Abbott and Costello

About Abbott and Costello

135 complete radio episodes (66 hours) from 1940 to 1948, across 1 series:

• Abbott and Costello: 135 episodes, 1940–1948

Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.

Abbott and Costello on the radio

NBC, ABC, 1942-1949. With Bud Abbott, Joe Kirk, Elvia Allman, Connie Haines, Mel Blanc, George Fenneman.

• Abbott and Costello's first known radio broadcast was on The Kate Smith Hour on February 3, 1938.
• On radio, listeners had trouble telling the two voices apart during their rapid-fire exchanges, so Costello adopted the high-pitched, childlike voice he became famous for.
• Kate Smith's manager, Ted Collins, spotted the team performing at Loew's State Theater and invited them onto the next day's broadcast. For their first 21 weeks they had to sign a new contract every week.
• The pay on the Kate Smith show started at $300 for the first broadcast and $500 for the second. The team stayed on as regulars for two and a half years.
• On the Kate Smith show Lou refused to read from a script because he felt it got in the way of his ad-libs. Bud held the script and kept the routine on track.
• "Who's on First?" reached a national radio audience for the first time on March 24, 1938, on the Kate Smith program.
• A recording of "Who's on First?" broadcast on October 6, 1938, was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2002.
• Burlesque producer John Grant was writing and adapting sketches for the team by the time "Who's on First?" hit the air, and he stayed on as their head writer into the 1950s.
• Their first radio show of their own was a 13-week summer replacement for Fred Allen in 1940, sponsored by Ipana toothpaste and called Time to Smile.
• Harry Von Zell announced the 1940 summer shows from New York. When the program moved to the West Coast on August 21, 1940, Frank Bingman took over.
• The 1940 summer series ended on September 25, 1940, with the team performing "Who's on First?"
• In 1941 and 1942 the team were regulars on Edgar Bergen's Chase and Sanborn program on NBC, doing a routine of about five minutes each Sunday.

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