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Maurice Levy: This is Maurice Levy speaking to Mr. Walter Eibeck for the
Oral History and Music Project. It is September 16th, 1991. In 1933. You
sang with a 15-piece band. You want to tell us about that? Who? What band
was it?
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Walter Eibeck: Chuck Sagwitch. I forget what they called themselves, the
Pennsylvania Loyalists or something like that. I can't remember their name.
They used to play at dances around the city. Everybody, all these little
places like Brentwood Park, and that they had dances, you know, they only
charged a quarter to get in or something. And they always had little bands
and I sang with them. And then that's when we were on WWSW.
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Levy: Then you, you went on WWSW.
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Eibeck: We went on regular and there was no pay. It was free. You know,
you, you, you went and played there and sang for nothing. And we only did I
think about 3 or 4 of those programs. That's when I really got into it. And
then uh, my neighbors, uh, had uh. Four sons and this Chuck that had the
orchestra. He played the piano and, uh, the father played the banjo, and
one played the guitar and one played the drums. Had about a 5 or 6 piece.
And I used to go over and sing with them and we'd do minstrel shows. He
used to. That's that's funny. We'd do that.
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Levy: Sure. Minstrel shows were still around. In the 30s.
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Eibeck: Real popular. Yeah. Then at the same time, I was doing some solo
work. I'd do a wedding or something like that once in a while. Or make an
appearance at a at a little social function at church or something. If you
got ten bucks, you got a lot of money. Sometimes you get, you know, you
didn't get anything really.
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Levy: But you were you you had your job as a bricklayer when you were
doing this. Eibeck: No, no, no, no. Levy: You were doing this first.
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Eibeck: Yeah. This was long before I became a bricklayer. I in fact, I
worked for Old Home Soap Company. I was, uh, worked in the plant, and I was
a collector when I was doing this. In fact, I was still going to school
when I first started. I had four years of Duquesne Prep school, and then
one year of college. And that's actually when I started to to sing before I
even got out of there.
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Levy: What other kinds of singing jobs did you have then after that?
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Eibeck: Well, uh, after I, after I was married, I joined a choir down
there, and we had a little a little bar, a little in the church, in the
church, a different church, a Catholic church. And then I was also a tenor
soloist in two different Protestant churches in Wilkinsburg. At the same
time, I'd go to the Catholic Church and sing for the mass, and then I'd go
out to the Protestant church, and I was a tenor soloist there in two
different places, and it just pick up different things here and there. I'd,
uh, you know, like I say, a wedding or some little social function. And
from there, uh, from the church organist, uh, called uh, KDKA and WCAE then
at that time and ask if they would audition me. Uh, he told an Aneurin
Bodycombe, I don't know if you ever heard his name, uh, that he had a man
that could sing any part from bass to tenor and then Aneurin Bodycombe
didn't believe him and didn't want to listen to him. And a man at WCAE was
the name Don Dixon. That was a protege of Fred Waring.
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Eibeck: He believed them, and he arranged an audition for him. And I went
down and he gave me some different music to sight read, and I sang a couple
solos, and he said that he would call me sometime, and by gosh, he did
within about a month. You know that the old gag, they say, I'll call you.
Yeah, well he did, and I went down to KDKA. Believe it or not, Don was a
WCAE, but they were trying to work Bodycombe out of KDKA, and Don was going
to move in as one of the musical directors, and Bernie Armstrong was in
charge of the the band on at KDKA. And this Duquesne Beer program came up
and I went down on a Thursday night and auditioned. And, uh, there were
seven other fellows that I had never seen and three girls. That was the
chorus, eight of us and three girls and a 26 piece band and two soloists.
And we auditioned for four hours, and the next night we went on the air,
and we had that program from 1943 to 1950.
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Levy: What was the name of the program?
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Eibeck: That was Duquesne Beer Time.
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Levy: Duquesne Beer Time? Mhm. So you're saying during the war?
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Eibeck: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's right. All, all all during the war, we
had a little quartet out of there that we would make appearances once in a
while. And uh, they did different shows like out at the Syria Mosque with
the Shriners. That would be the whole ensemble, the, the Bernie's Orchestra
and us. Then later, uh, we went off in 1950 and we came back in the latter
part of 1950 and they they started a program on Saturday night. A half hour
program was prime time. And that was a predecessor of the television show.
