On The Air

For over half a century, Russian born orchestra leader Andre Kostelanetz was one of the most loved figures in music. Today, thirty-eight years after his death on January 13th 1980, there remain countless Kosty enthusiasts around the globe. As well as making innumerable recordings, Kostelanetz made over one thousand broadcasts, mainly radio, from the 1920s to 1979, 'in black tie concert presentation'. Fifty-two million Andre Kostelanetz records were sold during his forty-year tenure with Columbia. He continued to record until his death in 1980, The first radio broadcast in the series,'The Pause That Refreshes On The Air', sponsored by Coca-Cola, went out on WABC on December 1st 1940. The wartime Armed Forces Radio Service transcriptions of the show omit the advertisements. So a song from an earlier broadcast was inserted to make up the missing time. Frank Parker, tenor, appears on all three shows which we have selected. He was a tenor balladeer who sang briefly with the Revelers, and was the first singer on the Jack Benny radio show, 1933-35; he appeared in several movies, in many other radio programmes and in the 1944 Broadway hit, 'Follow The Girls'. Ten years previously his record of TWO CIGARETTES IN THE DARK reached No. 6 in the American popular music charts. In the early 1950s he sang on the Arthur Godfrey TV show.