LizzieMaine
Bartender
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Longtime radio-TV nostalgia host Joe Franklin has died in New York at the age of 88. For people of my generation all along the Eastern Seaboard he was a key figure in promoting appreciation for the entertainment personalities of the prewar era, with his late-night radio show over WOR blasting over half the country when the atmospherics were good. He was a vital part of my own youth -- I spent my teens listening to "Joe Franklin's Memory Lane" every Saturday night -- "presented by Martin Paints. Martin Paints, my friends..." -- and it was thru that program that I got to know dozens of performers who are still a vital part of my life.
Joe Franklin didn't care about "cool." He wasn't interested in what the jazz cognoscenti had to say, he had no interest in "camp," and he had no use for rock. He loved -- dearly and sincerely -- the popular music and personalities of the 1920s and 1930s, and WOR gave him a fifty-thousand watt platform to preach from, something that's inconceivable in today's world, where if it's irrelevant to rock, it didn't exist. I didn't just learn about this music from Joe Franklin, I learned that there were other people in the world who appreciated its quality, long before there was ever any such thing as the internet. And I got to hear many of those personalities, themselves, while they were still alive to to tell their stories. Joe Franklin kept the flame burning -- and he passed that flame along to those of us who still remember.
Joe Franklin didn't care about "cool." He wasn't interested in what the jazz cognoscenti had to say, he had no interest in "camp," and he had no use for rock. He loved -- dearly and sincerely -- the popular music and personalities of the 1920s and 1930s, and WOR gave him a fifty-thousand watt platform to preach from, something that's inconceivable in today's world, where if it's irrelevant to rock, it didn't exist. I didn't just learn about this music from Joe Franklin, I learned that there were other people in the world who appreciated its quality, long before there was ever any such thing as the internet. And I got to hear many of those personalities, themselves, while they were still alive to to tell their stories. Joe Franklin kept the flame burning -- and he passed that flame along to those of us who still remember.
