“It was fifty years ago when KBOA radio first signed on the air. Everyone was anxious to turn our radios from KLCN (Blytheville) to KBOA to hear our own hometown’s new radio station… featuring Red Bohannan playing the piano and signing “Turn the Radio On.”

He played the introduction and then –loud and clear– he sang, “Turn the radio on and listen to the music in the air. Turn the radio on, heaven’s glory share…turn the light down low and listen to the Master’s Radio… turn the radio on… turn the radio on.”

There were several quartet singers in the community singing for civic clubs, “box supper” fund raising projects, pie suppers, etc. There was the Dunklin County Quartet, composed of two barbers in Kennett… Mr. Roy Day and Mr. J. A. Cooper; and the Byrum Brothers, Alton and Coy, who owned Byrum Grocery and Feed Store in Malden. I played the piano for them.

Mr. C. W. Wilcoxson and his two sons, Glen and Bill, of Wilcoxson Furniture, on the northeast corner of the Kennett Square, sponsored the quartet doing a fifteen minute program every Sunday morning (8:00-8:15) for about three years. (I believe they paid a dollar a minute to sponsor the program.)

There were other quartets… The Gospel Harmony Singers (Luin Hickerson, Roy Day, Carrol Eades and his sister Frances and her boyfriend Albert Gardner. I played piano for that group, too.

Then came The McDonald Brothers (Ralph, Harold, Alvin and Carl) with T. O. Miller as pianist. These are a few of the many people who had programs on KBOA.

Chester Scallorns
July 21, 1997