NORMAN CORWIN (Peace On Earth)

Norman Lewis Corwin (May 3, 1910 – October 18, 2011)

Above all, my true “Radio Hero” was a man who lived and wrote during the 1930s and 1940s: what is now called, “The Golden Age of Radio.” Norman Corwin’s work is too prodigious, perceptive, personal and profound for me to even begin to list his “audiography,” let alone his work in other media. If you think it all began with Allen Freed and the rest of the Rock’n’Roll/Top Forty stations and deejays then you might want to learn more about the father of the “Theater Of The Mind” and most things good in radio, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Corwin

Post-World War II American radio, as with cars then “Made In The USA,” began with extensions of what was produced in our country until 1941.

Then there was a hodgepodge “on the air” of everything from farm reports to the Metropolitan Opera’s live concert broadcasts. The style and substance of pre-TV radio emerged from war’s cocoon and began to fly as new innovators gave new ideas a try.

But even by 1965, when Bill Drake and Gene Chenault gained control of RKO Radio’s Los Angeles outlet, which we co-conspirators renamed 93/KHJ Boss Radio. Before the format switch (and the wakeup Robert W. Morgan Show) the morning program offering was a “bed in breakfast” program featuring Steve Allen and wife Jayne Meadows. The couple discussed the day’s events while snuggled in their Beverly Hills bed, sipping orange juice and nibbling bagels while Bill Mouzis handled the “remote” engineering chores back to the main studios and on to the transmitter and towers at Fairfax Avenue and the Santa Monica Freeway.

This affair was followed by the “Radio” Michael Jackson announcing from our fortress at 5515 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, just down the street from KNX Radio, at CBS Square. (Mr. Corwin started at the CBS Radio Network in 1938, when I was one-year-old and crawling around Waikiki Beach on Oahu, which had two stations, one of which was KGMB, the local CBS affiliate.) That is where Corwin’s masterwork, On a Note of Triumph, was commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to celebrate the victory of the Allies over Madness. Broadcast live around the world on VE Day, May 8, 1945. This program, in my blatant opinion, is the greatest long-form radio production ever made.

Later in 1972, while living in La Jolla, California and working at KGB-AM-FM, I began reading Corwin’s fantastic array of books about all manner of things, mostly veering to the socio-political. This was way back in the old days before email. So I wrote him a fan letter. Thus began an exchange via US mail between the master and myself, both who toiled in LA radio, albeit decades apart.

Norman Corwin was unaware of the 48-hour History of Rock and Roll, the KHJ original (and only cool) version, narrated perfectly by Morgan: the best announcer with whom I ever worked, besides all his other talents. I wrote Corwin about how disappointed I was that when my program finished and there were zero phone calls to the station about the epic event, neither good nor bad. Full specifics about the program are at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Rock_and_Roll,

I thought we had created a monster flop and had wasted two days of valuable airtime chronicling a subject that had been around for all of thirteen years (if one considers Bill Haley’s “Rock Around The Clock” as the first hit music of the “rock” genre; a major hit that exploded “rock” into global consciousness). This twelve-bar-blues-based song peaked at the #1 spot in the US and UK.

Returning to work the following Monday, February 24, 1969, I realized that in spite of my paranoid and insecure state of mind that praise for the HRR was pouring in, mostly in the form of those things called telegrams. Ratings revealed that one out of three Southern California radios were tuned to the production on which we had worked for months. (For the rest of the story of this program see: http://woodygoulart.com/wg/rock-and-roll-radio-history/people/jacobs-and-drake-on-the-record/history/

The outpouring of praise locally and nationally was rewarding to all of us. It is not every local radio show that is requested for inclusion by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institute. I wrote Mr. Corwin about that roller coaster climax to that project. In his return letter, Corwin told of finishing up his postwar tribute—which featured everyone in Hollywood fighting for even the smallest part and included FDR himself live from Washington—and staring at the studio “hotline” phone, which remanded deathly silent at the broadcast’s conclusion. Not a single ring. The genius writer, thinking he had launched his own bomb, went to a Gower Street bar and drank away his disappointment. Until the following day when acclaim for his artistic and patriotic effort showered him to his dying days.

Since it is “The Season” and the world goes through its beleaguered changes, I feel it my duty to place electronically the following words from Norman Corwin’s piece de resistance, the crown jewel of his unsurpassed body of work, On a Note of Triumph.

Today his words ring true to life as they appear on your computer monitor (or by whatever means you see this).

Mele Kalikimaka & Hauoli Makahiki Hou!

Lord God of trajectory and blast

Whose terrible sword has laid open the serpent
So it withers in the sun for the just to see,
Sheathe now the swift avenging blade with the names of nations writ on it,
And assist in the preparation of the ploughshare.

Lord God of fresh bread and tranquil mornings,
Who walks in the circuit of heaven among the worthy,
Deliver notice to the fallen young men
That tokens of orange juice and a whole egg appear now before the hungry children;

That night again falls cooling on the earth as quietly as when it leaves your hand;

That Freedom has withstood the tyrant like a Malta in a hostile sea,
And that the soul of man is surely a Sevastopol which goes down hard and leaps from ruin quickly.

Lord God of the topcoat and the living wage
Who has furred the fox against the time of winter
And stored provender of bees in summer's brightest places,
Do bring sweet influences to bear upon the assembly line:
Accept the smoke of the milltown among the accredited clouds of the sky:
Fend from the wind with a house and hedge, him whom you made in your image,
And permit him to pick of the tree and the flock
That he may eat today without fear of tomorrow
And clothe himself with dignity in December.

Lord God of test-tube and blueprint
Who jointed molecules of dust and shook them till their name was Adam,
Who taught worms and stars how they could live together,
Appear now among the parliaments of conquerors and give instruction to their schemes:
Measure out new liberties so none shall suffer for his father's color or the credo of his choice:
Post proofs that brotherhood is not so wild a dream as those who profit by postponing it pretend:
Sit at the treaty table and convoy the hopes of the little peoples through expected straits,
And press into the final seal a sign that peace will come for longer than posterities can see ahead,
That man unto his fellow man shall be a friend forever.