Icelandic State Park
Cavalier, North Dakota
September 4, 2024
The lyrics to Garnett Mimms (& The Enchanters) classic song "Quiet Place" start with "Johnny, Johnny Dollar"
Johnny, Johnny Dollar
Lady, lady, lady
Why do you holler?
Ain't nobody seen your Johnny Dollar
I can't get no sleep
In this noisy street
I've got to move (I've got to move)
I've got to find me a quiet place
There's a man next door
With a radio and he plays it
All through the night
There's a couple in the apartment above my head
That don't do nothing but fuss and fight
I can't get no sleep
In this noisy street
I've got to move (I've got to move)
I've got to find me a quiet place
Tell me, where do you go
When you got no dough?
There must be a way out of here
But I've got to find
Some peace of mind
There must be a place
That I can find
Believe me when I tell you
There's a cat that gets under my window
And he meows all the time
There's a drunk that wakes me in the middle of the night
Singing, "Sweet Adeline"
I can't get no sleep
In this noisy street
I've got to move (I've got to move)
I've got to find me a quiet place
I can't get no sleep
In this noisy street
I've got to move (I've got to move)
I've got to find me a quiet place
Oh, I've got to move (I've got to move)
I've got to find me a quiet place
I got to get away from this noisy street
So who is Johnny Dollar? Is he like "Dan" in many R&B classics?
I haven't found the answer. But I did find that Johnny Dollar was a classic radio series!
Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar is a radio drama that aired on CBS Radio from February 18, 1949 to September 30, 1962.
The first several seasons imagined protagonist Johnny Dollar as a private investigator drama, with Charles Russell, Edmond O'Brien and John Lund portraying Dollar in succession over the years. In 1955 after a yearlong hiatus, the series came back in its best-known incarnation with Bob Bailey starring in "the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account – America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator." There were 809 episodes (plus two not-for-broadcast auditions) in the 12-year run, and more than 710 still exist today.[3] Jim Cox's book American Radio Networks: A History cites "886 total performances" which includes repeat performances.[4]
Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar was so familiar to CBS Radio's listeners that the network's resident comedians, Bob and Ray, occasionally satirized it. Their version, "Ace Willoughby, International Detective," followed the Johnny Dollar format of exotic locales, continental officials, cool villains, and tense confrontations, with Ray Goulding doing a letter-perfect imitation of Bob Bailey's delivery. In the comedy version, however, the detective usually gave up on the case after being beaten up incessantly.
Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar was a popular weekly radio mystery play in the 1960s and early 1970s on Radio Iran. The role of Johnny Dollar was played by Heidar Saremi, a popular radio performer. Contrary to the original, Johnny Dollar was more of a criminal investigator. At the end of each episode, the narrator asked the radio audience how Johnny found the perpetrators, making the show a mystery quiz as well as a drama; those who guessed correctly were entered into a raffle for a prize.
In the 1970s and 1980s the comedy troupe The Firesign Theatre released a number of satirical record albums; several featured spoofs of old-time radio featuring the character Nick Danger, Third Eye, who was loosely based on Sam Spade and Johnny Dollar. The scripts included inside references to radio with lines such as, "It had been snowing in Santa Barbara ever since the top of the page," and riffs on radio sound effects.
In 2003, Moonstone Books adapted the Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar radio program into a graphic novel illustrated by Éric Thériault and written by David Gallaher.
The show has been the opening item on The Big Broadcast on WAMU in Washington, D.C. off and on since the early 1990s.
As of August 2017, the show is being aired several times a day on KTQA FM 95.3 in Tacoma, WA and CHLU FM in Middle LaHave, Nova Scotia, Canada.
In August 2021, the SiriusXM satellite radio network began airing many episodes of the show on its "Radio Classics" channel 148.
As of February 2019, a documentary about the program, Last Man Standing – Johnny Dollar & the End of Old-Time Radio, has been produced.[12]
In 2023, a new graphic novel series was launched with Johnny Dollar investigating cybercrimes of the modern age.[13] "The man with the action packed expense account" is a cyberinsurance investigator, taking on ransomware actors in the modern age
Comments