This was a nice addition to my information on the Miccolis sisters. Back in December of 2009 I digitized one side of a transcription disc. It was a recording of two girls playing amazingly fast country guitar and yodeling in perfect harmony. You can hear it here. Later on I was lucky enough to speak with Ruth Miccolis, now known by her married name, Ruth Williams. She's still performing locally in Kansas. More here. I have been trying for some time to collect her scant few sides on DeLuxe records. I have only found a few so far. They are somewhat rare apparently.
Above is a promo card of some kind for 630 KXOK-AM in St. Louis. The branding is "Blue Network." This is the only clue to the age of the bi-fold ad. But we already know that the Miccolis sisters were only on KXOK from 1947 to 1949. The intersection with the NBC Blue Network doesn't narrow that down at all.The other artists listed on the back flap Ambrose Haley, Dickie Phillips, and Joey Ross don't help either. Haley was there prior to the sisters, and left with them in 1949 for WIBW-AM. Phillips, Roberts and Ross are too obscure to be of any use. Ross had moved to KFAB in Lincoln, NE by 1947 lining up with the other dates. Curley Roberts had his own a minor career but no new information there either. For research purposes I scanned their bios in high res below.
I almost never shell out more than junk-shop prices for transcription recordings. But this one spoke to me. In transferring it I applied a slightly heavier filter than usual. This did produce faint artifacts, but the vocals are so amazing that I really wanted them to be clear enough to discern how fast they are actually singing.The Miccolis Sisters were two sisters from a set of 11 children. Mary and Ruth Miccolis were born in 1922 and 1924 respectively. They became country yodelers of some renown at least regionally in the midwest. They were not bumpkins, they were city girls born right in Melrose Park, a Chicago suburb.
In 1938 they won a local talent show called the Rubins Hour which led to an audition for KMOX. That played out welldespite the fact that the older of the two was only 16. At KMOX, they began singing harmonies for Pappy Cheshire's group on he Barnyard Follies show and The Old Fashioned Barn Dance show. They also played on the Ozark varieties Program which was syndicated on CBS. The program was sponsored by Dick Slack's Furniture Co. In 1946 They got their own program sponsored by Grove Quinine tablets.
In 1947, Ambrose Haley invited the sisters to perform on his program at the St. Louis Star-Times owned KXOK. This programming was syndicated on the NBC Blue Network. Working with Haley paid off, when Haley got an offer of a job at WIBW in Topeka, All three of them moved to Topeka and joined the Ozark Ramblers playing the Kansas Roundup Program.When he left in 1949 for WREN they stayed on.
They recorded 8 sides for DeLuxe, and two for King. I've only ever seen one of them and none of them are still in print anywhere, anyhow. They also had a songbook with twenty some songs worth of sheet music. This transcription is from a live broadcast, and the Song is the CowBoy Yodel, a song not in the DeLuxe catalog meaning that until now, it's never really been heard by anyone. That's a damn shame.
**************** UPDATE****************
I managed to Contact Ruth Miccolis now married as Ruth Williams. She is still with us and still performing. I hope to collect her few sides and provide her with digitized versions of her catalog. Please contact me if you can be of assistance.
All content herein should be considered to have a Creative-commons-like license with the sole exclusion of Wikipedia. I welcome use of my research by all writers, readers and researchers except those that would publish such information on Wikipedia. Thank you.
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