Early Bird

Four months ago Columbia Broadcasting Co. tucked another contract away in the safe, announced that a new man named Little Jack Little would be in to broadcast on weekday mornings from 9 to 9:15. Early morning broadcasts are beneath the notice of radio's star entertainers. The day Little Jack Little started on his new job Guy Lombardo, the orchestra leader, sent a telegram asking him why he did not double his income by taking on a milk route.

Beginning this week Columbia's early bird is having his salary doubled, from $400 to $800 a week. His morning programs have "gone over big." Commuters with radios in their automobiles have been stopping on their way to work to hear him better, avoiding streets where trolley-car tracks prevent good reception. Along with the added $400, Little Jack Little has been given extra time which no entertainer would scorn. Commuters without radios in their cars can hear him Sunday afternoons from 5:45 to 6, Tuesday evenings from 11:45 to 12, Friday evenings from 11 to 11:15 (E. D. S. T.).

Little (5 ft. 2 in.) Jack Little's stunt is playing the piano in a blithe, easy fashion. Cheer dominates his programs but not so blatantly as it does most of radio's early morning offerings. He lets his fingers do most of the talking, embroidering tunes all over the keyboard, breaking rhythms, holding them steady. Like most radio headliners, his voice is so small that he has to use an amplifier when he sings on the stage. But he can put a song over in what he calls an "intimate parlor baritone," and in many a parlor he hires himself out for private parties. He started singing that way back in Waterloo, Iowa, he claims, after he lost his voice cheerleading at a football game.

Waterloo remembers Little Jack Little as John James Leonard, a cricketlike boy whose father was a mechanic in the local cream-separator factory. Jack Leonard went to the State University planning to be a doctor but he spent most of his time there getting up orchestras, playing for dances. He decided to go into vaudeville but it took his adopted, sandwich-like name to bring him luck. In 1922 he started plugging songs for a music publisher from KDKA, Pittsburgh's pioneer station. That year he wrote "Jealous," his first & biggest hit.

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