A taste of mid-1950's Big Band by way of Woody Herman and His Third Herd.

Big Bands were starting to lose favor with audiences by this time, but the inventiveness of the Big Band sound is clearly evident on this live concert, recorded at The Royal Grove of Peony Park on September 24,1954.

In 1954 the deadline for filing your taxes was March 15th, not April 15th. The April deadline wouldn't come into effect until 1955. But even in 1954, President Eisenhower was alarmed that people of a certain massive income got away without "paying their fair share".

In this radio address, Eisenhower takes to task those who make a substantial amount of income, yet pay no tax on it, instead leaving the Middle-Class and those people who can ill-afford it the most to bear the burden.

It's interesting when you realize you're listening to a Republican President reciting the benefits of a fair tax system and the reason taxes exist was to accomplish what the private sector couldn't.

And almost sixty years later the conversation has shifted. And, judging by all I've heard, Dwight Eisenhower would be considered something of a Socialist Radical in today's climate.

Funny how things change.

Here is the complete radio address by President Eisenhower, broadcast on Tax Day (March 15th), 1954.

It would be impossible to imagine someone like Dwight Eisenhower being around today, unthinkable in our current state to even remotely consider him as Republican Presidential material.

But even during his time as President, he was often criticized as being out of touch, certainly within his own party. It did earn him the nickname of "old bubblehead" among the Press corps. And maybe he was the first of what eventually became a long line of "Figurehead Presidents" - those who knowingly or unknowingly left the back door open and paid little attention to the real culprits in the administration and his party, slowly dismantling democracy, one seemingly innocuous department at a time.

It was said he was at loggerheads with his own administration - coming from a Military and not a political background, not understanding why being Commander-in-Chief didn't afford him the same leadership platform as Supreme Allied Commander. That in the end he expressed a level of sadness and frustration that much of what he tried to accomplish was thwarted by political interests and undermining.

But in 1954 he was still looking at it all rather optimistically and on May 31st he delivered an address he called "Man's Right To Knowledge And It's Free Use Thereof".

President Eisenhower: “Amid such alarms and uncertainties, doubters begin to lose faith in themselves, in their country, in their convictions. They begin to fear other people’s ideas, every new idea. They begin to talk about censoring the sources and the communication of ideas. They forget that truth is the bulwark of freedom, as suppression of truth is the weapon of dictatorship. We know that when censorship goes beyond the observance of common decency, or the protection of the nation’s obvious interests, it quickly becomes for us a deadly danger. It means conformity by compulsion in educational institutions. It means a controlled instead of a free press. It means the loss of human freedom. The honest men and women among these would-be censors and regulators may merely forget that the price of their success would be the destruction of that way of life they want to preserve. But the dishonest and the disloyal know exactly what they are attempting to do; perverting and undermining a free society while falsely swearing allegiance to it. Whenever, and for whatever alleged reason people attempt to crush ideas to mask their convictions, to view every neighbor as a possible enemy, to seek some kind of divining rod by which to test for conformity, a free society is in danger. Whenever mans right to knowledge and the use thereof is restricted, man’s freedom, in the same measure disappears.

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit, from revolutionaries and rebels, men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.”

By today's standards, radical Left-Wing stuff. It's interesting how often Eisenhower is now quoted on the Internet, even during a recent rally at Occupy Los Angeles, to cheers and loud applause.

A former Republican President, lumped in with "those bongo-playing weed-heads" - the mind fairly reels.

But I think Ike may have gotten it.

As was pointed out to me, the current problems we have with Immigration go back roughly to the post-World War 1 period of around 1919. Prior to that, it was pretty much an open door as Immigrants were encouraged to come to the U.S. in order to build up the labor force, join in the tidal wave of Western Expansion and generally bolster the population. But after World War 1 all that changed changed and suddenly the doors which were flung open were now suspiciously closed, and landing in this country as an immigrant became harder and harder. In 1924 the first Border Patrol was created in an effort to stem what had by then become a flood of Illegal Immigrants.

During World War 2 however, there was a flurry of activity with the Bracero Program (for Agricultural workers) along with the Railroad Bracero Program (for Railroad workers) which was passed in 1942 and implemented in 1943 and directed towards Mexico and Latin-America, but also as a way of shoring up the lagging workforce that had been drafted into military service. It didn't promise instant citizenship, but it offered a "fast track". And with our fears that Latin-American countries would go the way of the Axis, and since Mexico had also declared War on Germany, it was a good political move.

But when the War was over, so was the welcome mat and Immigration rules became tighter and more restricted. The Railroad Program was dropped in 1945 and the Bracero Program came under fire until it initially expired in 1947, but was renewed again in 1951 on a modified basis before it's complete demise in 1964. The Fear-On-Paper was the possibility of Communist infiltration. That spies and agitators would flow into the U.S. but the real fear was that, now the war was over, the workforce would return to its Pre-War level and there was very little need or desire for unskilled labor.

