The bizarre story of Delta Records of Nashville, TN (1967-78)

Stock fraud, a shooting, and a lot of oddball country records. That's the story of Delta Records, a small Nashville, Tennessee, label that released a number of unusual and obscure country singles in the 1970s, almost all of which featured unknown singers. 

When looking at the Delta discography, even serious country fans won't recognize many, if any, of the artists' names other than Clyde Moody, who had a couple Top 10 country hits for King Records in 1948-50, and Big Jeff (Bess), who has been anthologized by Bear Family Records. Big Jeff's wife, Tootsie, also recorded for Delta, and her Tootsie's Orchid Lounge in Nashville is a landmark in country music history. Those were Delta's big names.

Despite an almost total lack of success, the label kept cranking out releases throughout the 1970s. But because Delta didn't advertise, was almost never mentioned in any music trade magazines, and had no hits, it's hard to pinpoint even the years in which most of its records were released.

How did the label keep churning out singles year after year in a commercial vacuum? It was able to do it because Delta wasn't a typical record label. It didn't rely on record sales for survival—it essentially operated as a vanity label and a platform for stock fraud. Artists had to pay Delta to record and release their records, and many of them bought unsecured stock in the label at a price of $1 a share in the hope of receiving some promotional TLC. Complaints by these artists, many of whom who said Delta didn't honor its promises to release and promote records, eventually brought the label down.

In the beginning...

Delta was formed by Ken Galloway in Nashville, Tennessee, in the late 1960s, possibly to release his own records. A brief item in Record World in 1967 said that Ken's recording of "Knockin' on the Door" on Delta Records was—according to Ken, at least—"beginning to pick up renewed action." Around the same time, in addition to running Delta and attempting to establish himself as a country singer, Galloway was managing, producing, and writing songs for the 5 Williamson Bros., who recorded for North Carolina's Gold Star label. In 1970, he was listed in Record World's directory of personal managers.  

A 1970 ad for
two Delta singles.

For reasons that will soon become obvious, not many artists recorded more than one single for Delta, which throughout its history had a generic white label that said DELTA in block letters. Ken's sons Bobby and Jimmy also recorded and wrote songs for the label.

After several years of steadily releasing records that went unnoticed by the mainstream country audience, Delta came under the scrutiny of the Tennessee State Insurance Department in 1976 in an investigation of alleged music-industry "ripoffs."

Delta was targeted for selling unregistered securities, stocks that aren't registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In a front-page story in 1977, Nashville newspaper The Tennessean reported that Delta had been selling unregistered securities since incorporating the previous year, many of them "to hopeful recording artists."

In addition to going after Delta for selling unregistered securities, the State Insurance Department charged Delta with misrepresenting the value of the stock, failing to inform investors of pending legal action against the label, and leading artists to believe that their purchase of Delta stock would result in more robust promotion of their records.

Galloway was unrepentant and blamed the artists. "They come here to record," he told The Tennessean, "then they go home and realize that the money is gone and they come up with every excuse in the world to try to get it back."

The lawsuits

The aggrieved artists included the aforementioned Tootsie Bess of Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, who recorded one of the final Delta records listed in the discography below and took Galloway to court over the rights to the composition. Galloway failed to appear in court and Tootsie won a $4,500 judgment.

Also named was Rita Gay McMurray, who recorded a single for the Music Mountain label with Galloway's help, and Violet Cole, who wrote two songs that were recorded by Bill Haney, also under Galloway's guidance, for what seems to have been the only release on Bayou Records, a subsidiary of Delta. 

Cole's story was especially tragic. A 60-year-old operator of a nursing home in Daniels, West Virginia, she came to Nashville in the hope of placing some songs she'd written with a publishing company or recording artists. She was referred to Galloway, who told her that she had "the wildest imagination of any songwriter that ever came to Tennessee." He cajoled her into paying for more session time than she intended, telling her that she would soon recoup all the money she spent. Galloway and his sons had a publishing company, Openwide Publishing, that buttered up Cole by giving her certificates for "best songs published in 1973" and "most songs recorded with hit potential in 1973." She racked up over $13,000 in studio and promotion fees, a debt that forced her to close her nursing home and sell five of her eight acres of land.

