The Two Black Crows

It was if though George Moran and Charlie Mack (whose real names were George Searchy and Charles Emmett Sellers) were in fact perched on adjacent scarecrows in a field. Their radio skits consisted of lazily-floated volleys of speech, idle comments meant to while away an afternoon.

The Two Black Crows radio show  began as a minstrel act, the performers (John Swor was Mack’s partner before being replaced with Moran) donning the infamous blackface and traveling the country. The act would later be re-invented into short children’s films. But in between, it lived in probably its most famous incarnation, as a regular segment on CBS radio’s “The Majestic Hour.”

The characters were Southern rural-dwellers, down on their luck and poor. In mellifluous tones, they’d bemoan the small struggles of the Everyman and gently chide one another. Wordplay and absurdist humor were paramount. Catch phrases were “why bring that up?” and “Who wants a worm anyhow?”, the latter referring to the phrase “the early bird gets the worm,” appearing in a sketch of the same name.

The pair were on the air from 1928-1930. Charlie Mack died in a car crash in 1934.

See also: Pick and Pat Radio Show