Originally published in the Old Radio Times, 2017

            In 1929 Edson Bradford Browne found himself one of the busiest men in New York City radio. For a man who just a few short years earlier was earning a paycheck as a department store floor walker in Newark, Browne saw nearly unlimited in the rapidly developing world of commercial broadcasting as a new decade was about to begin.

Born December 31, 1890, when the very earliest radio experiments were just getting under way in laboratories around the world, no one in North Adams, MA, could have anticipated his future career at the time of his birth. His parents were Isaac Snell Browne and Elizabeth Tobin, neither of whom held a position that would naturally lead a boy into radio. But then, most of the medium’s earliest professionals happened into the field by chance, and such is Bradford Browne’s story.

As a child Browne entertained family and friends banging on the piano and plucking the banjo. He never took lessons nor ever seemed to seriously consider a performing career. Perhaps seeing his father’s work as a minstrel end man lead to little, Browne chose a different path. Instead, he decided he might want to pursue law. Browne enrolled in Georgetown University where he eventually graduated with honors from the law program. Within a few years the United States entered World War I and he enlisted and was subsequently assigned to the 101^st Regiment as a personnel corporal. In the middle of war Browne returned to his childhood roots, entertaining and writing songs he performed for his brothers in arms.

With little direction Browne wandered from job to job after leaving the Army. He worked as a stenographer in Washington, D.C. and as a lawyer before going to work as a floorwalker for a department store in Newark, NJ. On his own time he began singing with a man named Al Llewelyn, a former steel plant manager who had lost his job and was then staying at the same boarding house as Browne.  Unbeknownst to both, a doorway to radio was opened to them. Station managers at the time were ever on the lookout for talent to fill airtime; talent was secondary to reliability.