two years later they began working as a radio team, singing duets and engaging in comedy dialogues. The couple starred in Blackstone Plantation, which was broadcast on CBS (1929-1930) and on NBC (1930-1934). They performed as the "Singing Sweethearts of the Air." In 1930, they continued with a popular quiz show, The Battle of the Sexes, which ran 13 years, Crumit and Sanderson drove from Massachusetts to New York City, a four-hour trip, twice a week to do their radio show. Their final broadcast was aired the day before Crumit's death from a heart attack in New York City on September 7, 1943. Hit songs His biggest hits were made during the 1920s and early 1930s; they included popular phonograph records of "Frankie and Johnnie", "Abdul Abulbul Amir", "A Gay Caballero" (he even recorded a sequel, "The Return of a Gay Caballero"), "The Prune Song", "There's No-one With Endurance Like The Man Who Sells Insurance", "Down In De Canebrake", "I Wish That I'd Been Born in Borneo", "What Kind of a Noise Annoys an Oyster?", and "I Learned About Women From Her". Crumit is credited with composing at least 50 songs in his career, including the Ohio State University fight song, "Buckeye Battle Cry" in 1919 for a song contest. Prior to this he wrote at least two songs for Ohio University, “Round on the Ends” and “OH + IO.” He composed and published "Hills of Ohio" in 1941. His song "Donald the Dub" was used as the theme music to the BBC radio adaptation of P. G. Wodehouse's Oldest Member. His back-to-back recording (that is, one song on each side) of "The Gay Caballero" and "Abdul Abulbul Amir" (Decca W-4200) sold more than four million records. His 1929 song "A Tale of the Ticker", came out just a few months before the Wall Street crash in October. This song's lyrics shed light on the problems involved in stock market, correctly foreshadowing the devastating event that would happen just weeks following. The song was featured in the BBC documentary, The Great Crash 1929. Like so many of the performers during the era, Crumit was a fan of the instruments created by the C.F. Martin & Company and used their tiple, to the point it had to be returned for a new top. References Further reading David Lennick, Frank Crumit Returns, Naxos website External links Frank Crumit biography by Tim Gracyk