A Prairie Home Companion:July 6, 1974

It's our first show

Listen to the first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion

A Prairie Home Companion’s first broadcast, from the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center on the campus of Macalester College. Special guests: Bill Hinkley and Judy Larson, Vern Sutton, Philip Brunelle, Bob DeHaven, Ernie Garven, and the Brescian String Quartet. Listen to the July 6, 1974, show.

From the Library of Congress website:

“Well, it’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my hometown, out on the edge of the prairie.” On July 6, 1974, before a crowd of maybe a dozen people (certainly fewer than 20), a live radio variety program went on the air from the campus of Macalester College in St. Paul, MN. It was called “A Prairie Home Companion,” a name that at once evoked a sense of place and a time now past — recalling the “Little House on the Prairie” books, the once-popular magazine “The Ladies Home Companion,” or “The Prairie Farmer,” the oldest agricultural publication in America (founded 1841). The “Prairie Farmer” later bought WLS radio in Chicago from Sears, Roebuck & Co. and gave its name to the powerful clear-channel station, which blanketed the middle third of the country from 1928 until its sale in 1959. The creator and host of the program, Garrison Keillor, later confided that he had no nostalgic intent, but took the name from “The Prairie Home Cemetery” in Moorhead, MN. His explanation is both self-effacing and humorous, much like the program he went on to host, with some sabbaticals and detours, for the next 42 years. Read more history about the first show as the first broadcast is remembered in the Library of Congress.

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