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One audience favorite was the Dill Pickle songs. Ashley Dixon, owner of a rival radio station, joined the Hoot Owls Degree Team in 1924 and was the author of various Shakespearean burlesques included "Richard the Thirteenth," "The Curing of Hamlet," "The Merchant of Venice, California," and "Twelfth Night -- that Became the Thirteenth." Dean Collins wrote many of the song lyrics (including the Dill Pickle songs) as well as a long-running segment called "Bedtime Stories."
A typical program could include a song like "The Cuspidor My Father Left Me" or "In Hayfever Time I'll Meet You in McMinnville" (an town near Portland which abounded in grain farms). Another favorite item was "The Cheese Opera" which was set in Tillamook (an Oregon coastal community famous then and now for its cheese factory) which included the lyric "And that's why the Swiss Cheese has all the holes -- when its Limberger that needs ventilation." The opera's plot involved a leading soprano, named Listerine, and her lover Freddy (a bootlegger) who sings to her from his jail cell: "My heart is full of the garbage can of love -- left standing on the fire escape above."
While much of the program was scripted (ever the moreso as the program grew older), there was considerable impromptu content and, to say the program was spontaneous would be an understatement.
A typical program could include a song like "The Cuspidor My Father Left Me" or "In Hayfever Time I'll Meet You in McMinnville" (an town near Portland which abounded in grain farms). Another favorite item was "The Cheese Opera" which was set in Tillamook (an Oregon coastal community famous then and now for its cheese factory) which included the lyric "And that's why the Swiss Cheese has all the holes -- when its Limberger that needs ventilation." The opera's plot involved a leading soprano, named Listerine, and her lover Freddy (a bootlegger) who sings to her from his jail cell: "My heart is full of the garbage can of love -- left standing on the fire escape above."
While much of the program was scripted (ever the moreso as the program grew older), there was considerable impromptu content and, to say the program was spontaneous would be an understatement.
