Charles Crutchfield was an N.C. broadcasting icon

Charles Harvey Crutchfield was told early on as a youngster, growing up in Spartanburg, S.C., that he had a “voice for radio.”

Charlie Crutchfield broke into the radio business in 1929 at age 17, when Virgil Evans, owner of radio station WSPA in Spartanburg, let him “announce a few records on the air.”

Journalist Jim McAllister wrote: “Young Charlie was so ecstatic that he worked the first six months without pay.”

“Later, they gave me a $10 meal ticket a week as my salary,” Crutchfield recalled. “In those days you could hardly eat $10 a week in groceries.”

Crutchfield said he was hooked on radio, but “it seemed like I got fired from every radio station in the South”…or at least five. “I was single and just a wild buck, and sometimes I just wouldn’t show up when I was supposed to.” (Yep, that’ll do it.)

WBT in Charlotte, N.C., was his “dream job.” WBT was the truly “big time” radio station in the South, affiliated with the CBS network.”

 

(WBT was North Carolina’s first commercial radio station, established in 1922. The station was purchased in 1925 by Charles Campbell Coddington (shown below), owner of the Buick dealership in Charlotte. He promoted the radio station and his car lot with the slogan “Watch Buicks Travel.”

 

Shortly after Crutchfield landed at WBT in 1933 as a radio announcer, he said: “We got wind of a wedding between the two oldest ex-slaves in the country – a 97-year-old man and a 92-year-old woman – who were getting married for the first time.”

“It being Sunday with little else happening, the spare engineer (at the station) and I decided to cover the event. Loading our equipment, we hopped in the car, a 1929 Model T Ford, and headed down toward Pineville.”

“What we thought would be a rather routine assignment suddenly developed complications when the deacons – after a hurried huddle – decided that it would be sacrilegious to broadcast from the church.”

Things were looking bleak, Crutchfield said, until the head deacon “admitted that he ‘jest might’ crack one of the windows for a little consideration.”

“Poorer by two dollars, I climbed a plum tree outside the window, stuck the microphone inside and aired the entire ceremony,” Crutchfield said.

Then Crutchfield pulled their car up to the front steps and told the couple that this was the “official wedding car.”

“They climbed in, and we got an interview with the couple…grinning from ear to ear,” Crutchfield said. “When I asked the groom what his plans were, he came out with a classic: ‘I’m gonna quit running ‘round, settle down and start raising a big family.’”

Crutchfield’s “first claim to fame” at WBT was the creation of the “Briarhoppers,” a “hillbilly music” band in 1934 to play live music and promote advertising for a product known as “Peruna.”

 

It was a medical elixir to cure catarrh, which is a “build-up of mucus (phlegm) in one’s airways.” Symptoms are a stuffy or runny nose, feeling the need to constantly clear one’s throat, a persistent cough, headache, a crackling sensation in the ears and general tiredness.

 

Peruna was touted a “miracle cure.” It’s no wonder. Peruna was 28% pure alcohol, offering customers quite a kick. WBT listeners who sent in Peruna box tops received complimentary photographs of the Briarhoppers…as well as New Testaments.

 

Crutchfield said WBT received an average of 18,000 Peruna box tops every week. Praise the Lord.

He joked that his own mother, a teetotaler, drank Peruna like it was water and became a happy woman.