smays.com

KBOA 830

In an earlier post I wondered about some recent move affecting the radio station I worked at many years ago. Our friend Jeff pointed us to a post on a radio message board:   

"Eagle Bluff Enterprises has received FCC permission to move KOTC from Kennett, Missouri to Memphis, Tennessee.  KOTC (830 AM) signed on in July 1947 as KBOA.  KOTC went silent on 6-1-08.  The justification for the STA was "The station has been temporarily turned off pending format changes and equipment repairs".  After the move, KOTC will diplex its 10 KW signal from a tower shared with WHBQ, 560 AM, in Memphis."

When I worked at KBOA the frequency (a daytime clear channel) was 830. When consolidation hit there was a series of call letter/frequency shuffles I was never interested enough to try to sort out.

I think they moved the KBOA calls to a frequency (105.5) licensed to Piggott, Arkansas, but operating in Kennett, MO. The 830 freq was assigned some newer, local (Kennett) calls (KOTC).

The KBOA I knew and loved died long ago. And it was nice to read some kind words about KBOA830.com. Thanks to all.

KBOA 830 no more?

I keep getting sketchy reports that the radio station where I worked 25 years ago, is no longer on the air. Not sure what that means since call letters and frequencies were scrambled and shuffled years ago.

The station that I worked at for a dozen years (and my father for many more than that) ceased to exist for me long ago. It was gutted during The Great Consolidation frenzy following deregulation.

Whatever this latest "news" is, it apparently wasn't big enough to make the local paper. So, if anyone has details, drop me a line.

The Senath Lions Quartet

One of the best parts of having a blog is connecting with people. You could argue it's the only part. One of the first sites I created was a tribute to KBOA, the radio station where my father worked for many years and where I spent a dozen years. The site is packed with great photos, most of which were taken by the late Johnny "Mack" Reeder.

I captioned one of those photos [larger photo] "Unknown Hillbilly Band" because I had no idea who they were. Now I do, thanks to an email from one of the men in the photo, Charley Crawford:

"The name of the group is "The Senath Lions Quartet" and this was in1951. We started the quarter in Senath High School. The members are left to right front, Charley Crawford, Jimmy Milligan, behind Jim, right to left are Charles "Tod" Horner, James Allan and David Adams at the piano.  We were on the radio every Saturday morning at 10:30 a.m., sponsored by the Senath Merchants."

Charlie was also a member of The Foggy Mountain Boys Hillbilly Band in 1948.

CORRECTION: I assumed --incorrectly-- Charlie was referring to The Foggy Mountain Boys featuring Flatt and Scruggs. Charlie and friends were in a local band of the same name.

The Foggy Mountain Boys was an influential bluegrass band that performed and recorded during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

Worst jobs for 21st century

From a Forbes story on job prospects over the next few decades:

"Another endangered species: journalists. Despite the proliferation of media outlets, newspapers, where the bulk of U.S. reporters work, will cut costs and jobs as the Internet replaces print. While current events will always need to be covered (we hope), the number of reporting positions is expected to grow by just 5% in the coming decade, the Labor Department says. Most jobs will be in small (read: low-paying) markets.

Radio announcers will have a tough time, too. Station consolidation, advances in technology and a barren landscape for new radio stations will contribute to a 5% reduction in employment for announcers by the middle of the next decade. Even satellite radio doesn't seem immune from the changes. The two major companies, XM and Sirius--which now have plans to merge--have regularly operated in the red."

The U. S. Department of Labor stats identified a few growth areas: Health care, education and financial services.

Gobler Mercantile Company

My make-over of "KBOA: The Early Years" is far from complete. But I had to share a snippet from one of the pages. A Tribute to a Country Store was written (and self-published) by Virginia B. Branch. It's probably the only history of this small country store that got big. Not Wal-Mart big but something of a phenomenon where I grew up. Here's the paragraph that caught my eye:

"About 1952 television had come to Gobler and each night, out back on the porch of the furniture department, one of these new inventions was displayed for benefit of the general public. It was here that most of Gobler's citizens saw their first TV. A good-sized crowd was on hand every night. There was only one channel at the time so no disagreements could arise as to program choices."

And now it's Tivo, iPods, AppleTV and all the rest. From one channel... to thousands.