And we were on that program, I think about. A little over a year. And then
we went on Dumont, which was the only television station in Pittsburgh at
that time, before KDKA. Levy: Channel 3. Eibeck: Yeah, before KDKA bought
it, that was the only only channel. We had a prime time program at 9:00 on
Wednesday nights.
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Levy: It was WDTV
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Eibeck: Yeah. Every Wednesday night we had a prime time program, and there
were, uh, they had four different formats. Uh, the one for men had Bernie
and and the orchestra, and there was myself and three other fellows. We had
a quartet and a girl by the name of Elaine Beverly. The five of us used to
come marching out and sing. This is a silver Topper's with a silver
top. They opened and closed every show at that time. I don't know if you
remember or not, you know, and also, uh, on this show, they had, uh, um.
The guy that sang on the hit parade. I was just going to say Maureen.
Maureen Cannon was the girl she sang with Paul Whiteman. They brought her
in every week or every month. Once a month. Uh, geez. What the heck was his
name? Come sign Nord as well. It'll come to me later. Anyway, he was a star
on the Hit parade, which was a network show. And then the next week the
format would be, uh, Maurice Bertoni and the orchestra, and they would
bring in, uh, singers from New York like John Charles Thomas and Jan Peerce
and so forth, and maybe a, maybe a lady also.
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Eibeck: And we would still do the introduction and sometimes give
background for the soloists, you know, and sometimes we'd sing a song
ourselves. The third format was with Slim Bryant and the Wildcats, if you
remember them. And on that program, uh, they would have guest stars like,
uh, Rosemary Clooney, Patti Page, the Four Lads, the Mills Brothers, and,
uh, they're the kind of people they would have. And the fourth format was,
uh, was, uh, what they, what they called, uh, just a show from nightclubs,
uh, Harold Cohen. And he used to be the critic, the drama critic in the
paper. Levy: Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Eibeck: He was the emcee. And, uh,
um. They would bring in, uh, performers from the different nightclubs
around Pittsburgh, name stars like Rudy Vallee or any, any, any big name
that would be at a nightclub. They would bring them in and have maybe 3 or
4 of them, and that's how they'd make up the half hour program. And that
program lasted for 15 months.
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Levy: Now that was that was on WDTV. Yeah. Was was that shared with the
other, uh, stations on the Dumont network? That or was it just local?
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Eibeck: It went to West Virginia. I know, but I don't know where else. I
really don't know. There weren't that many stations at that time.
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Levy: That's right. There were.
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Eibeck: West Virginia was one of them, because they'd always did have the
tie in. And even when we had the radio program, they used to broadcast it.
And I know in Wheeling and, you know, in West Virginia that, that I really
don't, don't know. That from there we had, uh, before, uh. Before we go
down to television. On Tuesday nights, we had a. Uh, 15 minute program
with, uh, ten men. And we just sang choral music and and once in a while, a
little solo. I'd do a solo once in a while. That was a 15 minute spot. That
was also for Duquesne Beer. Then that went off. And when we got the
television program, the quartet that I was in and Elaine Beverly, we got
the show on Tuesday nights for 15 minutes. It was from 6:30 to 6:45. It was
silver top, really, and we were replaced in that program in 1953 by Bob
Prince. That put him on as a sports analyst. And then we went off the air.
And at the same time, all the time. I was down KDKA on radio for that
Duquesne Beer Show. They used to have, uh.
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Levy: You were you were doing both a a show on radio and TV. Yeah. At the
same time.
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Eibeck: Yeah, yeah, the television show we practiced Monday night and
Tuesday night, and then we did it Wednesday night. The radio show. We would
go down there Tuesday and get the music and go over it and do it on the
radio. You had to be able to read it live. Yeah, it was all live. Same way
with the with the show. When we had the ten fellows, we we would get the
program the night we did it, the music and of course we could use the
music. You didn't have to be dressed. You didn't, you know, you didn't have
to do any choreography. You just read the music. That's the way those
programs went. And, uh, when we finally went off. And the reason we went
off is because they replaced all the live local shows by network shows. Uh,
if you remember, uh, Buzz and Bill and, uh.