But outside the border America was still considered the Land of Opportunity and better wages were still to be had. So rather than make it easier to achieve legal Immigrant status, most chose the Illegal route.

Then as now, the logic has always been "go where the work is and the opportunities are". And employers on the other side of the border, in Manufacturing as well as Agriculture were more than willing to offer employment since it usually meant "off the books" and "negotiated wages" (i.e: well below market). Skilled labor, it should be noted and with personal experience, has always been given higher regard than unskilled labor. In short, it is easier to land Immigrant Status with a college degree, an in-demand skill or a good lawyer. The vast majority of people scrambling across the border are not skilled, do not have college degrees and certainly don't have lawyers. They are what have been called "country folk" (think Appalachia in Spanish), and they are degraded, chastised, vilified and discriminated against. But strangely, they are welcome with open, if not clandestine arms when it comes to building roads, picking oranges, cleaning toilets, straightening Hotel Rooms and dumping body fluids.

So in 1954 the problem was the same as it is now even though The Bracero Program was creaking along and offering legal employment to Mexican nationals with cooperation from conscientious American employers.

This documentary, produced by CBS Radio and KNX in Los Angeles, followed the path of the illegals, the Wetbacks as they were called, on a journey from Mexicali to Los Angeles. It was recorded on scene and, not only does it make for fascinating broadcast journalism, it also spells out exactly what was entailed at the time to get across the border and not get caught.

Bear in mind this is 1950's radio. It's a one hour Documentary that covers a lot of bases. Then as now, it's all mired in controversy and knee-jerk responses. The stereotype portrayals are just as prevalent then as they are now and the problem hasn't changed with one exception - in 1954 there was The Bracero Program and today there isn't. In 1954 there was at least an attempt at offering a solution, no matter how much of a band aid on a bleed-out it was. Today the conversation is back to Square One.

But there is a history.

Back in the day when you could blame everything on the Russians, the 1950's were a simmering pot of nothing but paranoia and fear. So much so, that on April 4, 1954 President Eisenhower made a radio address to the nation seeking to allay those fears. Well . . .sort of.

President Eisenhower: “ Sometimes you feel almost as if we could be excused for getting a little bit hysterical, because these dangers come from so many angles and there’s such different kinds. And no matter what we do, they still seem to exist. But underlying all of these dangers is this one thing; the threat we have from without, the great threat imposed upon us by aggressive Communism. The Atheistic doctrine that believes in Stateism as against our conception of the dignity of man is a quality before the law; that is the struggle of the ages.”

One of the many double messages rampant in the 1950's. And it's no wonder the Tranquilizer became so popular. I often wondered if they named it Miltown as an homage to Milhouse (vice-President Richard Nixon's middle name) rather than the borough in New Jersey. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Still . . . .

Since the Newstalgia Pop Chronicles are not exclusively about popular music in our culture but rather popular culture in general and how we responded to it at the time, I thought I would post an example of who was a pop culture icon and just what it was we listened to in the way of mainstream media as a society in the 1950's. Dave Garroway is probably best known as the first host of the Today Show. He was without question one of the most popular figures in the early days of television - a daily fixture every weekday morning. But during the "last gasp" of network radio during those years, Garroway was also a regular fixture on weekend radio. Hosting the program, Sundays With Garroway and later hosting (at least partly) the adventuresome Monitor series NBC Radio had devised. Since technology was rapidly changing, radio was able to take advantage of it's "go anywhere - do anything" status, and Garroway filled that expectation nicely. With a combination of self-deprecating humor and an insatiable curiosity, Garroway was able to interview a vast range of personalities and news makers and present them in a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere as you will hear when you hit the play button.

Here is a complete Sunday With Garroway program, originally aired on May 2, 1954 - an ironic date as there are two news breaks discussing the battle of Dien Bien Phu which was taking place as they were on the air.

Since the program is two hours - hour 1 is the top player and hour 2 is the bottom player.

Plenty of time to travel to 1954 and be back by breakfast.

1954 became something of a pivotal year with regards to our presence in Asia. The Korean conflict had come to an end, but the one in Vietnam was about to heat up. Only earlier in the year the French suffered a paralyzing defeat at Dien bien Phu, bringing about their withdrawal from the former colony and our increased presence in the form of aid (military and economic) to the South Vietnamese government. China was again saber rattling with the island of Formosa. It was an uneasy time.

So on September 23, 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles addressed the United Nations General Assembly.

