(Courtesy: Tom Buckley, “eyeontv”) The Joy Boys, Eddie Walker & Willard Scott, host their final show at 4001 Nebraska Avenue on Friday afternoon, October 6th, 1972. Gordon Peterson sits-in.
Ultimate thanks to Dave Statter, ( http://STATter911.com ) for finding this clip.
Visit http://TheJoyBoys.com for everything you’d ever want to know about the legendary radio team.
From Dave Statter:
WTOP reports Ed Walker died just three hours after his final “The Big Broadcast” last night on WAMU Radio. Ed was a wonderful man and a great broadcaster who had an amazing knowledge of radio history and music.
While at Channel 9, I discovered this 1972 film of Ed and Willard Scott’s final broadcast as The Joy Boys on WRC (with Gordon Peterson reporting).
It had been dubbed to video but was not identified. I turned it over to Tom Buckley who always makes sure broadcasting history is preserved (and that’s why we are able to see it today). The Joy Boys were extremely funny and made great radio. Ed Walker will be missed.
Ed Walker spent 65 years on the radio. His last program was unlike any other.
From The Washington Post:
Ed Walker didn’t really want to do it. He was tired and sick, he said, and not really up to it. Besides, his voice — the instrument of his preposterously long radio career — was no longer what it had been.
Just once more, pleaded Lettie Holman, Walker’s boss. For the audience, she said. For posterity. His daughter, Susan Walker Scola, agreed, urging her father on.
Walker reconsidered. Okay, he said. One more.
So they assembled last week to record one more, the last of the untold thousands of radio programs Walker has done since he broke into radio as a college student 65 years ago, when Harry Truman was president. Holman was there for the final show, as were audio engineer Tobey Schreiner and a couple of Walker’s radio associates, Rob Bamberger and Bob Bybee. The vehicle was “The Big Broadcast,” the weekly radio-nostalgia program that Walker has hosted for the past 25 years on Washington public station WAMU (88.5 FM).
The setting was Room 623 at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington. Walker, 83 and battling cancer, had been there a week. He did the show in a hospital gown, connected to a bank of hospital monitors. He insisted on getting out of bed to sit upright. An old pro knows you sound better that way.
“Good evening, everybody, and welcome to another edition of ‘The Big Broadcast,’ ” he began one last time. “My name is Ed Walker.” ....MORE
While at Channel 9, I discovered this 1972 film of Ed and Willard Scott's final broadcast as The Joy Boys on WRC (with Gordon Peterson reporting).