More images from early years of KBOA

I scanned another 70 prints this weekend and added them to the KBOA flickr set. Most of the scanning work is done but I got a bunch of pages that need to to be copied and pasted to the new site. The Canon scanner and iPhoto are making the work image work so much easier.

And I never tire of looking at these images from a by-gone era of radio. I'd love to ID the announcer in the photo below but every year that goes by makes it less likely. And the guy in Studio B, performing live... priceless.

I have more than 700 images on flickr now and think I'm on track to hit 1,000 by the end of the year. I'm trying not to upload crap, just to hit the number.

There is something strangely satisfying about getting images out of the closet and out on the net. I remember worrying that someone might "steal" my photos. Now I see that the only way to "save" these images is to put them out here.

Cueing records

I love this photograph of my father. It was taken in the control room (Studio A) of KBOA in Kennett, Missouri, probably around 1950.

Anyone that has ever "cued" a record recognizes that sense of touch and the delicate balance of the heavy tone-arm on the oh-so-easy-to-scratch record.

A skill (if you could call it that) that hasn't been needed for many years. I'm glad I didn't miss those final years of high-touch, hands-on radio.

We had one of the early automation systems (for our FM station) but it felt like telling someone how to make love to your girl friend.

And the thrill of having the program director walk into the studio while you were on the air and put the hot new single into "current" box. Is it as much fun to see the new single come into the rotation on a computer monitor?

Before I get carried away, allow me to say --for the record-- I don't miss using a grease pencil and splicing blog to edit tape. If I had to choose, I'd be th digital boy I have become.

Portable reel-to-reel tape recorder

I love this photo [larger]. Johnny "Mack" Reeder conducting one of his popular "Man on the Farm" interviews on his "portable" reel-to-reel tape recorder. This was probably state of the art at the time and being able to get out of the studio to record news and interviews "in the wild" had to seem pretty cool at the time.

I've started rescanning some of my old KBOA prints and this image caught my eye because it contrasts so dramatically with great new gear in the renovated Missourinet newsroom.

I think I might have posted this image previously, but this is a better scan, so...

Radio Announcers

That's what they called them when my father and Mr. Rudy (Pylant) were on the air at KBOA in Kennett, Missouri. Pop and Mr. Rudy have since made the transition to Pure Amplitude Modulation but the audio waves of their wonderful voices are still streaking through space.

I had never seen this photo (larger version) of John and Rudy standing in front of the KBOA studio but, based on the automobiles behind them, it could have been as early as '49 or '50. The station went on the air in July of 1947 and my father started in 1949. Any of you car freaks able to ID the year of the car at the right edge of this photo?

Ole Camp Meetin' Time

Nostalgia Alert: We're going back to 1947 in this post.

When KBOA went on the air (July 19, 1947), one of their first --and most popular-- programs was "Ole Camp Meetin' Time." It was the creation of Ray Van (Hooser), the station's first program director. The program featured hymns and gospel music but was far more than a "record show." And it was immediately and immensly popular.

Sometime in the early '50's, Rudy Pylant ("Mr. Rudy") took over Ole Camp Meetin' Time and gave it his own special flavor (think Will Rogers-meets-Jerry Clower). The program continued to be hugely popular.

I was reminded of Ole Camp Meetin' Time this week when my (life-long Kennett) friend Joann sent me one of the original Ole Camp Meetin' Time Song Books. Published in late 1947, the radio staiton gave away thousands of these. Seems hopelessly quaint now but in 1947, these were like iPods.

If you grew up anywhere within a hundred miles or so of Kennett, Missouri, in the late 40's or '50s... you probably have memories of sitting at the breakfast table listening to Ole Camp Meetin' Time. As I write this, I realize I don't have the skill (or perhaps it is not possible) to convey how important this radio program was to the people that listened to it every monring. But, fortunately, I have some oral history that might come close.

• Ray Van talks about putting KBOA on the air and the creation of Ole Camp Meetin' Time
• Joe Bankhead remembers the programs biggest and best known sponsor, Gobler Mercantile
• Mr. Rudy on his tenure as the host of Ole Camp Meetin' Time

You can read the introduction to the song book by station manager Paul C. Jones, after the jump.

