Joy Boys

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Ed Walker (l) and Willard Scott, The Joy Boys (1965)

The Joy Boys was a popular daily

Huntley-Brinkley Report with their own zany "Washer-Dryer Report".[1] Walker told an interviewer years later that the duo imitated some 20 voices in all.[2]

Scott and Walker teamed as co-hosts on WRC-AM, the NBC-owned-and-operated station in Washington, beginning July 11, 1955.[3] Initially, the program was titled Two at One and aired at 1 p.m. The term Joy Boys originated when they adopted a brief song of that title, set to the "Billboard March" as their theme music:[4]

We are the Joy Boys, of radio,
We chase electrons to and fro-o-o-o...

Later, the Joy Boys became a nightly feature at 7 p.m. on WRC. In a 1999 article recalling the Joy Boys at the height of their popularity in the mid-1960s, The Washington Post said they "dominated Washington, providing entertainment, companionship, and community to a city on the verge of powerful change".[1] One of their many running gags was "As the Worm Turns", a spoof of the television soap opera, As the World Turns.[5]

Walker, who was totally

blind since birth, said that growing up "radio was my comic books, movies, everything".[3] On the Joy Boys program, Scott would sketch a list of characters and a few lead lines setting up the situation that Walker would commit to memory or note on his braille typewriter. Scott and Walker formed a professional and personal bond which continued up to Walker's death. Scott said in his book, The Joy of Living, that they were "closer than most brothers".[6]

The Joy Boys moved from WRC to another Washington radio station, WWDC (now

Masterpiece Theatre's Six Wives of Henry VIII, which they called Masterpuss Theater had a one-week airing on consecutive nights on KBYU-FM in Provo, Utah, in 1973.[5]

CDs. The Joy Boys' roast of WRC newsman Bryson Rash, when he became president of the National Press Club in Washington, D. C. in 1963, was released on a CD, Is Bryson Rash?.[9]

References

  1. ^ a b Marc Fisher (1999-09-13). "Washington Comes of Age". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-01-29.
  2. ^ "Interview with Ed Walker (video)". University of Maryland. Archived from the original on 2007-09-29. Retrieved 2008-01-29.
  3. ^ a b Hendrix, Steve (July 29, 2009). "WAMU's Ed Walker, Host of 'The Big Broadcast', Has Spent His Life in D.C. Radio". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 1, 2020.
  4. ^ "Where did the theme music come from?" -- The Joy Boys - History
  5. ^
    Provo Herald
    . November 12, 1973. p. TV 2.
  6. ISBN 0-698-11130-3
    .
  7. ^ Yonki, David (November 5, 1972). "Teen Record Review". Sunday Dispatch. Pittston, PA. p. 38.
  8. ^ "The Joy Boys website". Retrieved 2008-01-29.
  9. OCLC 36510143
    . Retrieved November 1, 2020.

External links
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