Don McNeill Says: Make America Proud of You (MP3's)

Don McNeill was a radio legend, host of The Breakfast Club, heard on WLS in Chicago and nationwide on the Blue Network (and later ABC) for over 35 years. At the height of his run on the show (and shortly after ending a brief TV simulcast), in 1956, McNeill teamed up with Archie Bleyer, founder and head of Cadence Records, for a one shot 45 of a song which had been sung on The Breakfast Club, "Make America Proud of You".

This record appeared on the label during a real hot streak, in between number one hits by The Chordettes and BIll Hayes (the year before) and Andy Williams and The Everly Brothers (the year after).

For the A-side, McNeill engaged what sounds like at least a hundred Chicago area young people, including lots of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and the choruses from two North Shore high schools, Evanston and New Trier (the latter being the school I would attend, some twenty years later, at that school's West Campus). This assembled multitude made quite the boisterous recording.

For the flip side, McNeill and Bleyer again utilized the talents of the New Trier chorus, minus all of the other performers, however, for a much more sedate (and, to these ears, dull) performance of the material, complete with a recitation by McNeill which touches on, among other things, how even if you're not the smartest, fastest or otherwise bestest, you can still do your own personal best in everything you attempt, and in doing so, "make America proud of you".

Don McNeill, Evanston and New Trier High School Choruses, Chicago Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, Archie Bleyer - Make America Proud of You (MP3)  | New Trier High School Chorus, Conducted by Archie Bleyer, Narration by Don McNeill - Make America Proud of You (MP3)  | Single A-Side Label (JPG)  | Single B-Side Label (JPG)

Comments

[Kip W]

I was driving home from work and turned the radio on in the middle of "All Things Considered," and they were talking about Don McNeill. I was thrilled! I loved his cornball show, which Mom had on the radio every morning when I was a kid. They played little clips from the show, and it was like going back. They even played from the prayer section of the show, where he urged everyone to pray, "each in his own words, each in his own way. Pray for a world united in peace."

Then the NPR announcer came back on and I realized I was listening to an obituary, and, well, the rest doesn't matter, really.

[Ultimajock]

...actually, at the time this record came out -- and most of the years before -- McNeil's "Breakfast Club" wasn't heard in Chicago on WLS, but on WCFL. The original Blue Network/ABC-owned station in Chicago was WENR, which shared frequency time with Prairie Farmer's WLS until 1959. As "The Breakfast Club" was sent out by the Blue Network/ABC at an hour when WLS had its own morning programming, WCFL agreed to carry it in Chicago instead. It was only for the last nine years of the program's ABC run, 1959 to 1968, that WLS carried it; after its last broadcast in December 1968, "The Breakfast Club," with McNeil's customary "Peace" closing, was followed up by fill-in disc jockey Larry Lujack's pointed playing of The Beatles' "Revolution"...

[Alan Gunther]

I was one of the scouts in the recording and have been trying to get a copy. If America could hear it today it is just as appropriate today and it was back than. As I remember the words, I believe it became part of JFK's acceptance speech, As not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.

[King Daevid MacKenzie]

...BTW, Archie Bleyer was fired by Arthur Godfrey from his radio and TV shows on the same day Godfrey dismissed Julius LaRosa on the air; the two reasons given were Bleyer's romantic relationship with fellow "Little Godfrey" Janet Ertel of The Chordettes (both CBS and Godfrey had strict non-dating policies regarding employees) - who Bleyer married the following year - and the Cadence Records contract with Godfrey's direct competition on the ABC Radio network, Don McNeill, which the insecure Godfrey saw as disloyalty on Bleyer's part. Godfrey's records were distributed at the time by Columbia, and to my knowledge he never cut a single note for Cadence (although later on Godfrey did do some material that was released on Vee-Jay)...