Country-and-western musician Billy Cox was born near Charleston on August 4, 1897. He started his career in 1928, singing and playing guitar and harmonica on Charleston’s WOBU radio station, which later became WCHS.
During the 1930s, Cox was recognized as one of West Virginia’s premier singer songwriters.
Among his 150 recordings were future country standards like “Sparkling Brown Eyes” and this song, “Filipino Baby,” which he performed with Cliff Hobbs of Cedar Grove.
Several of Billy Cox’s songs celebrated Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. But the Great Depression, along with personal problems, cut Cox’s career short.
He soon left the music business and worked various odd jobs, including a stint at Charleston’s Kelly Axe Factory. He was later discovered by musicologists in the 1960s living in poverty. Billy Cox, known as the “Dixie Songbird,” died in 1968 at age 71.
Musician Rex Parker died at Princeton in Mercer County on June 2, 1999.
The Fayette County native was the patriarch of the Parker Family, a popular musical fixture on West Virginia radio and television stations for more than a half century.
Parker started his career in the late 1930s on WCHS radio in Charleston and WJLS in Beckley. He was in his late teens at the time. In 1941, he married Eleanora Niera, the daughter of Spanish immigrants. The next day, Rex and Eleanor began their career as a country music duo on WHIS in Bluefield. They also worked on WOAY in Oak Hill and other radio stations before moving into TV in the 1950s. Two of their original songs—“Build Your Treasures in Heaven” and “Moonlight on West Virginia”—received considerable airplay.
After becoming Born-Again Christians in 1959, the Parkers performed only sacred music. By this time, daughters Conizene and Rexana had joined them. The Parkers hosted a weekly live program on WOAY-TV during the ‘60s and ‘70s. In later years, they performed mostly in local churches and had a Sunday morning radio program in Princeton.
On March 5, 1963, country music star Hawkshaw Hawkins was killed in a plane crash in Tennessee. Born in Huntington in 1921, Hawkins got his start in music after trading five trapped rabbits for his first guitar. In the late 1930s, Hawkins performed on radio stations WSAZ in Huntington and WCHS in Charleston before joining the Army. During World War II, he fought in the Battle of Bulge and earned four battle stars in 15 months of combat.
After returning to the states, he performed on the Wheeling Jamboree and had five top-ten records, including “Pan American” and “Dog House Boogie.” In 1954, he moved on to the Grand Ole Opry and achieved more notoriety. His biggest hit, “Lonesome 7-7203,” was released only three days before his death. On March 3, 1963, he performed a benefit concert in Kansas City along with country music legend Patsy Cline and “Cowboy” Copas. Two days later, Hawkins, Cline, and Copas were flying back to Nashville when their private plane crashed into a forest, killing all the passengers.
Hawkshaw Hawkins was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2009.
Musician Red Sovine died in Nashville following a car crash on April 4, 1980. He was 61.
Born Woodrow Wilson Sovine in Charleston, he was influenced by local radio musicians Frank Welling and Buddy Starcher, who were known for their sentimental monologues.
Sovine’s early radio career on WCHS in Charleston and WWVA in Wheeling was slow to take off. So, he took a factory job in the Putnam County town of Eleanor while performing on radio. After World War II, he pursued a full-time musical career in Montgomery, Alabama, Shreveport and finally Nashville.
Joining the Grand Ole Opry in 1954, he became famous for his recitations, especially ‘‘Giddyup Go,” “Phantom 309,” and this number-one hit from 1976:
Red Sovine was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2008.
On September 15, 1927, Charleston’s WOBU radio station went on the air with 50 watts of power at eleven-hundred twenty kilohertz. A year later, it moved to its present frequency: five-eighty AM.
One of the station’s most popular shows was The Old Farm Hour, with early local performers including country musicians Bill Cox and the Kessinger Brothers.
