Radio flashback: From the 1940s a reminder of local radio in the days before television. John Wrisley (r) was joined every afternoon at 5 pm on Central New England’s most powerful radio voice by Danny Patt, organist, and Margaret Cox. Open House was a variety show with guests, live music, and banter.

If he had to, John Wrisley couldn’t pick just one favorite out of the thousands of tapes in his collection of old radio shows and sound bites.

Wrisley, who says he’s on the far side of 70 but wouldn’t give an exact age, has been adding to his collection since he began his career in radio 60 years ago.

“I started hanging on to duplicate discs back in the 40s and started saving old radio shows when tape came around,” Wrisley said. “I began to compile complete shows after a while. Jack Benny , Amos and Andy , Fred Allen , and the great mystery shows like Inner Sanctum . I have hundreds and hundreds of hours of old radio shows.”

Wrisley has recordings of Guglielmo Marconi, who in 1901 went to Newfoundland and listened to the code letter S being transmitted across the ocean; a short clip of Florence Nightingale, the woman who invented nursing; and a recording of the bugle played for the charge of the Light Brigade at Waterloo recreated in the late 1800s.

But Wrisley still remembers the first recording he got his hands on.

“Major Bowes did an amateur show that was very popular where people would play musical songs or tap dance,” Wrisley said. “There was a group called the Hoboken Four, and they came on, and he had a little chat with them. The spokesperson for the Hoboken Four was a kid named Frank Sinatra. It was the first time Sinatra had ever been on any radio, around 1934. That was probably the first one I got a hold of, and I still have it.”

And out of his recordings, only a small number are of himself.

Wrisley became interested in radio in the 1940s when he was in high school. After auditioning at a local station to try and get a weekend job, the program director told him he had a pleasant voice but a horrible accent.

“People told me I had a nice voice and that I should be on the radio, and when he told me that I was crushed,” Wrisley said. “I really had to drop the accent though, because in those days you had to sound like, well, a radio announcer. Those were the days of the deep voices.”

After correcting his New England accent, Wrisley was in radio full time by the fall of 1946. He came south after being offered a job at WSAV in Savannah in 1952, and three years later he was offered a position in Columbia.

“In 1955 the manager of WIS Radio was fishing on a river and picked me up one day when I was doing something good,” Wrisley said. “He called me when he got back Monday and wanted me to come to Columbia and talk with him. I came up here and was hired, and the rest is history.”

While at WIS, Wrisley also tried his hand at television.

“TV called me in to do the weather because the regular weather man got off a day early to get married,” Wrisley said. “That was my introduction to television. I did a quiz show on television and a lot of odds and ends.”

Radio is Wrisley’s favorite.

“I like radio because of what people like Garrsion Keeler are still doing with it,” Wrisley said. “He can do the most astounding things with just a couple of actors, a little musical group, and clever scripts. He does radio the old fashioned way where they stand up in front of a microphone and have clever sound effects. People can create any kind of mood by just reading scripts. Except for Keeler and a few others, nobody does that any more. It’s a lost art.”

Keeler has a radio showed called the Prairie Home Companion on 93.1 FM.

“Radio offers the listener more possibilities with the use of their imagination than television does,” Wrisley said.

“You can take a microphone and a piece of cellophane, and you can’t do this with television, and you can crumple up the cellophane and say ‘Boy, that bacon smells delicious.’” Wrisley said. “You can do the same thing with the cellophane and put suspenseful music in the background and say, ‘Oh my God something is on fire!’ There are just a lot more possibilities.”

“Radio just isn’t the same today as it was in the past,” he said.

“What they are now are just juke boxes,” Wrisley said while pointing at a modern radio. “It began back in 1958 when people just began to rely on a guy with a bunch of records. No effort was put into it. It was the cheapest way to go, and that’s all it is today. When I go around the dial in Columbia I basically hear the same thing.”

Advancements in technology have also spoiled the old experience of listening to the radio.

“There is something about the sound of digital that isn’t as good as the sound on analog in my year,” Wrisley said. “There was something about the warmth of those old tube amplifiers, sitting in front of a big console radio in the living room. It’s just not the same as what comes out of these things.”

Wrisley gets recognized occasionally when he is out around Columbia.

“I was over at a Senate sub–committee meeting, and when I came out a middle–aged guard said ‘Crime to Court!’ And I looked at him, and I said ‘You remember?’ I used to have to look at you every week he said.”

Wrisley co–wrote and co–hosted “Crime to Court,” a teaching series that never went on the air but was used as a teaching tool at the Criminal Justice Academy.

He is also recognized for his work in radio.

“Once when I was walking up from Five Points, a lady down on Saluda stopped me and said ‘You were in radio. Your name is John Wrisley,’” Wrisley said. “She said she was a little girl and used to listen to me in the morning on WIS. And we stood there on the street talking about it for 15 minutes. She just wanted to be nostalgic. It just shows you how those things linger.”