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Levy: And Bill Hinds. Yeah.
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Eibeck: Well, Bill Hinds brother is one of the fellows that was in a
quartet with me. He was the baritone Bill Hinds brother. But they
replaced all those shows at one time by network shows. They had no more
live shows from Pittsburgh. So, uh, when we lost that Tuesday show, uh,
maybe a month after is, uh, Earl Elder, Pete Elder, uh, they're actually
the organizer of the barbershop Westinghouse Quartet. And Bill McDowell,
who would sing tenor. They both called me at different times and asked me
if I'd be interested in singing with the Westinghouse Quartet. Barbershop
quartet, and I didn't even know that much about them.
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Levy: This is 19-
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Eibeck: 1953, after we went off, uh, off that radio program. And I've been
in the quartet ever since, and Bill dropped out in two years, and and Pete
dropped out in 1957, which would have been four years. And I've been in it
since then. So it's really 38 years going on 39 years. And we had a manager
of the quartet named Harry Smith that was, uh, he used to do all our
booking and everything like that, and he was connected with Westinghouse.
So we had the Westinghouse tie in. In fact, we had a very good thing going
for us. We, uh, we made a pretty nice little piece of money all the time.
And it was on the side I worked all this time. This was all an avocation,
you know, that's when I worked at Mest as a bricklayer. Okay. When all the
while, all the while, uh uh, all the while I was singing on radio and
television and in the and in the barbershop quartet. And at the same time,
I'd still do weddings or funerals myself if I could. And, uh, I had that
that other little quartet from church. We still would pick up a job once in
a while, even though I was singing, like professionally on radio and
television. We were buddies and we, you know, four of us were close. So in,
in, in, in my experience on radio and not on television, but on radio, I've
done some oratorio. I've done some duets.
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Levy: You've done classical music.
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Eibeck: With a girl. Yeah. And, uh, uh, did a little bit of opera and, uh,
sang with, uh, with a mixed quartet. Two men and two women, uh, I've done
nightclub work, and I didn't do a lot of that because that entails too
much. Too much nightlife, you know, and I worked I used to get up at 6:00
in the morning. So nightclub work and it's not good for you. It's not good
for family ties. And, uh, I sung with a double quartet and at radio thing,
that was eight men at first and three girls. In fact, the three girls later
became the Kindra sisters. Oh, really? One of the Kindra sisters was one of
the three original girls. And when, uh, I didn't tell you this, Don Dixon,
who auditioned me and then came to KDKA. Was a protege of Fred Waring. And
he was a terrific arranger and a graduate of Penn State and a good pianist
and a good singer. And he had told me that he was going to recommend me to
Fred Waring because I could sing most any part, and I could also do solo
work, but. About 2 or 3 months after we had the program, Don Dixon got
killed in a taxi accident. So Aneurin Bodycombe was just about to lose his
job at KDKA, and they brought him back to take charge of the of the eight
fellows and the three girls. So later on, the other two Kinders were on
tour with the Ice Capades, and when they come back, he shoved the other two
girls out.
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Eibeck: The one girl was the wife of Don Dixon, the soprano. So he got rid
of her and got rid of another girl. And the Kinder sister that that was in
the chorus at the time is Elaine Kinder, who was married to Paul Long. Then
when the other two Kinders come back, they became the Kinder Sisters again
and they sang. They were the girls trio in our chorus. So. That that that
was. That's something I don't even like to talk about sometimes. You know,
that wasn't real nice, but it happened Levy: A painful memory. Eibeck:
Yeah. And at the same time, as we were on radio and doing that regular
radio show, uh, there was a show on Tuesday nights called Tap Time, uh,
with Mary Martha, Brownie and Bob Carter was a soloist and, uh, Spitalny as
the orchestra director and not Bernie Spitalny. And for Christmas and
Easter every year for about 2 or 3 weeks, the same group that sang on the
Duquesne Beer Show, we would we would sing on the On the Tap Time show on
Tuesday nights because there was no identification. We were the Tap Time
chorus. Same people. And there was a show on Thursday nights on WWJZ.
