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What would we do without the blender? No more smoothies or imagination drinks and no easy way to construct pureed foods for both potpourri in the kitchen and special diets in the hospital. There would even be limits on scientific exploration as the blender is an primary tool in the laboratory, applied by such scientists as Jonas Salk in his search for the answer to polio.
Fortunately Stephen Poplawski got the bright idea in 1922 to add a spinning blade to the bottom of a glass jar. He did it so he could make imagination drinks for soda fountain patrons. Of course, whenever somebody has a good idea, someone else thinks of a better one and so it was with the blender. Fred Osius, one of the founders of the Hamilton Beach Manufacturing Company, took on Poplawski’s idea and made it better.
Back in 1910, Osius, along with L.H. Hamilton and Chester Beach, formed a company to make kitchen appliances, which they did with great success then, and still do very well. Then in 1933 Poplawski’s soda fountain tool caught Osius’ attention. He made substantial improvements in Poplawski’s design and patented his version. But it is a long way from patent to successful syndication and Osius necessitated cash to follow that road.
At that time Fred Waring’s big band, The Pennsylvanians, was very ordinary and financially successful. Waring didn’t start out out to be a musician, however. He in the first place was a student in architecture and engineering science at Penn State. He always held his interest in new inventions and so seemed to Osius to be a good prospect. In fact, Waring was likewise searching for an posing no difficulty way to make the special diet of liquefied vegetables that his doctor had prescribed to treat Waring’s nagging ulcers. Thus, in 1935 when Osius talked his way into Waring’s dressing room after a live broadcast at the Vanderbilt Theater in New York, Waring was all ears.
Waring put $25,000 into the development effort of Osius’ blender. Six months later the difficultnesses with the blender still weren’t solved. Waring, as the important investor, fired Osius and hired somebody else to redesign it. It took a bit more time, but at last the Miracle Mixer was finish in 1937. It sold for $29.75 and was an prompt hit when it was introduced at the National Restaurant Show in Chicago.
The next problem was getting people to listen in regards to this terrifi new tool. Fred Waring took on the merchandising himself. He begun in 1938 by altering the name of the company devising the blender to the Waring Company and the tool to the Waring Blender. Then he disseminate the word. As a musician Waring was on the road a lot, spending much time in hotels and restaurants. He pitched his Waring Blender to the chefs and bartenders wherever he went. Next he took on the big section stores such as Bloomingdales and B. Altman. And by 1954, 1 million Waring Blenders had been sold. They are still selling today in modern versions and even a vintage replica of the firstborn machine.
Waring once bragged in regards to his Waring Blender to a St. Louis reporter. He said “This mixer is going to revolutionize American drinks” and he was right.
Fred Waring Pennsylvanians Music American
Famous American, chorus leader, showman, glee club pioneer, golf tournament host, and entrepreneur. Fred Waring was all of these and more, an enigma who kept together a major musical establishment for sixty-seven years, a man at ease on stage but loathe to sit through meetings, a man so earnest in his patriotism that by the 1980s he was considered almost an endangered species.
Virginia Waring, his wife of thirty years, chronicles both his some attainments and his shortcomings with candor and affection in Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. Her graciously written biography traces Waring’s childhood in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, his rise to fame as a bandleader, development and advertising of the Waring Blendor®, leadership of Shawnee Press, concert tours, radio and television programs, and his bequest of the most eminent possible standards in music as in life.
This intimate portrait of an American legend is accompanied by a compact disc with twenty-eight selections recorded by the Pennsylvanians over a forty-year period. They range from Adam Geibel and Tom Waring’s “Sleep,” recorded in 1928, through Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale,” Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach’s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” the traditionalisti “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child” and “Dry Bones,” to Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s “September Song” and Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s “Some Enchanted Evening.”
Review”This book made me miss Fred all over again. His music, his fun, his personality, his adventures … It’s a arousing and attention holding story of show business from the early days to the present. I love it!” Mort Walker, creator of Beetle Bailey
About the Author
A native Californian, Virginia Waring is a concert pianist who studied in Paris with Robert Casadesus and toured for ten years as the Morley half of the famed duo-pianists Morley and Gearhart. She was married to Fred Waring from 1954 until his death in 1984.
Fred Waring Pennsylvanians Music American Picture
Fred Waring Pennsylvanians Music American Pic
Fred Waring Pennsylvanians Music American Image
Fred Waring Pennsylvanians Music American Image
Most helpful client reviews
4 of 4 humans found the following review helpful.
 Interesting, but one sided view of the man
By Scott Loftesness (lofty@ehb.belps.org)
This book is a facinating read with regards to the widely known and esteemed choral conductor and his Pennsylvanians, for the duration of the early days of radio, television and film. Many amusive and interesting anectdotes punctuate the book throughout. Written by his wife, so it is a rather one-sided (positive) view of the man who a good deal of saw as a cold task master….but in whom no one could argue with the fine product he produced. This man veritably “taught America how to sing”.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
 Fred Waring’s Gatehouse
By The Gatehouse
Over the last 8 years, we have purchased numerous books when it comes to Fred Waring. Our favored is Virginia’s book, which offers a lot of wondrous photographs and selective information with regards to the village of Shawnee on Delaware, Pa. We own their home in Shawnee on Delaware and run it as a Bed and Breakfast. Each of the guest rooms at The Gatehouse Country Inn BnB hosts one of Virginia’s books so our guests may read in regards to the man, his life and his music. Fred Waring was a “star” and he turned this tiny village located on The Delaware River into a mecca for movie stars, political figures, golf professionals, musicians and singers. This is your probability to read when it comes to it.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating inside look
By Richard Huggins
This account can’t aid but be a little one-sided, but on the other hand who more than Virginia Waring could give us the glances of Fred Waring “unplugged”? I studied underneath a former Pennsylvanian, and was mesmerized to see his stories come alive, exceptionally in reference to the Chesterfield Hour. If you buy a used version, be sure and ask if the CD comes with it–you’ll get enjoyment from hearing for yourself this group’s distinguishable sound and how they did their radio broadcasts. Also included, arousing and attention holding accounts of the “non-musical” Fred Waring–the Waring Blender, his involvement in the Boy Scouts, his interest in new inventions, his own tinkering with merchandise and ideas.
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