She eventually took Galloway to court and won a $63,000 judgment, which included Galloway's fees plus $50,000 in punitive damages. The court's ruling referred to Cole as "a victim of [Galloway's] confidence scheme" and said that Galloway was "guilty of gross, willful and wanton fraud, to the point of outrage." Galloway, for his part, again failed to appear in court and maintained his innocence in the press.

This judgment led to the dissolution of Delta. On February 16, 1978, The Tennessean reported that Delta had closed its doors the previous week. One of the label's final and most ambitious releases was Patty Sexton's Elvis on My Mind Sung by Patty Sexton, a full-length album of tributes to Elvis Presley recorded after his death and produced by Galloway.

Galloway was philosophical about the scandals, portraying himself as both the real victim and just an ordinary wheeler-dealer:

"The real ripoff comes when people leave Nashville and go somewhere else to some little studio where the people don't know nothing. ... There's not a damn company on Music Row that you can't find skeletons in the closet. But is it worth ruining the whole of Music Row to expose one or two people that might do something they ought not to?"

An odd coda

That wasn't the end of the Delta story. Delta was ordered to repay the artists with interest, but no payments were forthcoming. This was predictable, because as The Tennessean noted, "Attorneys who have sued Galloway in the past have complained that it is impossible to collect judgements against him since he has signed most of the stock in the company over to his three sons."

Even though Galloway had insisted that the label's assets were worth more than $3 million, a court-appointed attorney who took over the assets of Galloway and Delta in an attempt to compensate the victims told The Tennessean, "There was nothing there of any immediate commercial value, and Galloway had no personal assets sufficient to make any kind of substantial payment to stockholders." The only asset of Galloway's that could be located was a 1972 automobile. When a reporter asked Galloway for specifics about Delta's alleged $3 million in assets, Galloway said, "You just don't understand the music business. I'm going to start charging $50 an hour to explain it to you."

The only thing missing from this story was gunplay, at least until 1979. Galloway turned up in the newspapers again that year when he shot a 24-year-old bouncer at a motel lounge where his son, Bobby, was playing guitar with a band. Bobby and the bouncer got into an argument that culminated in the elder Galloway shooting the bouncer in the chest. The bouncer didn't die and refused to press charges, saying that the shooting was "an accident," so Galloway again avoided facing any legal consequences.

