Bob and Ray

.

Ray Goulding and Bob Elliott hosting The Name's the Same in 1955

Bob and Ray began on Boston radio in 1946 with a daily 15-minute show titled Matinee With Bob and Ray. They continued on the air for over four decades on NBC, CBS, Mutual, New York City local stations (WINS, WOR, WHN) and NPR, ending in 1987. In the 1970s they were the afternoon drive hosts on WOR. They were regulars on NBC's Monitor, often on stand-by to go on the air at short notice if the program's planned segments developed problems, and they were also heard in a surprising variety of formats and timeslots, from a 15-minute series in mid-afternoon to their hour-long show aired weeknights just before midnight in 1954-55. During that same period, they did an audience participation game show, Pick and Play with Bob and Ray, which was short-lived. It came at a time when network pages filled seats for radio-TV shows by giving tickets to anyone in the street, and on Pick and Play the two comics were occasionally booed by audience members unfamiliar with the Bob and Ray comedy style. Some of their radio episodes were released on recordings, and others were adapted into graphic story form for publication in Mad magazine. Their earlier shows were mostly ad-libbed, but later programs relied more heavily on scripts. While Bob and Ray wrote much of their material, their writers included Tom Koch, who scripted many of their best-known routines, and Raymond Knight, an early radio pioneer. Bob Elliott later married Knight's widow. Another writer was Jack Beauvais, who had performed as a singer for WEEI in Boston during the 1930s and also worked for some of the big bands in the 1940s and 1950s.

Listen