Ben Alley

Ben Alley was a radio singer extremely popular in the early 1930s. "Radio Round-Ups, Intimate Glimpses of the Radio Stars" in 1932 noted "Ben Alley, whose beautiful tenor voice has stirred romance in the souls of the most prosaic, was born in the hills of West Virginia, one of seven children." Nicknamed the Blue Grass Tenor, Alley sang on the radio at WSAI in Ohio for a few years and then moved over to WLW where his popularity led him to CBS radio in New York City, often paired with singer Helen Nugent. "Who's Who on the Air (1932 edition)" mentioned in a feature called Headliners of the Air that "Ben Alley is just twenty nine years old, but his lyric tenor voice has been heard on more than nine hundred programs." The "Broadway and Hollywood Movies" magazine of May 1932 wondered in the Radio Row column "When is Ben Alley going to get a real good break?" By 1936 Alley and Helen Nugent were included in a feature in Radio Mirror (December 1936 edition) "Yesterday's Stars-Where Are They Now." The story includes "So popular was Ben Alley that the radio moguls overreached themselves. They put him on too many programs. Every time you turned on the radio you heard Ben Alley singing. He was on for a corset concern. For a department store. For a cigar concern. He had his own group of sustaining." (Note-sustaining were radio shows paid for by the network and not by sponsors) "And people tired of hearing him. Today he's a singer at a Baltimore nightclub." Helen Nugent didn't fare any better. The article in Radio Mirror states that after a failed romance with CBS engineer Paul Green she was back at WLW but "no one seems to know exactly what she's doing." In November 1937 he was heard six times weekly over WCAU and drawing more fan mail than the network programs. The magazine wondered "For some five years Ben Alley was starring on the CBS net five times or more weekly and then a shake-up left him outside looking in. A trouper, he fought the situation with plenty of "moxie" and is now heard six times weekly via WCIU sponsored by a bill-payer of a large network show... We arrived in time to see Alley collect his mail from fans...why should Ben Alley be confined to WCAU when millions of others would want to hear him?"