Delta Records discography

Delta catalog number	Artist	Song titles
????	Ken Galloway	“Knockin’ on the Door” / ?
1007	Ken Galloway	“A Fallen King” / “Branded Man”
1009	Rene’ Merritt	“Wink Em, Blink Em, and Nod” / “Hurt After Hurt”
1010	Darryl Massey	“Walk With Me (Little One)” / “She’s Got Me Crying Again”
1011	Edna Dee	“Move Over Music City” / “Paradise 404”
1022	Dick Root Jr.	“Surprise” / “Lie’s [sic] on My Lips”
1023	Vivian Dawn	"This Man" / "Passion and It's [sic] Truth"
1025	Dick Root Jr.	“Los Angeles Leavin'” / “I Can't Let Go”
1026	Bobby Lindsey	“Sugar Booger Baby” / “Blues That Ain't Never Been Used”
1027	Bobby Galloway	“Easy Baby” / “Got a Chigger on My Digger”
1031	Bobby Galloway	“That's Troublin' My Mind” / “If You've Never Been Kissed”
1032	Bernie Stevens	“I Was Born for You” / “L-O-V-E Love”
1035	Jeannie Dee	“It’s Gonna Be Hard” / “As Time Goes By”
1037	Jeannie Dee	“Pedro Hi-Jacked Santa Claus” / “Billy’s Christmas”
1038	Hal Phillips	“Too Many Irons in the Fire” / “That Side of Life”
1039	Tommy Gaebler	“What Kind of World (Am I Living In)” / “I Want To”
1040	Big Jeff	“You” /“I’m Out to Get Even”
1042	Janette Monday	“My Sacrifice Ain’t Nice” / “If My Mama Was With Me”
1043	Jimmy Galloway	“I Can’t Seem to Get Her Off My Mind” / “Hello Mister Lonesome”
1045	Clyde Moody	“She’s No Angel” / “If You Need Me, I’ll Be Around”
1046	Gaylon Wayne	“Will You Be Sorry (For Loving Me Tonight)” / “I’m Gonna Love the Devil Out of You”
1049	Wendy Lou	“Don't Blame Me (If You Can't Hold Your Man)” / “I’ll Sure Come a Long Way Down”
1050	Big Jeff	“We Wonder if Mr. Nixon Knew” / “Assassination of J.F.K.”
1053	Jimmy Harville	“She's My Wife” / “Unfaithful Wife”
1055	Fatima	“The Legend of the Ghost Town” / “Squaw Girl”
1056	Lynnie Poppell	“Retouch My Heart” / “Sweet Love”
1057	Billy Somers	“Pass With Care” / “I’ve Got to Be Free”
1058	Bobby Galloway	“My Woman Wait’s [sic] at Home in New Orleans” / “Canyon’s [sic] of My Mind”
1060	The Owens Sisters	“Suburbs of Passion” / “I'm Learning”
1063	Chuck Penny	“If a Man Could Live on Love” / “A Little Bit of Money Makes a Whole Lot of Change”
1066	Clyde Moody	“I Can Tell When I'm Not Wanted” / “What Can I Do”
1072	John Adcock	“They’ll Be No Need for Tomorrow (If There’s No Yesterday in My Heart” / “Sweet Good Lookin’ Woman”
1080	Clyde Moody	“Just As Long As I Have You (I’m Satisfied)” / “The Kind of Man I Am”
1082	Mickey Fortune	“Ode to the Politician’s Society Choir of Monotony (Same Old Song)” / “Windy”
1083	Kirt McGee	“This Is the End Forever” / “Someday We’ll Make It”
1087	Haven Clark (Truck Stop Granny)	“Wacky Sally” / “Memories Will Make You Pay”
1088	Mickey Fortune	“Humpin’ to Please” / “Taste of Heaven”
1094	Linda Lee	“The Love I Found” / “Mama Said”
1095	Del Warren	“Mr. M.I. Jackson” / “Thanks to Granddad”
1096	Mike Kirby	“It Ain’t as Long” / “Greener Pastures”
1097	Gail Kight	“Call on Me” / “Love Was All I Needed”
1100	Betti Hart	“Thank You for Coming” / “Da Do Man”
1102	Donny Tapp	“Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge” / “The Funniest Feeling”
1107	Don Chapel	“In the Palm of Your Hand” / “Higher on the Hill”
1109	Al Dean	“It's Only My Imagination” / “Green Green Grass of Home”
1112	Monte Davidson	“Walkin’ Shoes” / “Bury Me Halfway Between”
1113	Sandra Rossfield	“Winter” / “Iron Horse”
1118	Jim Hsieh*	“I Need a Ride” / “Tied to a Dream”
1130	Sue Blaine	“Clean Up Your Act” / “On Again Off Again”
1131	Dorothy “Everybody’s Mother”	“220 Mama” / “Music of the People”
1133	Tootsie	“Tootsie’s Wall of Fame” / “The Wettest Shoulder in Town”
1138	T.K. O'Neal	“That Damn Truck” / “I May Lose You Tomorrow”
1145	Patsy Clay	“Mama Likes to Swing” / “Remember You Promised”
1151	Patsy Sexton	“Christmas Without Elvis” / “Christmas Card for Elvis”
D 1002	Patsy Sexton	Elvis on My Mind Sung by Patty Sexton LP

*Jim Hsieh's "I Need a Ride" (Delta 1118) is included on the 2010 anthology Ears of Stone: 1960s Folk Country & Pop from the Nashville Indies, even though it was recorded in the 1970s.

Pat Boone's country years: 1973-80

A surprising number of veteran pop stars tried their hand at country music late in their careers after the pop hits dried up, and Pat Boone was one of them. 

Why would pop artists—many of whom used to strive for big-band and cool-jazz sophistication and had professional images that were about as country as a soy-milk latte—suddenly pull on cowboy boots and start droppin' their Gs? Probably for the same reason that fading old-timers made embarrassing attempts at singing rock 'n' roll in the 1950s. For showfolk, the show must go on, whatever it takes.

