''Champion Spark Plug Hour'' was a music radio program sponsored by

Champion A champion (from the late Latin ''campio'') is the victor in a challenge, contest or competition. There can be a territorial pyramid of championships, e.g. local, regional / provincial, state, national, continental and world championships, ...

. It was broadcast on New York's WJZ and WGY during the late 1920s and early 1930s. An entry in ''The Chronicle-Telegram'' (

Elyria, Ohio Elyria ( ) is a city in the Greater Cleveland metropolitan statistical area and the county seat of Lorain County, Ohio, United States, located at the forks of the Black River in Northeast Ohio 23 miles southwest of Cleveland. As of the 2020 cen ...

) for October 4, 1926, indicates the show aired on Tuesday afternoons at 5 p.m. By 1928, they were heard Wednesday evenings at 8 p.m. on the

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters ...

Blue Network The Blue Network (previously known as the NBC Blue Network) was the on-air name of a now defunct American radio network, which broadcast from 1927 through 1945. Beginning as one of the two radio networks owned by the National Broadcasting Com ...

. The program featured the Champion Sparkers Male Quartet and an orchestra conducted by Walter Gustave "Gus" Haenschen. Personnel in the band included Sam Lewis (trombone), Earl Oliver (trumpet), Merle Johnston (saxophone) and Phil Gleason. Irving Kaufman (1890-1976) was a featured vocalist with the band. The ''Oswego Palladium-Times'' (

Oswego, New York Oswego () is a city in Oswego County, New York, United States. The population was 16,921 at the 2020 census. Oswego is located on Lake Ontario in Upstate New York, about 35 miles (55km) northwest of Syracuse. It promotes itself as "The Port Ci ...

) offered a description of the program for December 27, 1928: :The Champion Sparkers will present Ed Smalle. singing comedian as featured soloist during their program which will be heard from WHAM and other stations of the NBC System at 8 o'clock tonight. Smalle's numbers include "Happy Days and Lonely Nights," "All By Yourself in the Moonlight" and "The Sun is at My Window." The delicate "Valse Viennese" is offered in an interesting arrangement for saxophones. Haenschen, who was also the program's director, composed the show's theme song, "The March of the Champions" (aka "Champion Sparkers March"). The orchestra and quartet recorded for

Brunswick Records Brunswick Records is an American record label founded in 1916. History From 1916 Records under the Brunswick label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, a company based in Dubuque, Iowa which had been manufacturing prod ...

in 1931, including ''

William Tell Overture The ''William Tell'' Overture is the overture to the opera ''William Tell'' (original French title ''Guillaume Tell''), whose music was composed by Gioachino Rossini. ''William Tell'' premiered in 1829 and was the last of Rossini's 39 operas, af ...

'', ''

The Mikado ''The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu'' is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations. It opened on 14 March 1885, in London, where it ran at the Sa ...

'', ''

Peer Gynt Suites ''Peer Gynt'', Op. 23, is the incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's 1867 play of the same name, written by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg in 1875. It premiered along with the play on 24 February 1876 in Christiania (now Oslo). Grieg ...

'', "

Parade of the Wooden Soldiers ''The Parade of the Tin Soldiers'' (''Die Parade der Zinnsoldaten''), also known as ''The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers'', is an instrumental musical character piece, in the form of a popular jaunty march, written by German composer Leon Jessel ...

," "Just Bubbling Over with Love" and "Lilting Lucia."Laird, Ross. ''Brunswick Records: A Discography of Recordings, 1916-1931: Volume 2: New York Sessions, 1927-1931. Greenwood Press, 2001.

References

{{reflist 1920s American radio programs 1930s American radio programs American music radio programs NBC Blue Network radio programs