John Foster Dulles: “The people of the United States believe wholeheartedly in the purposes and the principles set out by the charter of the United Nations. And that document marks a milestone in an understanding of the nature of peace. It recognizes that peace is not merely a passive concept. But peace is a call to action. It is not enough to dislike war and to denounce it, war has been hated throughout the ages, yet war has been recurrent throughout the ages. One reason is that men have never put into winning the peace efforts comparable to those which they put into winning a war.”

Lofty words, yet given the amount of "meddling" we were involved in at the time, it would seem a somewhat hollow gesture. Granted, there was a Cold War raging. The Independence movement was going full-tilt in Africa and the Soviet Union were doing their level best to influence those newly discovered rights of self-determination with both financial and military aid and it was something of a popularity contest. But we weren't making the world any safer by our support of regimes and dictatorships with endless lists of human rights violations. In our somewhat bungling quest to wage world peace, we were doing much to sow the seeds of discontent simply because we were always helping out the wrong guy. Were we, in 1954 just lousy judges of character? Or did we really think dictatorships, such as those in Cuba and Nicaragua, would see the error of their ways and magically embrace democracy with the Batista's and Somoza's stepping down "for the good of the people"?

We're still trying to figure that one out.

Probably a dim-distant name now and certainly, listening to these performances today you wonder what the big deal was, since acting methods today have changed substantially since even the 1950's. But you have to understand that before Eugene O'Neill came along, plays were mindless or overblown morality exercises, usually suited for the wild over-acting of the time. O'Neill offered something audiences in this country had never seen before - honest depictions of realistically drawn characters in well crafted dramatic situations. Drama that made you think. And frankly, that took some getting used to for an audience ingrained with bedroom farce or hysterics. Over time, Eugene O'Neill became the motivating voice for innovation on Broadway, and many have considered the period of his time as the Golden Age of Drama in America.

O'Neill died in 1953 after a very long bout with Parkinson's Disease and this broadcast, as a tribute to Eugene O'Neill on May 15, 1954 was a star-studded occasion with some of the greatest names on Broadway Theater performing scenes from some of the most memorable O'Neill plays.

So as a change of pace, and maybe as a possible new feature of offering complete plays on Newstalgia during the weekends, I'm posting this tribute to Eugene O'Neill, narrated by the legendary Theater critic Brooks Atkinson and featuring performances by Shirley Booth, Helen Hayes, Oscar Homolka, Franchot Tone, Joseph Cotten and many others.

Let me know if this appeals to you. If yes, I will - if no, never mind.

Nearing the end of the almost endless and infamous Army-McCarthy Hearings, this installment of the drama comes from June 15, 1954. The daily wrapup, with George Herman and Griffing Bancroft of CBS Radio, encapsulates the day-long hearings into a half-hour program which ran at 10:00 pm every evening.

This installment winds down the proceedings and features, among others, cross-examination of McCarthy Aide Francis Carr and McCarthy Chief Council Roy Cohn. Anticipated for the next (and possibly last) day was Joe McCarthy. Everything on this day went smoothly and, with the exception of the Press being distracted by a disturbance elsewhere in the building, was pretty humdrum by comparison with other days.

No fireworks and no wild accusations, but theater nonetheless.

Here is that daily wrapup from CBS Radio for June 15, 1954.

Buried in the news on this June 4th in 1954 were several stories that would come back to haunt.

Starting with the tragic news of the explosion and fire aboard the USS Bennington, due to a hydraulic spark igniting explosive fuel, with the result of 102 crewmen dead.

The Secretary of Commerce admitted "we're in a Recession" with the disclosure of 16 more cities added to the list of 123 major cities with substantial unemployment. The figures come in at well above 5 million unemployed, although the government claimed its figures to be around 4 million. The numbers didn't take into account the unemployed whose benefits had run out in recent weeks.

Another harbinger of things to come - General James van Fleet was reported to have said he didn't think U.S. ground forces were needed in South East Asia. That sending military aid would be enough. This came hot on the heels of Secretary of State Dulles, joining a growing list of officials predicting U.S. involvement in a shooting war in Indo-China (i.e. Vietnam) was imminent.

There was a report on a preview of the upcoming 1955 cars, with a lot more V-8 engines available as standard equipment. The irony was an accompanying report that the major Oil companies were purposely keeping gas prices up by making claims that extra additives for improving performance of these V-8 engines was a way of jacking up gas prices, while marketing claims that these new fuel formulas were better for car performance. A claim not substantiated.

It was also reported that some Army engineers had developed a Solar Panel that, when installed on the roof of a family home, would provide enough heat and electricity to fuel the average house completely from the sun. In 1954, no less.

From Capitol Hill - much anticipated wrangling over President Eisenhower's Farm Bill. An FCC Commissioner, favored by Sen. McCarthy was re-appointed by President Eisenhower and the Army-McCarthy Hearings were droning on, with more noise than progress.

And that's what happened on this June 4, 1954 as reported by Frank Edwards And The News.