrayed gangsters as having hearts of gold, but get over it. It's a show. The stories were often less important than the language (they spoke like "I am ever so pleased to make your acquaintance"), but there was enough gentle charm in each character and each story to win over just about any listener. Only 52 episodes were made, and they're all in circulation. Life Of Riley starred William Bendix as the rather obnoxious head of a family that managed to survive despite Riley's antics. There are tons of episodes available out there, and the quality is generally very good, both in sound and in content. The show is a lot of fun, and because the subject matter is family related, it has aged well. There are so many great comedies, and it all comes down to a matter of personal taste. You may love Baby Snooks and hate Abbott and Costello, or vice versa. If you love Monty Python, you probably have the taste for Britcoms, so The Goon Show, Beyond Our Ken, Around The Horne and I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again might be just what you seek. Get out there and taste test.

ADVENTURE

This is a great genre in old time radio. There are so many things to suggest that it really is hard to pick just a few. In the superhero subgenre you have Superman, which needs no describing, and The Green Hornet, Captain Avenger, The Shadow, and on and on. If you like unusual angles, try The Shadow Of Fu Manchu, a program in which the title character is evil incarnate. Then there are the human-hero programs, like Bold Venture, which starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in a Caribbean setting. There are shipboard adventures like Voyage Of The Scarlet Queen, aviation adventures like Hop Harrigan, and westerns like The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Frontier Gentleman and Six Shooter. Any of these can be found easily among collectors and in the various snag spots along the ol' Info highway.

DETECTIVE SHOWS

Ah, now here's one of my favorite genres to collect. You can't go wrong with Sherlock Holmes, and that show is still being made in England, at least last I heard. The roles of Holmes and Watson have been played by quite a few pairs over the decades, and part of the fun of collecting Holmes programs is developing your preferences. Will you be a Gielgud and Richardson fan, or will you prefer Hobbs and Shelley? They were all good, so you'll hear a lot of fantastic mysteries along the way. Vincent Price was The Saint, and that show is so completely entertaining you can get lost for hours when you only intended to listen to one episode. Dick Powell's character in Richard Diamond, Private Detective was among the most interesting in the genre, and his banter was among the wittiest and least pretentious. He didn't need a lot of four-star words to say "I smell a rat." The Adventures Of Sam Spade and The Adventures Of Phillip Marlowe are also highly recommended. And if you don't mind a hero that is really a caustic jerk, Nero Wolfe is worth your attention, too.

SCIENCE FICTION

This is a genre that requires the listener to forget what year it is and what the world is like, because so many of the shows predicted a robot-controlled, nuclear-destroyed or space-colonized 1970s. Get past that and you'll be knocked out by some great writing in X Minus One and/or Dimension X. Be aware that those two shows have some scripts in common. I don't mean similar, I mean the same script and same title. Oddly enough, the performances are sometimes different enough to make it worth the time to hear both. Journey Into Space is also entertaining, though somewhat cornier than the X shows. Space Patrol is almost pure space-corn, but it was aimed at kids, and Flash Gordon is cheesy but in the best way. There is a whole universe of sci-fi to discover out there, both American and British, and it can become an obsession and a voyage of discovery.

MISC.

If you like variety shows, check into Kraft Music Hall, which had two hosts over the years: Bing Crosby and Al Jolsen, and always had good guest stars. If condensations of Hollywood movies is your bag, The Lux Radio Theater is what you're looking for. It ran forever, and many of the shows were quite good. Personal opinion: avoid The Wizard Of Oz. It's el-stinko and will just sully the memory of a great film. On the other hand, there are dozens and dozens that do their films justice. Looking for actual broadcasts of sporting events? It's a bit thinner than I'd like out there, but occasionally you'll find someone with full broadcasts of baseball and boxing. If you're a big baseball fan like I am, there's nothing like hearing the actual call of a Joe Dimaggio grand slam or hearing the Ebbets Field faithful go nuts as right fielder Carl Furillo throws a Yankee out at home plate. Want some soap? There I can't help you. Personally, soap operas gag me, and I'm no more interested in vintage soaps than I am in modern soaps. If anyone out there would like to suggest a listening list of soap operas, I'd be happy to include it in a future column.

Again, these are just a few suggestions, and this isn't meant to be "the list." Starting points. That's all. So get out there, use the search engines, find sites that have shows for downloading, and get going! More next month. See you then.

(C) 2000 - DJ Johnson