The other day as I was typing a comment here on the Trail, I inadvertently slipped into “pirate talk”. I’m not sure why, but I suddenly had Cap’n Billy of the Muskellunge on my shoulder. It didn’t last long, but it’s not the only time lately that I’ve spontaneously conjured up one of the regulars from TLGMS – The Late Great Morning Show – MPR’s varietal music wake-up show which aired between 1983 and 2008. For instance, Lloyd’s of Monday pops into my head whenever something goes awry on a Monday.
For the uninitiated who might wander onto this blog, here’s an excerpt from a 2006 article describing the show:
“Fans of The Morning Show know they can expect to hear comic sketches, ad spoofs and other skits featuring characters such as Captain Billy, Bud Buck and Genway’s Dr. Larry Kyle. It all originates at Dale Connelly’s keyboard. “Basically, I create the characters in the scripts,” Dale says, ‘then I hand the scripts over to Jim Ed and he brings them to life in his own way.’
[The late Tom Keith, whose stage name was] Jim Ed Poole is a master at doing various voices, dialects and characterizations. ‘There are so many different characters,’ Jim Ed laughs, “that some characters are starting to sound like other characters.”
I’ve been missing the Morning Show a lot lately – I’ll be cooking and want some music instead of the yammering of the radio’s talk shows. Or I’ll turn on the classical station, but they’re playing something weird, so I try Radio Heartland on my iPad. But they don’t play the old favorites any more (from what I can tell), and besides, RH doesn’t do the fun stuff like those fake sponsors and quirky character skits I used to laugh out loud at.
Dial it back several years:
What were some of your favorite “spots” or characters from Dale and Jim Ed’s collection?
(If you click on the little magnifying glass at the top right of this page, and type in your favorite character or “sponsor”, you may find old blog posts on that topic from the archives.)
Trail Baboon 
billy marty barry, tony bennets visits and mr sports news action mr jim ed poole.
one time jim ed came on and said “yesterday half the teams won and half the teams lost
that’s all for sports” geeze they had fun .
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Billy Marty Barry for sure. His loving analysis of song lyrics was a treat.
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Yes, the sports was, I think, leftover from Garrison days – Jim Ed was the flying center fielder for the Lake Wobegon Wippetts!
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Billy Marty Barry examined the lyrics to Bad Bad Leroy Brown and You Don’t Mess Around With Jim with sympathy for guys who got beaten up. Did Mr. Brown know the marital status of Doris? Can there be any reason for name calling Big Jim dumb?
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Mystery science theater
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Ooh, say more – I don’t remember that one.
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Well it probably wouldn’t since my fingers were just typing away and I typed the word science even though I shouldn’t have because we all know that mystery science theater is what Wes and I love. Mystery theater was based on supposed letters to people wrote in. It was hysterical … in the one I remember the most clearly is why do cats get into grocery bags. Empty grocery bags. And of course the answer was because cats don’t trust us to actually get everything out of the bag so they are just double checking on our work.
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DITTO this (thank you, Barb)
I’ve been missing the Morning Show a lot lately – I’ll be cooking and want some music instead of the yammering of the radio’s talk shows. Or I’ll turn on the classical station, but they’re playing something weird, so I try Radio Heartland on my iPad. But they don’t play the old favorites any more (from what I can tell), and besides, RH doesn’t do the fun stuff like those fake sponsors and quirky character skits I used to laugh out loud at.
GEnway’s Dr. Kyle: Memories roll up into my brain every time I happen across my Genway t=shirt…
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Ah, I’d love to see the Genway t-shirt!
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I just took photos of it…how do I share?
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I’m afraid I don’t know – Linda has been able to share a photo that she had first uploaded to Facebook, but I’m not sure how she did it.
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Or you can always do a blog post about it and send it along to VS… 🙂
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of course…will think about that!
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I have a Flickr account. I upload the photo to Flickr with public permissions and paste the link into the blog.
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What a show. I miss ‘Monback brothers moving’. ” ‘Mon back… ‘mon back… [crunch] “That’s good.”
The hide and seek at the state fair.
The mouth pigeons.
The Intimida and the Sherpa.
Way way back was the serial show they had going… Incredible Betty. I used know the theme song… can’t come up with it anymore…
Found this: “April 23, 2004. Join Dale Connelly and Jim Ed Poole for 2 hours of music, manners, superhuman meddling and radio melodrama. Actor and playwright Beth Gilleland appears as “Incredible Betty” a caped avenger sworn to uphold generally accepted standards of Polite behavior”.
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I remember loving “Incredible Betty”
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I’d forgotten about “Monback”! 🙂
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Bubby Spamden.
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Here’s a blog post Dale wrote in 2015…
https://trailbaboon.com/2015/02/
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Dale has such a way with words. 🙂
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OT – In case anyone is interested, tpt is showing a film about Flannery O’Connor at 8 PM.
Today I managed to get an appointment for my first vaccine shot on Saturday. Yay! My second one scheduled for April 17th. I’m on my way.
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Oh, I am so glad!
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Aah, I just saw Cynthia’s Genway t-shirt on Facebook. 🙂
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I was always fond of Bart the Bear.
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Also future Historians of America.
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