George Hyde was for the Tuesday night Tap Time show was, I think, for Iron
City. Yeah, we were Duquesne Beer and they were Iron City and the Thursday
show with George Hyde. Uh. These were all around 7:30 to 8:00. I don't know
how the day. Kenny Hildebrand was our announcer, Bob Prince and Bill Hinds
before he went to the service.
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Eibeck: And Bob Prince was the emcee on On Tap Time. And George Hyde
emceed his own show. He sort of pushed that show himself. And there was a
quartet on that show from our from our eight man chorus, same four guys.
And in the summertime, when I would take either the leads place or the
tenors place on vacation. So, you know, it was always the same people, same
as on that Monday, Wednesday and Friday show on 6:30 to a 6:45, a 15 minute
program with the same four guys from our chorus. And I did the same thing
then, when one guy would go on to vacation, I'd take his place, you know,
either a lead or a tenor. So those guys had a nice thing going for them.
They they made nice money and they all worked for a living, although they
were singing professionally, you know. And this is what television spoiled.
You had your staff orchestra, which involved like 18 to 20 men. And when
television came out, they all lost their jobs. After the television pushed
everything off a local broadcast, and the same way with with the television
broadcasts were no more live ones. These fellows all had to go hunt jobs,
and they were all musicians. Augie Frisch was one, but he was fortunate he
still played for the symphony. Yeah. So, uh, this is sort of a background.
And then ever since then, I've been singing with the with the barbershop
quartet.
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Levy: Were you a member of the union? You were a member.
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Eibeck: We had to join AGVA AFRA and AFTRA. And after we had to join the
I, I belonged to the performers union, which was AGVA, and then AFRA was
the Radio Artists Union. And then it became AFTRA, the Television Radio
Artists Union. Yeah, we had to belong. We had to belong to that.
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Levy: But, uh. What was the technique that they used to determine what you
sang? Did you people have any input or do.
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Eibeck: Myself, you know, by your range?
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Levy: No, no. In terms of who picked the program. Oh, is that done by the
producer of the show?
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Eibeck: The one radio and television. I don't even know who had the final
word, but there was a they would have a music committee, more or less.
Bernie would have a big input into what he wanted to do. Plus he had
approved he had to get the approval of the, uh, the advertising agency. It
was Walker and Downing at first and then Vic Maitland or, uh, in fact, he
stole he stole the customers from he worked for Walker and Downing and then
stole the customers and then became Vic Maitland Advertising and and they
had some arrangers that arranged music. Between them. They made out the
program and of course the soloists. If they brought them from New York,
they more or less had to, had to please them. In other words, you want to
do what you do best when you're in public. And these performers usually
knew what songs they did the best, so that's whose approval they had to
get. But the program in general would would have been worked out by the
orchestra leader and, and a couple of members of the staff, plus the
advertising agency. And there in the, in the television, in the radio
program, it was just Bernie and them.
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Eibeck: But in the television program, you had the four different formats.
So you had a, you had a consult with each one, each different week. You
know, one week it was Bernie, one week it was Tony, one week it was Slim
Bryant and his brother Lobby. And the other week I really don't know who
had the input there because Co and I didn't think didn't know anything
about music too much. So I don't think he could have picked that. I think
it was between the orchestra leader who was Bernie incidentally. That's
right. For that Bernie Armstrong Bernie Armstrong still and I would think
at that time Vic Maitland. They would have had the biggest input. Now, as
far as the, uh, barbershop. When I first joined the Westinghouse Quartet,
Pete Pete Elder was the one that that picked more or less picked the songs
and a program. But when Pete left, and I've been doing that ever since I
became the contact man. And I picked the music and every, every show that
we do, I'm the one that more or less picks the program.
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Levy: The music. So when you came into staying with deal with the radio
experience, the. They would just hand you the music then at the rehearsal.
Yeah. Arrangements.
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Eibeck: The arrangements, the arrangements for, uh, for that chorus and on
the radio program originally were done by Don Dixon, who, and they were in
a Fred Waring style. And when Don got killed. Uh, they immediately threw it
to an Aneurin Bodycombe. And he could and did arrange and that's what they
would do. We would go down on a Friday afternoon at 5:00, and he would give
us like, uh. Anywhere from 6 to 7 songs at least, and we had never seen
them before. And we would go over them. We would rehearse with him at the
piano, uh, for about a half hour to 40 minutes, and then they would take a
break, and then we would get together with the orchestra. And then, uh, at
7:30, we would put that program on the air and you would have thought we'd
rehearsed it for a week. That's how well you had to be able to read, and
that's how well it came out. Now, after after the program was done at 8:00,
we'd go back and listen to it. And believe me, they were nice. They were
really good.
