RADIO AS A AID TO ASPIRING MUSICANS
Radio is doing a tremendous service to young and aspiring musicians; it is “discovering” future stars, no matter how humble their enviroment in great numbers. From the depths of the unknown they are being dug out, given hearings and boosted faster than through any other medium. For example take Jane Upperman. Miss Upperman was unknown save in the little Kentucky town in which she lived...and where she sang in a little church choir. She is tall, blonde, imposing, of splendid stage appearance. And she can sing, too But for a long time it looked as if nobody in the outside world, would ever know of her. Then W.5.A.1., at Cineinatti, ‘'discovered” her, took her into their studio as their protege, and had her voice registered over the air. So her fame spread. ‘Now she is under the training ol‘ one of the best, vocal masters in New York City, and has been so' impressed with the possibilities of her beautiful coloratura voice that he has undertaken to teach her without pay and. also to finance her training in Europe.
WCCO, at Minneapolis, St. Raul, also boasts a “find” in Howard Melancy, who has just quit shovelling coal on a Northern Pacific locomotive running between Glendive and Forsythe, Montana. He is a tenor of such promise'that WCCO announcers speak of him as "The Mountain McCormack.” He has always enjoyed singing, but up .to a short time ago he had no training other than what he could give himself and what he could get in the church choirs that he joined frtom time to . time. It took all he could earn on his railroad job to support his mother, his younger brother, a sister and himself. Through many a small economy he scraped together enough money to buy a phonograph and records of his favourite tenors. During the evenings he could spend at home he played these records over and over again so that he might study the voices and their technique, and so improve his own voice. “Then,” as they say at WCCO, '‘one day last winter he burst in on us.” That'very evening .Meianey was singing before ths microphone. During the next week hundreds of applause letters swept into the office with requests for "more from Me laney.” Bin the fireman had to keep on his joe lor a while. He stoked the furnace on his favourite engine, singing at intervals from WCCO. But his name spread fast, and before long he found his name taken up with calls for concerts and theatrical performances. And it was his income from these lhat finally made it possible for him to give up his jailroad job and study music in earnest.
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Shannon News, 6 January 1928, Page 4
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456RADIO AS A AID TO ASPIRING MUSICANS Shannon News, 6 January 1928, Page 4
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