BIG JON AND SPARKY or BIG JOHN AND SPARKIE - OLD TIME RADIO - 2 CD-ROM - 160 mp3 - Total Playtime: 29:00:02 (Old Time Radio - Children Series)

Jon Arthur was the professional name of Jon Arthur Goerss. As Big Jon Arthur he was the host of the Saturday morning children's radio series, Big Jon and Sparkie. Sparkie, "the little elf from the land of make-believe, who wants more than anything else in the world to be a real boy,? was actually the recorded voice of Jon Arthur played at a fast speed. From his home in Pittsburgh, Jon Arthur went to radio school and then began his broadcasting career at radio station WJLS (Beckley, West Virginia), signing on two weeks after the station went on the air in 1939. Arthur later left Beckley for Ogdensburg, New York and soon headed for the West Coast. Arthur died in California in 1982. At WSAI in Cincinnati, Arthur began the Big Jon and Sparkie show, carried daily on 181 ABC stations beginning in 1950.[3] ABC also aired his two-hour Saturday show, No School Today, heard weekly by 12 million listeners on 275 stations. The show's theme song was "Teddy Bears' Picnic" as sung by Ann Stephens. Cincinnati's Don Kortekamp, who was an editor at WSAI, teamed up with Arthur to become the scriptwriter of Big Jon and Sparkie. Arthur originally created the character of Sparkie as a young scamp who would interrupt him while he was on the air. WSAI's station manager asked Kortekamp and Arthur to expand this into a radio program. Arthur voiced all of the various characters while Kortekamp provided the scripts for their adventures and a local businessman in the novelty business produced a Sparkie puppet. Kortekamp drew on his memories of his childhood in Cheviot, Ohio when creating new characters and the plots for the program. Mayor Plumpfront, the Krausers, Clyde Pillroller, and Eukey Butcha were all based on people he knew while growing up. However in 1951, the station did not renew its contract with Arthur and the program then moved to new Cincinnati studios to continue its ABC radio broadcasts.