Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion"

Last night my husband and I enjoyed Garrison Keillor's live radio broadcast of "A Prairie Home Companion" at the Milwaukee Theater. I hadn't realized live radio could be so much fun. The majority of the featured skits, songs and jokes had a Milwaukee theme. Kathryn Hauser Slusher, the shows segment producer and music librarian, read an essay on growing up in Milwaukee which culminated in her recitation of the Polish and German last names of her former classmates with perfect pronunciation. To my husband's amusement, one of the names she recited was his mother’s maiden name. The music featured local talent; The Exotics, a surf band, the 100 year old Mandolin Orchestra (supposedly the only Mandolin Orchestra still in existence) and local jazz clarinetist Chuck Hedges who joined The Guys All Star Shoe Band. My husband’s highlight of the evening came when Chuck performed “Come Sunday” a Duke Ellington tune. Pat Donohue the guitarist from The Guys All Star Shoe Band sang a cute little ditty about his days at Marquette University. Keillor even came up with a little local trivia; the typewriter had been invented just a couple of blocks from the Milwaukee Theater and Golda Meir had grown up and gone to college in Milwaukee.

My husband first discovered Garrison Keillor’s "A Prairie Home Companion" in the early eighties while camping in northern Wisconsin. He introduced me to the show by tuning in on Saturday nights while we prepared dinner. I quickly became a fan.

According to Garrison’s website Keillor developed an idea for a variety show for radio with musical guests and commercials for imaginary products after working on an article for the New Yorker magazine about the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. On July 6, 1974, Keillor hosted the first live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, named after the Prairie Home cemetery in Moorhead, Minnesota, at the Janet Wallace Auditorium at Macalester College, Saint Paul. The audience consisted of 12 guests, mostly children and earned less than $8. Today, A Prairie Home Companion is heard by over 4 million listeners each week on over 558 public radio stations, and is heard abroad on America One and the Armed Forces Networks in Europe and the Far East. Keillor remembers, "When the show started, it was something funny to do with my friends, and then it became an achievement that I hoped would be successful, and now it's a good way of life."