'He recently had played for a show featuring an Eastside dance group, `Tap Happy.' Music was his life.' He also composed songs - 'mostly like the old crooners used to sing,' said his daughter.

He was working on a book about Bing Crosby. He got to travel, and to meet stars such as Rudy Vallee and Cliff Edwards, the voice of Disney's 'Jiminy Cricket.' Kiner collected some 4,000 reels of tape with 40,000 radio shows. His robbery reward helped buy equipment and records, a few of which had been made from live broadcasts in wartime. He signed 100 aging stars in two years and had records pressed in California and Canada, selling to stores, distributors and mail-order clients. Losing a job helped propel him into producing records of rare broadcasts by Al Jolson and Bing Crosby. He ran some ads in a magazine and began selling tapes of radio shows. Kiner finished school, then worked in electronic-parts engineering, production and sales. Kiner in later years would take his children to Seattle Pilots and Mariners games - and to spring training in Arizona.Īfter his family moved to Santa Monica, Calif., in 1950, Mr. Katherine Kiner of Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane, said, 'Dad also pitched one season with a semipro club in Bremerton around 1949.' He switched high schools, according to his son David of Kirkland, 'because he was trying to find a school with a good baseball team.

Kiner attended Broadview Elementary School, Seattle Prep and Lincoln High School. In 1934 the family moved to Seattle, where Mr. The tall, quiet boy began collecting records when he was 12. Kiner liked to play piano and loved music of the 1920s and 1930s. Kiner, old-time hero and old-music buff, died Friday (July 22) of cancer. 'He was really proud of that letter,' said his son. Edgar Hoover, then director of the FBI, was another reward, said Mr. specializing in records of old-time radio shows and music - which he'd begun with the several-hundred-dollar reward he had received for helping nab the bank robber.Ī letter of thanks from J. Kiner followed the man's car, sticking with it until he could flag down police and finger the suspect. Larry Kiner knew something was wrong, seeing that stranger dash from a Georgetown bank.

Beanworld, Vol. 1 by Larry Marder