Radio Fame
In the late 1920s, O'Daniel assumed responsibility for the company's radio advertising. To that end, he wrote songs and hired a group of musicians to form an old timey band. Originally called the Light Crust Doughboys, notable musicians such as Bob Wills got their start with O'Daniel. After the Doughboys split up, O'Daniel formed the Western swing band, Pat O'Daniel and his Hillbilly Boys. The new group was named after O'Daniel's Hillbilly Flour Company. The show extolled the values of Hillbilly brand flour, the Ten Commandments and the Bible.
O'Daniel's noontime radio show not only gave him his nickname "Pappy" after a catchphrase used frequently on air, "pass the biscuits, Pappy"; it also propelled him into the public spotlight. By the mid 1930s, W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel was a household name in Texas. As a national magazine reporter wrote at the time: "At twelve-thirty sharp each day, a fifteen-minute silence reigned in the state of Texas, broken only by mountain music, and the dulcet voice of W. Lee O'Daniel."
Read more about this topic: W. Lee O'Daniel
Famous quotes containing the words radio and/or fame:
“Now they can do the radio in so many languages that nobody any longer dreams of a single language, and there should not any longer be dreams of conquest because the globe is all one, anybody can hear everything and everybody can hear the same thing, so what is the use of conquering.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.”
—Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846)