Who are the best storytellers?

That's hypocritical. You accused me by inference of not approving people making money on the side, of not approving of people in public broadcasting doing that, of treating such activities as "hard sell." None of those things were true. But, by all means, post again so that you can have the last word and then call for the discussion to end.

I posted stuff about the Dead Dog Cafe several years ago herein when someone had a similar thread about "Talk radio". Remember, we spend sometimes goodly months in downeast Maine and I like CBC better than most US radio. I could get the St Johns CBC 1 and 2 as well as the Frederictown repeater. The only CBC shows I thought were lame were the daily "Maritime Noon" which was pretty much focused on fishing reports and gardening .

While were at it, remember the good stuff of Peter Dzoski?.

I haven't accused you of anything. I disagreed with you, OK? And I am not going to say another word about this. You are making a mountain out of a molehill & frankly, I think it's a side issue anyway. Jeez, lighten up, will ya?

Any chance of some Dead Dog material, farmer?
(Or perhaps you've posted some already? I'll go back & look.)

peter gzowski was a great reporter and interviewer

Hey, you might be gratified to know that DDC was revived as "Dead Dog in the City" several years back. I don't know if it is still running, but it had King, Jasper Running Bear, Gracie Heavy Hand and a new character, Portia Jumping Bull (you got the impression that she was nubile and naïve, and the character was supposed to be about 16 or 17. There was an undercurrent with Tom King, who seemed to see her relationship with Jasper Running Bear as being inappropriate, although i think he was supposed to be her uncle. It was very good, and i bet you can find podcasts at CBC.

might be some floating around the internet, the original series ran on radio from 1997 until 2000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Dog_Café_Comedy_Hour

By the way, CBC Radio One is available on Sirius satellite radio channel 137.

Truman Capote too -- he was a bit of a weird human but he could be an excellent storyteller. (Trying to remember the name of the story he tells about making fruitcakes with an older female relative, maybe an aunt... another childhood "listening to the radio" memory. Oh, "A Christmas Memory" I think...)

edit: yes, that's what I'm thinking of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Memory

Thanks, djjd.

I know it's kind of goofy to say this, but the woman who played Gracie Heavy Hand sounded like an aboriginal woman, by which i don't just mean an accent.

I recall several years ago (maybe 2001 right after DDC went off), there was an attempt at doing a DDC website and , since it was run by some people from BBC who were associated with the show, They inserted a DDC "Indian NAme Generator". It had names of things that, when added to ones first name(like John, Turtle Tickler), it resulted in a name like the cast memebrs of DDC.

WELL SIR, Canadian First Nations members got all excited at how this was a racist slur and showed lack of sensitivity.
SO, the name generator just stopped and the entire website started giving these "404" interruptions.

SOmetimes people get all racially sensitive just because they can. The entire flapdoodle was raised because the show was popular among USers and we, as every one knows, are insesnitive doofii.

You know, the pathetic thing about it was that the name generator was created by Tom King and his cast members, who are all "first nations" people. Yeah, that was certainly an example of the political rectitude gestapo running wild.

When I was a kid, the Catholic SChool at which I was in attendence had a projector and I recall these really scratchy shorts that were done by Robert Benchley. He had this "Mr Whipple" look and hed tell stories and act out some of his essays , like "The Treasurers Report" . He and JAmes Thurber were great short story tellers.

Thurber was from Columbus, Ohio. And as soon as he could, he got out of town, and never went back. That doesn't stop them embracing him as a "home town boy," though. If you go to the Thurber house, they have (or once had) recordings of him, and they were quite entertaining.

Two of my favorite performances by actors telling stories in the character of
their authers were Hal Holbrook doing Mark Twain and Vincent Price doing
Oscar Wilde.

I listened to Holbrook on his "Mark Twain Tonight" recording and also saw him
do part of it on some TV programing. I still hear his voice when I read Twain.

I saw Vincent Price's one-man show in Boston many years ago. He assumed
just the right level of archness.

I don't know why your post reminded me of it, but one of my favorite narrations of Peter and the Wolf is by Jonathon Winters.