Walter Fredericks, owner of the Charleston Radio Supply Company, started WOBU reportedly to sell more radios, but he sold the station only three years later. The station’s call letters were changed to WCHS in 1933, and its power was boosted to its present 5,000 watts in 1940. Over the years, WCHS has featured local news and information, Cincinnati Reds baseball, high school sports, West Virginia University sports, and the long-running Sports Page of the Air, hosted for years by Ernie Saunders.
West Virginia Radio Corporation acquired the station in 1992 and launched the current format of national and local news, talk, and sports. WCHS is the third-oldest radio station in West Virginia. The only older stations still in existence are WRVC in Huntington and WWVA in Wheeling.
He’s been beaten and berated for doing his job, but despite the dangers, Bob Aaron says he still loves being a T.V. reporter.
Those dangers made international news when two young reporters in Roanoke, Va. were shot and killed by a former co-worker on live T.V.
On this week’s Front Porch Podcast, Aaron tells funny and touching stories from his 50 years as a reporter, and answers the question, what keeps you going?
Aaron was investigating a complaint about animals being mistreated in a remote area of Clay County, W.Va. The farmer’s son confronted him.
“I decided I wasn’t going to get out of the road. I was on public property,” Aaron said. “I had a couple of second thoughts when I saw the guy was about 100 pounds heavier than me.
Man attacking Bob Aaron with tripod.
“He actually picked up the tripod I was using and swung it at me,” hitting Aaron and sending him to the hospital.
The man received three months home confinement and must pay the station for damaging the equipment.
When Sheriff’s deputies allowed him to get beat up
When Aaron worked in Waterloo, Iowa, he went to a mobile home park where a man was holding his wife with high-powered rifle.
Two of the man’s brothers jumped Aaron. It was cold and icy, a real “hockey fight,” Aaron said. But none of the deputies came to his aid.
“I was amazed that nobody was helping me,” he said. “Everyone was perfectly happy to let this guy beat me up while I was out doing my job.”
Why? Because police felt his station has compromised an earlier investigation.
When a dangerous situation was diffused by a lack of skill
Aaron went to cover a murder on the Logan-Boone County line, and ran into a potentially dangerous situation.
“The relatives were throwing rocks at me,” he said. “But their aim was pretty bad, so it didn’t become an issue.”
On covering labor strikes
One strike in Rum Creek, West Virginia became violent. Miners took their stand on a low-water bridge.
They would use steel cable to chain cars on the bridge. Coal trucks became battering rams, knocking the cars aside, while picketers ripped mirrors off the trucks.
One day, police attempted to clear the bridge. A woman was knocked over, and the crowd became agitated. Aaron worried about his safety.
“But instead, they push me up to the front, to get good video of what’s going on.”
On covering accident scenes with respect for the victims
“People say, ‘That’s my wife, that’s my brother, you can’t shoot that.’” Aaron said.
“You certainly don’t want to get in a fight with the father of some little child who’s been killed in an accident because you’re taking pictures there. You try to be tasteful and understanding,” he said.
“We’re not going to take pictures of an uncovered, dead drowning victim, naked, being loaded in an ambulance.”
On how the Virginia shooting changes things
WCHS staff have received training from police about “situational awareness.” They’ve been advised to carry an emergency trauma kit to stop bleeding.
Aaron says they were told this: If you are conscious five seconds after something happens, you have 80 percent chance of surviving it, but you have to do something to take care of yourself.
“The troubling thing about this is, maybe this is the first shooting of its kind, like Columbine was the first shooting of its kind. And you always wonder if some nutjob will decide to take advantage of this situation and do this someplace else.”
On why he keeps at it, after five decades
“I guess I like to be where the action is. I like to be on the street.”
Bob Aaron is a senior reporter/producer for WCHS/WVAH-TV in Charleston-Huntington. He’s worked for WCHS for 33 years.
An edited version of “The Front Porch” airs Fridays at 4:50 p.m. on West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s radio network, and the full version is available above.
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