Alka Seltzer Time
How It Came Together
What eventually became Alka Seltzer Time started in 1949 under a different name. The show launched as Curt Massey Time — sometimes advertised as Curt Massey Time with Martha Tilton — a 15-minute daily music program built around two vocalists who happened to share the same home state. By 1952 the sponsor's name had moved into the title, and the program settled into its final identity. It ran on both CBS Radio and the Mutual Broadcasting System simultaneously, airing at 12 noon Eastern on Mutual and again at 5:45 pm Eastern on CBS, which meant regular listeners could catch it twice in the same day without much effort.
The show's premise was straightforward. Advertisements described it as "informal song sessions" — no elaborate premise, no dramatic narrative, just Massey and Tilton singing together against a live orchestra backdrop. That informality was the format. The antacid brand Alka-Seltzer, which had been a significant radio advertiser for years across multiple programs, kept its name on this one through the full run. The Mutual broadcasts ended April 30, 1954, and the CBS side followed on October 8, 1954.
The Two Voices at the Center
Curt Massey was born May 3, 1910, in Midland, Texas, into a large musical family — his sister Louise Massey was a known country and western singer in her own right. He studied violin, trumpet, cornet, and piano before attending the Horner Conservatory of Music in Kansas City, and by around age 20 he was working as a staff musician at KMBC radio there. He came to the show as a baritone with years of broadcast experience already behind him.
Martha Tilton was born November 14, 1915, in Corpus Christi, Texas — another Texan, which gave the partnership an easy biographical symmetry. She had risen to prominence as a vocalist with Benny Goodman's orchestra in the late 1930s, including a spot at Goodman's historic 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. After her Capitol Records tenure ended in 1949, she came to this show and stayed with it for roughly seven years. She was often billed in promotional materials as "the liltin' Martha Tilton," a phrase that stuck. Together, Massey and Tilton were a natural pairing — both experienced, both rooted in the same region, both comfortable in a format that asked for warmth rather than flash.
The Orchestra Behind Them
Massey and Tilton performed with Country Washburne and His Orchestra, with Charles LaVere on piano. Country Washburne — born Joseph H. Washburn in Beaumont, Texas, on December 28, 1904 — was a veteran tuba player and bandleader who had previously worked with Ted Weems and Spike Jones's City Slickers. He brought a seasoned professionalism to the backing, and the Texas connection ran deep even into the orchestra. For Washburne, Alka Seltzer Time turned out to be the last radio program he appeared on before his death in January 1974. The announcer for the program was Ford Pearson, occasionally rendered as "Fort Pearson" in some sources.
The song selection ranged widely. Episodes drew from contemporary hits and older standards, and the catalog included themed programs — a "Go West" show, music pulled from old phonograph records, and a salute to Hawaii. Episode titles in the surviving catalog reflect that variety: "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "Medley of Hawaiian Songs," "It's Istanbul, not Constantinople," "Tunes from Old Records," "I've Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle," and "Moonlight When Shadows Fall," among others. Episodes were generally identified by the first song performed in each broadcast, which is how the surviving recordings have been cataloged and collected.
What Survived and What It Tells Us
Nineteen episodes are known to survive, all from a window between October 9 and November 5, 1953. That's a narrow slice of a run that stretched across several years, but it's enough to give a clear picture of the format. A certified set of the series was issued in 2017, updated to Version 1.1 in August of that year, which established a reliable baseline for what exists.
The survival of these particular episodes from late 1953 captures the show at a point when it had been running for several years and had presumably settled into its rhythms. The "informal song sessions" format didn't require reinvention — it was built to be comfortable and repeatable, the kind of midday radio that suited a lunch-hour audience. Sharing the airwaves during that era with programs like the Andrew Sisters Show and the Bell Telephone Hour, Alka Seltzer Time occupied a well-defined niche in daily music programming.
After the Radio Run Ended
Massey and Tilton didn't simply go their separate ways when the CBS broadcasts ended in October 1954. They continued performing together, appearing on programs including Guest Star and Stars for Defense, and in 1957 they recorded a joint album titled We Sing the Old Songs. They also moved into television together, hosting the Curt Massey-Martha Tilton Show on KRCA-TV in Los Angeles beginning October 29, 1956.
Massey went on to a notable post-radio career. He co-wrote — with Paul Henning — the theme song for the CBS sitcom Petticoat Junction, which ran from 1963 to 1970, and his voice is on that recording. He received an Emmy Award in 1961 for his career in radio and television. Tilton continued performing until late in her life; she died December 8, 2006, having spent decades as one of the more recognizable vocalists to come out of the Goodman era. What the Alka Seltzer Time broadcasts represent in both their careers is a long, stable professional partnership that outlasted the radio run itself — seven years together on the air, and then more work after that.