Amos & Andy - Sunday Monday Or Always (02-25-44)

Amos 'n' Andy was a situation comedy popular in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s. The show began as one of the first radio comedy serials, written and voiced by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll and originating from station WMAQ in Chicago, Illinois. After the series was first broadcast in 1928, it grew in popularity and became a huge influence on the radio serials that followed. Amos 'n' Andy creators Gosden and Correll were white actors familiar with minstrel traditions. They met in Durham, North Carolina in 1920, and by the fall of 1925, they were performing nightly song-and-patter routines on the Chicago Tribune's station WGN. Since the Tribune syndicated Sidney Smith's popular comic strip The Gumps, which had successfully introduced the concept of daily continuity, WGN executive Ben McCanna thought the notion of a serialized drama could also work on radio. He suggested to Gosden and Correll that they adapt The Gumps to radio. They instead proposed a series about "a couple of colored characters" and borrowed certain elements of The Gumps.

THIS EPISODE:

February 25, 1944. NBC network origination, AFRS rebroadcast. Replacing "The Great Gildersleeve." Andy is convinced that he's written the hit tune, "Sunday, Monday, Or Always." He and The Kingfish go into the song writing business! Guests are Kay Kyser, Harry Babbitt. Also Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen (the real composers of the tune). Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll, Harlow Wilcox (announcer), Kay Kyser, Harry Babbitt, Johnny Burke, Jimmy Van Heusen, Kay Kyser and His Orchestra (music fill), Georgia Carroll (vocal). 29:42.