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101 Broadcast Chronology Early country music groups and southern radio stations mutually profited from their interdependence. The stations, their sponsors, and listeners enjoyed inexpensive live entertainment, while musicians profited from the high profile they received in return, allowing them to attract sponsors, sell records and souvenir songbooks, and draw audiences to personal appearances. The downside of this arrangement was that they could perform only for limited periods of time, usually a few months, until the area was “played out” and they had to move to another station and new market where their appeal was fresh once more. ThisisalistofthestationsthatWaderemembers,whereMainers’Mountaineers worked until 1937, and where Wade’s own groups appeared afterwards. WSOC Gastonia (The Wayside Station) 1933–34 WBT Charlotte (Crazy Barn Dance) 1934–35 WWL New Orleans 1935 WWNC (Wonderful Western 1935 North Carolina) Asheville WSJS Winston-Salem 1935 WSJS Winston-Salem (Julia) 1935–37 WPTF Raleigh 1935–37 WBT Charlotte 1937 WIS Columbia, SC 1938 WPTF Raleigh 1939 WAIR Winston-Salem 1940 WWNC Asheville 1941 W??? Danville, VA 1941 WNOX, WROL Knoxville 1941–early 1942 102 broadcast chronology WBBO Forest City, NC 1943 (as soloist); ca. 1950 (with Jim & Jesse) WGST(?) Atlanta 1944 WWNC Asheville mid-1940s Wade, J.E., and the Mountaineers were invited to make records for RCA’s Bluebird label in 1935. Recording director Eli Oberstein had a particular need for a good string band at the moment. Milton Brown’s Musical Brownies, a popular western swing outfit, had left the label at the end of 1934, and began to sell a lot of records for the rival Decca label in 1935. Bluebird was still recording Bill Boyd’s Cowboy Ramblers in Texas, but Oberstein correctly felt that his label needed comparable talent from the Southeast. The Mainers traveled to a field recording session at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta. On August 6, 1935, they recorded several best-sellers, including “This World Is Not My Home,” “New Curly Headed Baby,” “Lights in the Valley,” and “Maple On the Hill,” Wade’s enduring arrangement of a popular song from 1880. wade When we got with a record company and got some recordsout,peoplebegantolikeusalotbetter.Theydidn’t play records on the station back then, I mean the RCA records. We were there live at WPTF till our records come out. Then they began to play our records and we could slow up a little bit, get a little rest, get a little sleep. FIRST RECORDS ...

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