What happens
Jack Benny, at the start of this episode, plays an imaginary admiral in a Nebraska Navy, then recalls for a newspaper writer, Mr. Kern, how he first met bandleader Phil Harris. Ten years earlier, Benny visits Mary Livingstone on her birthday, and they go out to a downtown nightclub to hear Harris and his band. The club is a rough basement room, and the waiter turns out to be an undertaker's assistant. Benny is eager to sign Harris for his radio show, and Harris is cagey about the offer. The transcript ends with Benny's account still in progress, before any deal is settled.
Los Angeles in the 1940s, with flashbacks to a birthday dinner and a basement nightclub on North Figueroa Street about ten years earlier
Characters: Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Rochester, Don Wilson, Larry Stevens, Gladys De Biscoe, Mr. Kern
Listen for: Benny's flashback narration to Mr. Kern about meeting Phil Harris, and the nightclub scene where Harris performs his own song
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. 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.