So here we are sixty years later (gulp!) and it ain't your father's radio anymore. I have no illusions about returning to those days. But as I listen to the men that built KBOA talk about their love of radio (I'm not sure they would have said "the business" of radio)... I wonder if that same passion still exists today. I'm not in many stations these days so the flame might be burning brightly and I would not know. I've turned the comments on for this post for those than might.

KBOA, Studio A

I'm fortunate to have many photos from the early days of KBOA (Kennett, MO). This one of John Mays, cueing a record in the control room, was taken by Johnny Mack Reeder or Bob Miles. Probably in the early 50's.

You can see into Studio B which served a number of purposes over the years. Live newscasts and commercials orginated from Studio B. Later it house a large "disc cutter" used for recording spots.

I'll never forget the pleasantly musty smell of these ancient rooms with their massive doors

John Reeder: 1924-2006

John Reeder (known on-air as Johnny Mack Reeder) passed away in Mt. Ida, Arkansas on October 10, 2006, at the age of 82. John was living in a nursing home at the time of his death. He'll be buried in Blytheville, Arkansas. John helped put KBOA on the air in 1947. He and my father worked together until John left Kennett (in the fifties sixties?). John Reeder was a great broadcaster. He established KBOA's reputation for local news coverage. You can hear John's great pipes in the brief interview segment on KBOA830.com. John was a talented and avid photographer and took literally hundreds of photos of the early days of KBOA. Almost every image on the KBOA830.com site was taken by John. I pulled a few shots of John for this Flickr set.

Holly Farris and the Senath Light

I recently received an email from Ben Brogdon, a long-time radio guy (KLCN, Blytheville, AR) who stumbled across one of my websites:

"I Googled my old hometown radio station, KLCN, Blytheville, AR, and found a link to your Early Days At KBOA site. I sat and read every word of it, looked at every picture, and finally went to bed at 6am."

Ben is a musician at Dollywood and played in a jazz band in college with Wendell Crow (Sheryl's daddy). We bounced emails back and forth for a few days before he brought up "the Senath Light." This is (was) a well-known paranormal phenomenon (that I never witnessed).

"Actually, I never saw the light. Oh, we’d drive up from Jonesboro when I was living there playing in bands, working at radio stations, and attending class on occasion, and we’d sit patiently, not making a sound, those who smoked wanting a cigarette REALLY bad, and wait, but it never came out while I was there.

Others told me they had seen it, though. One of my jazzmates at school, Holly Farris, a trumpet player who has the distinction of being the only white musician James Brown has ever had, and who QUIT a gig with Steve Winwood to go back with JB after he got out of prison, DID stand under that tree in the middle of the road and supposedly got KNOCKED CLEAN OUT COLD by the light hitting him in the head, which most assuredly changed his life and his thinking process from that moment on.

I also worked with a piano player from Caruthersville who could talk to spirits, and was told that he had actually TALKED to the light, which surprised me, since we all knew if you made a sound, it would disappear. BUT, having him sit in my house and tell me it was inhabited by spirits, which I had suspected, and then say once when we were watching a storm that it would kill 35 people, and it DID kill 34, I somehow believe he may have talked to the light."

Why do I blog? So I can "meet" people that played with Holly Farris, the only white musician to play with James Brown.

Bill Page dead at 39

Bill Page was discovered dead Tuesday in the bedroom of his home in Kennett, Missouri. Bill was 39 years old. According to a brief story on the Daily Dunklin Democrat website, Bill died of natural causes.

I never met Bill but he emailed frequently and I referred to him in a number of posts. Our connection was KBOA. He was passionate about local radio. I am sorry to hear of his passing. He started a blog in early May but hadn't posted recently. I can't help but wonder how long it will remain up. When you think about it, every post might be your last.

Small town radio: 1976

"Captain Banana, who spends most of his days disguised as a mild-mannered local radio personality, will emerge Saturday to serve as master of ceremonies for the American Cancer Society dance-a-thon to raise money for cancer research. The contest will begin at 7:00 p.m.; tickets are $1 at the door." -- Daily Dunklin Democrat, May 12, 1976.

When my brother moved to Indonesia, he stored a bunch of boxes at our father's house. After dad died and we sold the house, I lugged the boxes back to Jeff City. My brother and I went through them this week and discovered the treasure above. My hair is gray now and may someday be gone, but I will always have this.