DR. KNOW

Q + A

I’m from Cincinnati but currently study physics at the University of Wisconsin. Does anyone back home know that the first live radio symphony was by the Cincinnati Symphony here in Madison in 1921? It was my physics department’s experiment! I think Cincinnati has

forgotten it. —CINCINNATI, POP!

DEAR POP: The 100th anniversary of this historic broadcast is upon us, so the Doctor hopes you’re wrong about Cincinnati not remembering. Your university boasts one of the country’s first “experimental” radio stations, launched by the physics department in 1916. (For comparison, WLW

Dr. Know is Jay Gilbert, weekday afternoon deejay on 92.5 FM The Fox. Submit your questions about the city’s peculiarities at drknow@cincinnati magazine.com

started in 1922.) Lacking vacuum tubes, they recruited glass-blowers to help create them. That’s the kind of get-it-done spunk that today’s students majoring in lethargy could learn from. On November 1, 1921, a microphone cable was run from the University Gymnasium to the control room of station 9XM, and the visiting Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra was heard by the widest audience in human history. The night sky had virtually no competing signals, so the music reached as far as North Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota. Take that, Ryan Seacrest! You are correct about this historic moment deserving more attention, especially this year. The only modern local reference the Doctor found was buried almost undetectably deep within the CSO website. Don’t worry, though, he’s summoned all his powers of influence and clout to make things happen in this town. After all, someone has to replace Dick Farmer and Carl Lindner. Watch your calendar.

Forty-five years ago this month, I saw the Beach Boys perform at then-Riverfront Coliseum. When they sang their new song, “Susie Cincinnati,” they brought a woman onstage and said she had inspired it. She had picked them up in her cab at CVG years earlier. Who was she, and is

she still a cabbie? —I’M PICKIN’ UP DESTINATIONS

DEAR DESTINATIONS: She didn’t recognize the guys who crammed into her cab late that night in 1971, and they didn’t remember her name. But the Boys later turned the playful ride into a song called “Susie Cincinnati,” about a woman with “a groovy little motor car.” Jump ahead five years, and before their next Cincinnati show the Beach Boys thought: Wouldn’t it be nice if we could honor our new song’s muse at the concert?

They placed large ads in The Cincinnati Post and Enquirer asking for help locating her, since the taxi company was long gone. God only knows how they found her, but that night Joellyn Lambert came on stage