First Show (Aired January 28, 1940)
Beat the Band---with Garry Moore hosting, Ted Weems (featuring a vocalist named Perry Como) leading the band, Marvel Maxwell also singing, longtime Easy Aces announcer Ford Bond in the same slot here, and General Mills sponsoring the show for its new corn cereal Kix---premieres on NBC, based in Chicago. A precedent to the later, somewhat landscape-changing hit Stop the Music, Beat the Band listeners will receive ten dollars if their question is used on the air, and the answer is always the title of a song. If they can beat the band they land twenty dollars and a case of Kix, with the musicians who miss the answer having to “feed the kitty”---tossing half dollars onto the bass drum, with the musician scoring the most points answering the listeners’ questions getting to take the money home. Folks, listen for the boom of the ol’ bass drum---that means the question beat the band.---Country Washburn, bassist with the Weems orchestra. Beat the Band's first incarnation will expire in 1941, but the show will be reborn in 1943, out of New York, with "The Incomparable Hildegarde" (Walter Winchell hung that tag upon the famed cabaret/supper club singer) as hostess, Harry Sosnik joining Ted Weems in handling the music, Marilyn Thorne joining Marvel Maxwell in the singing, and a slight change in the rules, tied to the new sponsor, Raleigh cigarettes. Listeners sent in musical questions and it was up to the band to identify songs from a few clues. Prizes of twenty-five dollars and a carton of the sponsor’s cigarettes . . . went to contestants whose questions did not beat the band. If the question did beat the band, the contestant received fifty dollars and two cartons of cigarettes, and the boys in the band had to throw a pack of cigarettes "on the old bass drum for the men in service overseas."
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