Recently, I’ve been buying some old time radio transcriptions from another collector.  Once in a while, he throws in odd discs for free - parts of shows with missing discs or acetates with test material or sound effects and music that were tossed from local radio stations.

A few of these discs came from WREN, a radio station in Lawrence, Kansas, and include excerpts and around three almost complete episodes of a local music program, “Ted West and His Range Riders”.  So, here’s one of the discs with the Range Riders program of September 2, 1946.  The group performs songs such as  “Back in the Saddle Again”, “Take Your Girlie to the Movies (If You Can’t Make Love at Home)” and “You Don’t Love Me But I’ll Always Care”.

WREN was originally located in Lawrence, Kansas, before moving to Topeka in 1947.  The station was purchased by Presidential candidate Alf Landon in the early 1950s and was in operation through the late 1980s.

There’s a bit of WREN history that survives in Topeka - a giant wren statue that used to be perched on top of the radio station.  (You can see another picture of it here.)  The bird was sold off as a fundraiser when a Christian radio station bought the building in the early 1990s and was the statue was purchased by a local historical society.  If you’re visiting Topeka, you can also take a gander at a giant meat cleaver and Truckhenge that are located nearby.

The show was transferred from an original WREN acetate.  Note that, at the beginning, you’ll hear brief excerpts from an episode of “Easy Aces” and an NBC news broadcast that are also on the disc, probably recorded to test some equipment at the station.  The “Range Riders” show starts about one minute into the file.

Apologies for the rough sound, but the years haven’t been kind to this one of a kind disc.  I’ve got a couple more Range Riders shows I’ll post in coming months if folks are interested.

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