The Beginnings
"My dear sweet mother and day tell me that I was born at home in Birmingham on July the 17,
1920, and that I started making a lot of noise right then. In fact, I didn't stop crying
for three months." This is how Joe Rumore describes his beginnings in Rumors About
The Rumores. And thus a future radio legend is born. Joe goes on to say that his
first interest in music was at the age of three months, when his mother would play the
old graphanola. Joe started grammar school at age 6 in Birmingham and attended
high school at Ramsey High School, also in Birmingham. "Even though it did take me
nearly six years to get out of high school, I finished in 1941." states Joe in Rumors.
Joe lived on a farm in Huffman, Alabama from 1933 to 1938, when the Birmingham School
Board made Joe move back into the city if he wanted to stay in public school in
Birmingham. It was there on the farm that Joe, "learned all about being a country boy."
While in high school, Joe would take all the speech courses he could crowd into his
schedule. Joe would study serious music for 12 years, learning 4 complete opras.
At age 7 Joe made his radio debut on Station WJOE, as Master Rumore. Young Joe rigged
up a make-believe microphone by nailing a tea strainer to a cigar box. With an ancient
Victrola and a pair of ear muffs doing duty as turntable and earphones, Master Rumore
broadcast over Station WJOE for 3 years before he got his first piece of mail. It just
so happened that Master Rumore had written the letter, a letter of lavish praise and
caustic criticism, to himself. Master Rumore acknowledged the letter on the air at
Station WJOE and promised to do better in the future. Joe kept the letter in his
mind throughout his school days in Birmingham, with every subject Joe studied had to
answer the stern question,"How will this help me in radio?"
It was right after high school that young Joe Rumore started the radio career that would,
in the near future, set the standard in Birmingham radio.
Next: Early Radio
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