Find that Philco

 

Are these all Philcos? No. I just like the alliteration. This dial lists KOA, KGIR and all the other buttons are knocked out. That's not a lot to work with. 850 KOA-AM signed on in 1924. They signed on as a 5,000 watt station and in 1927 increased to 12,500 watts, becoming an NBC affiliate in 1929. The station was so ubiquitous in that era it does not narrow the date range. 

Today the KGIR-AM calls reside in Cape Girardeau, MO. But back in the 1930s, KGIR was a 500 watt station in Butte, MT on 1360. With only 500 watts of power, I think that puts our radio somewhere between Butte and Cody, WY. They're about 500 miles from Denver, but surely able to receive a clear channel station in that era.  The station signed on in 1929 and changed its call letters to KXLF in 1946 which book ends our date range.

Here we have a more to work with, though the labels have slid around unhelpfully: KMPG?, KOH, KGMB, KGKB, KROV, and KICA. But what a weird selection. 590 KGMB I can hardly believe as it's was based in Honolulu. It also can't be KGME-AM in Phoenix, AZ. It signed on in 1940 on 1200, as KPHO only picking up the KGME call letters in 2000. I hope I'm misreading that one. KROV does not exist that I'm aware of. I think that could be KRGV in Oroville, CA but more likely 690 KROW in Oakland, CA which used those calls from 1936 until 1964 before it changed to KABL.  More here. 

980 KICA-AM was most recently a farm station in Clovis, NM. The calls are not cut off. But earlier it was a TV station with the same calls in the same city. It was on 1240 back in the 1940s, and 1370 in 1936. This is highly unlikely with it's distance from the other bay area stations, but I have no other plausible matches. 

630 KOH-AM was not in LA, it was in Reno, NV from 1928-1994 when it became KRCV-AM. The stick on 780 in Reno is KKOH, it borrows the brand name but is not otherwise related. The original KOH, now KPLY is known the oldest radio station in Nevada. 

The first calls are KMP-something. Station 710 KMPC-AM was in Los Angeles. More here. The calls have moved around and currently broadcast Radio Korea on 1540 in LA. The original station first signed on as KRLO in 1927 and changed calls to KMPC in 1930 and held the calls for 67 years. Gene Autry owned KMPC in the 1950s. It aged with it's audience and was Adult Standards and talk radio in the 1980s.  

Just one more. This one is fun with the vertical station levers instead of push buttons. I see KGFW, KFAB, KMMJ, WGN, and WOW.  KGFW, is another heritage station, founded in 1927in Ravenna, NE. The station moved to Kearney in 1931 where is remains today on 1340. KFAB is even older and first signed on as KFRR in 1924. It moved to 770 in 1928. 

KMMJ is almost as old, having been founded in 1925 in Clay Center, NE. Noe how near Kearney that is.  I think 720 WGN-AM out of Chicago is an outlier, received only because it's a clear channel station.  Likewise 590 WOW has been on air for 100 years but never more than 5,000 watts. I think this radio sat between Omaha and Grand Island. This set of stations is pretty consistent. 

The Novelty Boys

Jimmie Pierson and Richard "Dick" Klasi were the Novelty Boys, leaders of a yodeling old time country music troupe. I say troupe because their group grew to include a number of other members including Cora Deane, Cleora Cooper, Johnny Buffington and others. Dick and Jimmie were farms boys that first met in 1931 working at the Henry Field Company.

Henry Field was a seed company, they still exist today. Like many small businesses of the era, they sponsored tom on their local radio station. In this case that was 780 WJAG-AM in Norfolk, NE. WJAG was owned by the Norfolk Daily News, so you can imagine there was some reciprocity there. While the station's main studio was at the Hotel Norfolk, the Henry Field Company programs aired daily from a studio built at one of their branch stores. It is there that Jimmie and Dick debuted on air. They later played KSOO-AM for Henry Field as well. First they played as the Nebraskan Trio, then as The Oklahoma Wranglers , a name they used for about 3 years. 

They went on to play at KFNF-AM near Shenandoah, IA and on KOIL-AM in Omaha, NE.
It was there that they picked up the name "The Novelty Boys."  They were sponsored by the Aksarben Horse Show and were also able to play WAAW-AM and WOW-AM. In 1934 they played on KMOX-AM.  They also played for a time on WNAX-AM in Yankton, SD. In 1937 Jimmie Pierson's little brother, Melvin "Willie" Pierson, joined the group. He stayed on for a New England tour that included WABI-AM in Bangor.

In WWII Jimmie went into the service, and his brother Willie filled in for him. The group returned to St. Louis and appeared on several stations, then stayed on at KMA-AM in Shenandoah. When Jimmie returned they tried to reunite, but illness struck and the remaining members dispersed. Jimmie and Willie played as part of a trio with Willie's wife Lois on WIBW-TV, but the good times were over. Willie has a second career as a DJ on KRFM, a radioman at last.

Texas Mary on KFAB

Mary Marsich, aka Texas Mary died in 2008. She had performed as yodeling country western singer on KFAB-AM in Omaha, NE for 46 years. Despite that tenure there is precious little written about her career. She was not an Omaha native but spent most of her life there. She was born in Iowa, in 1917 and didn't return there until 1995.

There is so little written about her that I first heard of her from her obituary. Billboard referred to her less than half a dozen times over her career. I can guess from her birth date that she started at KFAB around 1938 and retired in the early 1980s. Her few press clippings seem to confirm that time line.

She  first appears in billboard in August of 1943. She was already sufficiently famous to get written up over her recovery from a "bone disease" and her return to KFAB from the Mayo clinic. It said that "Texas Mary made 17 trips to the hospital and underwent 13 operations at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. in her fight for health that finally returned. The flood of mail, flowers and candy from KFAB fans that followed her caused her doctors to ask if she came from Hollywood." At the time  She had a 15-minute daily broadcast at the time and had been with the station about 5 years.

By the mid 1940s she was a part o a larger group, Eddie Sosby and the Radio Rangers. They broadcast  three times and Mary was a draw. Another Billboard article noted in 1948 she was still with the band doing a new program "Hi, Neighbor!" a  45-minute long show.  At the time the line up included Texas Mary, Alene McKinney, the Melody Masters and the Uptowners. The article somewhat indicates that she's performing with the band as opposed to as a member of the band. It's unclear. In 1950 the Radio Rangers signed a deal with 4-Star records. That same year they appear on WOW-AM, another Omaha station. It's hard to tell if they were playing both stations or had crossed the street. But either way, it appears that Texas Mary didn't make the trip to 4-Star or WOW.