Bob Brundage: It quit working again for just a minute. But ..., uh ..., go ahead ..., uh ..., you were telling me your firs experience with the radio.
J: That was the first experience ..., uh ..., very ..., uh ..., actually playing an instrument. My ..., uh ..., first experience on the radio …. The Glendale Fire Department years ago used to have a ..., an awful lot of talent. They had ..., uh ..., men who had been in show business.
B: Uh, huh
J: Firemen. They established a fire department orchestra. And ..., uh ..., they was on KELW, a little
twenty-four-hour station out here in the Valley that carried all the way to San Diego (J-laughs).
B: OK.
J: And ..., uh ..., my friend John Freeman …, he played, big …, he had the biggest guitar I ever seen ...
B: That right?
J: ... and he was a big fella to start out with, you know. And he'd play that guitar, and he taught me quite a little bit on it. And ..., uh ..., he got …, he says, "I'll take ..., uh ..., you and your friend KennethMcFonald, you sing duets together and we'll put you on the show." So I says, "Fine." Well, that was my first radio experience ...
B: OK.
J: ... my ("day-boo") in radio. (Jonesy seemed to intentionally mangle or distort the pronunciation of this word, "debut," in a playful or folksey manner-jw)
B: What year was that, now?
J: Oh, that's back in the twenties.
B: In the twenties. All right.
J: Yeah, in the twenties. And uh, of course we were, you know, we were gonna sing "Hand Me Down My Walking Cane."
B: All right.
J: I started out ..., there's several verses ..., I started out ..., by the fifth verse, I hadn't heard no tenor.
B: Ah hah!
J: We were sitting at a table, with a table-mike ..., in the studio. And they had an audience back in the glassed-in area.
B: Yeah.
J: And ..., uh ..., so he couldn't see the audience, you know, but uh..., I got along about ..., close towards last two verses and I wonder, "What's the matter with Mac?" And (J-laughs) I looked over and his mouth was open but nothing was coming out (J-laughs). He had mike-fright.
B: Oh he did, eh?
J: So I picked up the next verse.
B: Yeah.
J: I missed one verse, but I picked up the next verse and I carried it on. At the very last line I heard a little squeak. That was all they gotoutta him. And that was my "day-boo" in radio, see? You might say.
B: That was the end of your duet. Right?
J: And then we organized this group ..., uh ..., of uh ..., musicians. Got on Bob Schorrs program, just after he got through lambasting the cityfathers. And we got radio experience there. Blues Eradicators.
B: Blues Eradicators.
J: And then,the next thing, there was a man come out here from Ft. Worth, Texas. And if I talk like a Texan, which fools a lot of people, I got it from the Texansand Oklahomans I worked with for a good many years in what we called "hillbilly-cowboy" music. No "country-western" or anything like that, before the Sons Of The Pioneers, you see.
B: Uh huh. OK.
J: That was in the twenties, too. And ..., had an old time fiddler, Sheriff PopWaller we called him. He looked like an old time sheriff. Great big moustache and silver hair, like yours you know. And uh ..., he was a big fellow and he could play …, I worked with him for eight years and he could ..., always coming up withsomething we'd never heard before.
B: Is that right?
J: And he was a wonderful ..., so we organized ..., this man took over, across the street where I was room and boarding at that time, he took over a service station ..., Richfield service station.
B: Uh huh.
J: And he said uh ..., "I want ..., uh ..., know if you know any hillbilly musicians”. I said, "Yeah. I'm acquainted with a few of them, banjo players ... and..., and a fiddler" and all. And he said, "Well. My two nephews are good singers and," he says, "I play harmonica." And he plays harmonica …, FoxAnd Hounds and all that, you know. And he has what you call a "whiskey-tenor," we always used to call it.
B: OK.
J: He wasn't a drinker. But he just ..., a "whiskey-tenor," we called him.
B: Right. Right.
J: And he says uh ..., "Why don't we organize a group? And I'll build a platform out here by the service station under the big tree ..., it was called the "Big Tree" service station. "I'll build a platform out here and uh ..., we get together every Wednesday night and just entertain the neighborhood ..., just for the fun of it."
B: OK.
