This photo was previously identified as Mr. Rudy’s wife, Bernice. Daughter Pam informs this is Nellie Allgood, Bernice’s sister.

I’ve been reviewing your website on the history of KBOA. It’s a fantastic resource. I found your Flickr page last year from a photograph that included my great-grandfather, Henry Shropshire. He played on the drums with Chuck Harding & the Colorado Cowhands for awhile in the early 1950s. Do you have any recordings of the band during their time at KBOA?

I also wanted to share a photograph from the 1950s that I think you’ll find interesting. This is a photograph of my great-grandmother (Jan Rosson) and grandmother (Cathy Lynn Shropshire) with an advertisement for Chuck Harding / KBOA / Hart’s Bread on the side of a car.

— Brandon Rowe

The recordings featured in the YouTube playlist above are not all from the early days of KBOA. Some are from later periods, including my time at the station in the 70s. And several of the recordings in this playlist can be found elsewhere here. Click the “Playlist” link in the top left corner of the YouTube player to see other recordings.

KBOA’s 35th Anniversary (1982) – AUDIO

Today is the last day that KOTC 830Khz (the original KBOA site), will be on the air in Kennett. I have been instructed to disconnect the 10 KW transmitter and have it ready to be shipped to Memphis Tomorrow. The station has had a construction permit to move to Memphis for almost 3 years now. It was sold just before the permit expired. Now, Both the original KTMO 98.9 and KBOA 830 Khz frequencies have been moved from Kennett. After sign off tonight, 830 will be a Memphis assignment.

“I first began broadcasting on KBOA in l949 when Ray Van started a small singing group called the Old Camp Meeting Singers. He had a recorded early morning program called Old Camp Meeting Time for several years and we were just an adjunct to that program. My brother appeared with me occasionally on that program. Some time later, Walter Bailes (of the famous Bailes Brothers Grand Old Opry) and his wife had a religious program there and asked me to play the mandolin and sing on their program. My brother also appeared with me a few times when Johnny Mack (program director) asked us if we wanted a program of our own.

We started in late l950 and continued until mid l95l. Our sponsor was Mother’s Best Flour. The Chuck Harding program preceded us and the McDonald Brothers Quartet came on immediately following us. We played with the Wilburn Family several times on personal appearances and with Ira & Charley Louvin from the Grand Old Opry. We also made appearances with most of quartets popular during that period including the Blackwood Quartet from Memphis.  We were billed as the Wyatt Brothers and we sang gospel music.”

Austin Wyatt
28 Sonora Way
Hot Springs Village, AR 7l909
March 11, 2001

“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

“I listened to KBOA on the farm in Arkansas. My grandfather bought me a transistor radio when they were first available as pocket size. They were very expensive and would use up a battery in no time. KBOA was the main choice in the cotton fields when we would chop cotton. Everyone chopped with me so they could listen. My dad demanded that I chop cotton very fast, so everyone would work hard to keep up!”

Larry Jones
Kennett, MO

"I’m especially glad to see something published about KBOA. It truly was a big influence on Kennett people in my days there. Listening to short-wave and other types of radio has been a hobby of mine ever since those days. I was actually on the air there twice, when I won Dunklin County spelling bees in 1954 and 1955. Paul Jones was a friend of my grandfather. I knew a few of the people whose pictures now greet me at the site.

I remember as a child when a contest was held to decide what the letters KBOA "stood" for. I remember my grandmother’s telling me that the winning slogan was "Kennett’s Best, Others Attest." It took me years to understand what "attest" meant and thus what the slogan meant. I thought she was saying "others at test," as if they were still trying to prove themselves while Kennett had succeeded.

My grandparents listened to Home Town News religiously, particularly on trips to their Current River cabin in Arkansas where they weren’t in immediate touch with Kennett happenings. My surviving relatives in and near Kennett still listen to Home Town News. My grandparents and father were avid Cardinals fans, and I remember always hearing the games on KBOA. I remember Platter Party as a youngster growing up on the farm; I think it was a request show, and it was fun to hear familiar names read out. I think a syndicated show called Ports of Call was also aired in those days; I can’t remember much about it except that it was fascinatingly exotic. I never knew Johnny Mack and your father, but I certainly remember their voices.

And I remember all the country and gospel music, which got on my nerves but appealed to early everyone else, including my grandmother. She especially liked some basso profundo gospel singer who could be heard on Sunday mornings during his singing group’s program. I enjoyed reading Chester Scallorns’ recollection of singers on KBOA; two of them, Roy Day and J. A. Cooper, were my barbers when I was a boy. For that matter, I remember being in school with Chester’s son Joe.

Your inclusion of the Gobler Mercantile Company material is gratifying, too. The farm on which I grew up was about midway between Kennett and Gobler, and my first four elementary grades were spent at Little River School, on the county line road NN at Tinkerville just a mile or two north of Gobler. We shopped mostly in Kennett, but occasionally my father or grandfather would make a trip to Gobler, and they took me a few times. I recall the big crowds that Virginia Branch’s affectionate history of the store mentions. The crowds had a reputation of being a little rough at times, as Ms. Branch also mentions. And I recall hearing of the fire, and going to look at the ruins afterward. It was a unique place and time. Thanks for going to so much trouble to preserve a significant piece of history for us."

Bill Kelley
Chicago, IL
October, 1997