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Levy: So it was faked then?
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Eibeck: Yeah, they taped it themselves and I imagine they kept it in the
files. But, but but it was live.
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Levy: The broadcast was live.
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Eibeck: Yeah. We have, we had this this was all done. The radio shows were
done from KDKA, from the Grant Building, which was where KDKA was situated
at that time. And, uh, we we were in one room and performed and they had
they had a glass, uh, separation. And the audience sat, uh, in another
room, but they could watch everything and they could hear it. Then, uh, in
the interim, in about 19, 1945, uh, we had another half hour program, prime
time on Sunday night, which featured Bernie and the orchestra and Kenny
Hildebrand as the emcee and Betty Ellen Morris as a soloist. And they used
to bring a, a soloist in from New York, a male soloist. That's when they
would bring in a big name like Jan Peerce or somebody again, and our ten
man chorus and three girls, and they called it, uh, Steel Horizons. It was
for Allegheny Ludlum Steel that lasted a little over a year, and we
broadcast that from the William Penn Hotel up on the seventh, up on the.
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Levy: 17th.
Eibeck: Floor. 17th floor from the big ballroom with a live audience.
Right in, uh, right in it. We did the performance from the from the stage,
and the audience was sitting. Sitting right in right in the ballroom. But
that that only lasted, uh, maybe 13 months or something like that. Well,
then the war was coming had come to an end. And that that sort of, I think
was one of the reasons that was another one of the side branches from this.
But these were almost all the same people involved all the time.
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Levy: So there was sort of a core.
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Eibeck: Yeah. People never realized.
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Levy: That. So they didn't have to keep retraining people. All they had to
do is just change from Duquesne to Fort Pitt. Yeah.
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Eibeck: That's right, because no individual names were ever announced.
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Levy: The only difference was the label on the bottle of the beer.
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Eibeck: Right, right. We did have to recruit some singers, uh, for the
television program, because the fellows that were singing at that time, uh,
also had a television show. The quartet. And. Since they were on a program
that was advertising another beer, they could no longer be on Duquesne. And
two of the fellows sang in in in the church downtown. The Presbyterian
church as soloists. They weren't allowed to advertise beer, so they had to
drop out. So we had to get four new fellows. And believe me, that was a job
to get four fellows, one in each voice, uh, that would be able to pick up
music and read it. And then at that time, we had to memorize it. When we
came, when we got on television, it was a whole different ball game.
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Levy: You had a music. Radio, didn't you?
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Eibeck: Radio was an easy, you know, we could use the music and there was
nothing to it because we read well enough. But on television we had to
memorize, and you'd have to memorize anywhere from 5 to 7 songs. And
believe me, new songs every week and that and and some choreography. You
had to do a little movement with it, you know, and move around. So it, uh,
we didn't care for television, the radio.
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Levy: How much rehearsal? Uh, say about a half hour show.
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Eibeck: For a half hour show for for radio. Like I told you, we rehearsed
from 5:00, and then we did the program at 7:30. For the 6:30 show. We got
in there at 5:00, and then we did the program at 6:30. 15 minute show. For
television. We rehearsed Monday night down to Duquesne Brewery from about 8
to 10, 10:30 Tuesday nights. We went to the Chamber of Commerce building
for at least 2 or 3 hours. And on Wednesday night we did the program and we
had to be down there at least a couple hours. So the rehearsal time was,
I'd say, say two and a half five. You had seven, eight, at least seven,
eight hours for a television show that you had to reherse.
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Levy: And you sang about five songs on the show?
