Your Tropical Trip

I Love Lucy went on the air October 15, 1951.  Here’s what Desi Arnaz was doing just before that.  He was the host of Your Tropical Trip, a short-lived CBS radio show that ran on Sundays.  It went on the air on January 20, never found a sponsor and went off when Desi got busy playing Ricky Ricardo and producing the new TV series.  Most accounts say it was busy work that CBS gave him to keep him and his orchestra in Hollywood and working while I Love Lucy was prepped, though none seem to know when he stopped doing it.  Many songs which Arnaz later performed on the classic sitcom were first performed on the radio show and some companies later took radio transcriptions and released them as records.

Your Tropical Trip was a revamp of an earlier radio show called Earn Your Vacation.  Later, it was turned back into Earn Your Vacation and put on TV where it was hosted by a new-to-TV kid named Johnny Carson.