J: So we started doing that. And, uh ..., we would, uh ..., play for..., just for the fun of playing and people come from the whole neighborhood. And he pitched his tires and his oil and his gasoline and all that. Well then, he was quite a promoter too, so he says, "I got a job for us. No pay, but it's up at theFirst Baptist Church." That's down here on Wilson Street in Glendale. Anduh ..., the preacher down there wasn't able to fill his church, so he started puttin' on shows and then he'd fill the church. And then he'd lock the door so's people couldn't get out.
B: (laughs) Ha! Ha!
J: And then he'd preach the gospel right ..., gospel right down the line, see?
B: Fire and brimstone.
J: So, we organized a group. And he being from Fort Worth, Texas ..., Fort Worth is called "Cowtown" ..., so we called us the "Texas Cowtown Boys." And I was the only prune-picker in that whole group. They was all fromOklahoma or Texas, Louisiana, place like that in the South. And so they called me the "California Okie,"
B: All right.
J: They give me the name. Jack Guthrie was one of my close friends, you know. He was a better singer ...
B: Uh huh.
J: ... than Woodie.
B: Uh huh!
J: Oh, a far better singer than Woodie.
B: OK.
J: Woodie got all the credit for it, but Jack was .... I got ..., uh ..., one of his records out in the garage. I wouldn't part with it for nothing.
B: Right.
J: But anyway, that was the ..., we organized ..., and the next time he ..., he come up ..., he says, "Now I got a pay job." But Bruce was a funny guy. He could go to church and pray like the devil, but then he could cheat the pants off of you when itcome to money. See? But he got the opening ..., grand opening of the Union Public Market there on South Brant here in Glendale, which later became McMahon's Furniture Store, and still is.
B: OK.
J: He opened ..., three nights ..., three days of entertainment. So we had ..., that was the first pay job. And then we got onto KFBD. We got on KMPC. And uh ..., we made ..., you didn't make a lot ofmoney in those days, you know, but you made a few dollars doing .... And then the depression came along and every buck you got, every nickel you got, was worth something, you know?
B: Sure. Right.
J: Well then from ..., from that part of course, I organized bands too. We played oldtime dances. Do you remember the Johnson Club?
B: No, no.
J: (laughs) Ha, ha. I have to laugh, but so many people don't remember the old H. Johnson Club.
B: Uh, huh.
J: Well that was the first ..., actually the ..., I think that was the first gathering of senior citizens.
B: Oh, yeah.
J: And it was right across from the Post Office ..., down here on Broadway. There was a little dance hall.
B: Uh huh.
J: One-story building. And every Saturday night they had ..., uh ..., the old Johnson Club members. Doctor Johnson wanted the government to give them two hundred dollars a month ..., senior citizens ..., that they would have to spend. They could not put it in a bank or save it. They would have to spend it. Keep the money circulating, you see.
B: Uh huh.
J: At the same time, this is at the beginning of the depression. And, uh ..., so they uh ..., we played oldtime dances there at the Moose Club in Glendale on Wednesday nights. Old time dances ..., and we entertained out at Old Calabassas out here, which don't even look like it used to be with Old Calabassas.
B: Oh, sure.
J: There was a hangman’s tree.
B: OK.
J: We played there, every Saturday night, for a long, long time. It took, at that time ..., without the freeway ..., it took you two hours to get to Calabassas ...
B: Is that right?
J: ... from here. Now you can get up there in forty-five minutes.
B: Sure. Right.
J: But we played up there every Saturday night. We played in the cafe first ..., entertaining in the cafe. An old couple owned the cafe, they were, uh ..., East Indian ...
B: Uh huh.
J: ... you know. And next door was an improvised .... It had been astore, with accordion-type doors and ..., uh ..., they made a dancehall outof it.
B: OK.
J: And we had ..., every Saturday night ..., we had the best fights you ever saw in your life, too.
B: (laughs) Heh, heh.
J: ... because ..., uh ..., they had a group called ..., ah ..., uh ..., Pugilists ..., Young Pugilists, from Van Nuys. And, uh..., Hearst had a big ranch up there and his cowboys. And they came down to dance and the Pugilists would come from Van Nuys. And if they just bumpedan elbow, so help me, a fight started. See?
B: OK.
J: Every Saturday night we had very good fights along with our dances...
B: Just for ....
J: ... that was the starting of entertaining.
B: Right.
J: I first started to learn on a ukelele.
B: Ah hah.