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Eibeck: Yeah, we did. Of course. It was a half hour program, but that's
how much songs we were involved in. And, uh, the pay, the pay wasn't that
much different. We got, uh, when I first started, uh, the radio program, we
got $20 a Friday night. And at that time, I wasn't a bricklayer yet. I was
a helper. I made $6 a day. I made $30 a week at Mesta, and I made $20 at
night. And then it was raised to $25. And our television show, we got 55,
$55. But look at all the time that was involved there. Sure. And on those
other little radio programs, uh, $25 was a going fee for us. And that three
night a week at 15 minute, three night a week program. They used to get $55
for the three shows. But that was a lot of money. And that was back in 19.
1940, 41, you know, 42, not 40, 41, 43 is when I went down. They were doing
some of those before that. But from 43 up until we went off in 1950, uh,
that that was the programs that were those were the programs that were
involved. I can't remember when a couple of them went off sooner than that.
I don't remember exactly when, but, uh, radio was it was a it was a nice
thing. It was a pleasure. And television was, was not so much fun. It was
too much work.
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Levy: Of course, for the for the people that went around there. They
really there weren't as many radio stations as there are today. Dozens of
them. Yeah. There there were the three network stations. Where was it? Uh,
NBC blue, NBC Red, right. And CBS. Yeah, those are the network stations.
Was it KDKA, WCAU and WJAS.
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Eibeck: And then KQV come in KQV.
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Levy: It was.
Eibeck: Mutual. Yeah. And WWSW was independent. Yeah. So and.
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Levy: There wasn't much more.
00:26:21.000 --> 00:28:09.000
Eibeck: No, no. That's all you had. And earlier, uh, this, uh, this little
I had a little 15 minute program at WWSW on a Wednesday afternoon. I
couldn't play much. I played more like a ukulele, and I sang and I worked
at, uh, Home Soap Company at the time, and I wasn't getting paid at WWSW,
but I was already getting some fan mail. And we had a boss that, uh. You've
got four hours off a week, you worked 40 hours and you either had to take
four hours in a morning or four hours in the afternoon. And the first
couple Wednesday afternoons. He allowed me off, but after that he made me
come in Wednesday afternoon. In spite because the guys used to get me to
sing down there once in a while. It used to burn him up because we looked
like we were happy, you know, one of those things, you know? So I went
through that a couple times, and I finally I was going to quit working. And
things were pretty tough at that time. You didn't have there wasn't too
much work around. And, uh, the NRA had come out and, uh, from $8.15 an hour
and $8.25 a week for 55 hours a week, which I made at first. They raised it
to $14 a week for 40 hours. Roosevelt brought out $0.35 a week. So that was
a big help at home, and I was going to quit and start trying to get
something singing on radio. And my parents, they didn't. They objected to,
you know, how the old Germans were, Bob. So I finally gave that program up.
But I think I may have might have gotten into something there, but that was
the predecessor. And before I really got involved in television and radio.
I also won a Wilkins Amateur Hour. You remember them?
00:28:09.000 --> 00:28:11.000
Levy: Oh, sure. Brian McDonald.
00:28:11.000 --> 00:28:30.000
Eibeck: Yeah, I won one of those. And. I was. I made a couple guest
appearances later on after I won it. This was all side stuff, like, you
know, coming off of that. But I always spent a lot of time singing. I
always did between everything that was involved, I was always singing
somewhere.
00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.000
Levy: So you not only made a few dollars, you enjoyed what you were
doing.
00:28:34.000 --> 00:29:31.000
Eibeck: I've done an awful lot of free work, believe me. And still do.
Yeah. You know, but that's that's a pleasure of doing it and the pleasure
of pleasing people. Really. And I always say it's reciprocal. You what you
put into it usually comes back, you get out of it, you know, and
appreciation like this guy here and some more wine and. Uh, it, uh, it
really, uh, it makes it all worthwhile. One of the, uh, one of the
highlights. I'd say it'd have to be the highlight of our our barbershop
quartet. We made three USO tours, and, uh, we were the only, uh, only
quartet in barbershop society that made three. In 1965, we went to Gitmo
Bay, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and we were it was an eight day trip, and we
sang for the troops down there. That's when Castro first came in and had
that, that, that fence in the middle or whatever it was. That's when we
were down there, when.
00:29:31.000 --> 00:29:35.000
Levy: The when the Marines were sort of quarantined off from the rest of
the country.
00:29:35.000 --> 00:30:35.000
Eibeck: Right. Right, right.
