Date: Tue, 06 Apr 1999 02:45:10 -0400
From: mhd@world.std.com (Mark H. David)
To: mhd@world.std.com
Subject: Re: OTR Obit: Benjamin Gailing
Newsgroups: alt.radio.oldtime

Ben's Jewish -- mostly Yiddish -- radio show in Boston, The "Freylekher
Kabtsen" program, has run continuously from 1931 to this day, and will
continue for the rest of April.  It's scheduled to sign off forever on
April 28, 1999, after the final show on WUNR 1600 AM/Brookline, MA, at
7:00 p.m.  Hankus Netsky, Ben's producer and cohost, has been producing
the show the past few years completely without Ben's active involvement,
mixing tapes of Ben's inimitable jingles, intros, singing performances,
etc., with current announcements and old and new Jewish/Yiddish music. 
Ben contributed segments well into his '90s, well into the 1990's -- it
was no earlier than 1995, for example, when Ben switched from Sunday
morning to a Wednesday night spot on WUNR, and recorded his post-intro
greeting, heard each week,

   Thank you, smiling announcer of WUNR, 1600 on your AM dial.
   [Yiddish:] Zayt mir gegrist mayne libe fraynt ...

Hankus Netsky announced last week that he's just come into possession of
an aircheck of one of Ben's 1932 broadcasts, and will be playing it in the
coming final weeks.  He thinks this is the oldest recording of a Jewish
radio broadcast anyone knows about.

In cooperation with Hankus Netsky, I have set up a web page in Ben's
memory: http://www.yv.org/gailing/

Mark David
Host/Producer, The Yiddish Voice, Boston
http://www.yv.org

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