Stoopnagle and Budd
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Stoopnagle and Budd were a popular radio comedy team of the 1930s, generally regarded as radio's first satirists and sometimes cited as forerunners of the Bob and Ray style of radio comedy.
Musician Wilbur Budd Hulick and former broker-lumberman Frederick Chase Taylor (1897-1950) were both announcers at Buffalo station WMAK in 1930. The great-grandson of British-born Aaron Lovecraft of Rochester, New York, Taylor was a first cousin of author H.P. Lovecraft.
Hulick and Taylor came together as a team when a transmitter failure kept the station from receiving the scheduled network program. To prevent dead air, they delivered a barrage of spontaneous, impromptu patter. Hulick called Taylor "Colonel Stoopnagle" while Taylor played "I Love Coffee, I Love Tea" and other selections on the organ. The audience responded with so much enthusiasm that the duo's goofiness became a regular feature on WMAK, generating such local interest that within a year they were headed for New York.
Amid much network hoopla, they were heard on The Gloomchasers, beginning on CBS May 24, 1931. Spouting Spoonerisms, Taylor became known under the full name Colonel Lemuel Q. Snoopnagle as the partners appeared in several different formats on CBS, creating a variety of voices for their crazy characters, addlepated antics and wacky interviews. The public finally saw them in action when Paramount released International House in 1933.
The partners went separate ways after The Minute Men (1937). Hulick then hosted a Mutual game show, What's My Name?, and Mutual's Music and Manners (1939) before returning to local Buffalo radio stations. After a comedy series with Donald Dickson on the Yankee Network, Taylor was a summer substitute for Fred Allen on Town Hall Tonight in 1938. He did the goofy quiz show Quixie Doodles on Mutual and CBS (1941-44), continuing through the 1940s with The Colonel (1943), Stoopnagle's Stooperoos (1943), Burns and Allen (1943), substituting for Bob Hawk (1947), Vaughn Monroe's Camel Caravan (1947-48) and Duffy's Tavern.
Following a foray into television with Colonel Stoopnagle's Stoop (1949), Taylor died in 1950 in Boston of a heart ailment at the age of 52. He is remembered for his catch phrases and signature lines, "If it weren't for half the people in the United States, the other half would be all of them," "Stoopnocracy is peachy" and "People have more fun than anybody."
In recent years, Taylor's humor has been revived by Rick Squires in his Stoopnocracy is Peachy! website.