The country field, at least in the 1960s-80s, was fairly welcoming toward these expatriates from the Las Vegas Strip. The country audience tended to respect tradition more than the Top 40 pop crowd did, so it was willing to welcome pop veterans into the country fold, and some of these temporary county singers had moderate success: Patti Page, Bobby Vinton, Tom Jones, etc. 

Pat had been casting about for a new artistic direction even before he turned to country music. As his pop hits began to wane in the mid-to-late '60s, he first experimented with other kinds of pop/rock music, like Beach Boys-style hot-rod and beach music. He even recorded a Biff Rose song and an all-whistling record, "I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman." In fact, his final pop hit on the Hot 100 wasn't even a pop song. It was "July, You're a Woman," a single from an oddball folk-rock album he recorded for Bill Cosby's Tetragrammaton label in 1969. It peaked at #100.

Sensing—or facing the reality—that his days as a mainstream pop star were finished, Pat concentrated on religious music for a few years. In 1972-73, he recorded some albums with The First Nashville Jesus Band for the Christian imprint Lamb & Lion Records. These albums contained gospel and country-gospel material as well as a few songs, like Frankie Miller's "Blackland Farmer," that are mainstream or traditional country songs that have religious themes.

The Lamb & Lion albums continued Boone's evolution away from pop music and toward his new image as a mainstream country singer, which culminated in a brief record deal with MGM Records in 1973 to record secular country material. For MGM, he recorded the album I Love You More and More Every Day, which included songs such as "Golden Rocket" and "Jambalaya." MGM released three singles, none of which charted. The Billboard review of his MGM album remarked that "Pat has been making the transition to country, and here is very close to the mark."

After a year at MGM, Boone was picked up in 1974 by Motown's country imprint Melodyland. After that, he moved to another Motown subsidiary, Hitsville, before ending his country music career on the Warner/Curb label in 1980.

In these six years from 1974-1980, he scored five hits on the Billboard country chart, only one of which, "Texas Woman," managed to reach the lower rungs of the country Top 40. On the Cash Box country chart it fared a bit better, going all the way to #26.

This late-career transition to country music didn't come entirely out of the blue. Pat began his career in Nashville (although his earliest records didn't sound like anything you'd associate with Nashville), and throughout the '50s and '60s he occasionally recorded pop renditions of country songs like Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart" and Cowboy Copas's "Alabam," including a complete album of pop-ified country hits in 1965. He also married the daughter of Country Music Hall of Famer Red Foley and recorded a tribute album to Foley in the 1980s. But, as mentioned previously, defecting to country music wasn't his first choice of career move.

While playing country music, Pat sometimes recorded songs that weren't quite in keeping with his squeaky clean image. For a guy who famously wanted to change the lyrics of "Ain't That a Shame" to "Isn't That a Shame" so they would be grammatically correct, songs like his 1977 single "Whatever Happened to the Good Old Honky Tonk" seemed out of character.

Pat's minor 1980 hit "Colorado Country Morning" was his last hurrah as a mainstream chart artist until he recorded his 1997 novelty album of heavy metal songs, In a Metal Mood, which registered on the Billboard pop album chart and again showed Pat's willingness to record music that is wildly inconsistent with his image as long as it might rack up some sales. Other than that odd digression, Pat spent most of his post-country years cutting religious music and remakes of his old hits for independent labels and for his own label, Pat's Gold.

Pat's country hits 

"Indiana Girl" (#72, 1975)





"I'd Do It With You" (#84, 1975) – Duet with Shirley Boone





"Texas Woman" (#34, 1976)





"Oklahoma Sunshine" (#86, 1976)




"Colorado Country Morning" (#60, 1980)

Canta Maya: Roulette Records' odd venture into German cabaret (1958)

How did a German cabaret artist end up on Roulette Records, a label mostly known for teen-oriented pop hits by Buddy Knox, Jimmy Bowen, Jimmie Rodgers, The Playmates, and Frankie Lymon? Today on the Music Weird, we look at Canta Maya, one of Roulette's most unusual signings of the 1950s.

La Scala de Berlin in 1936

Canta Maya was the stage name of Elizabeth Sofia Mohl de Gimbel, a cabaret singer who performed at Berlin's Scala de Berlin in the late 1930s and starred in a Mexican movie musical in the mid 1940s. She also recorded a single album—the only album of her entire career—for the American label Roulette Records in 1958.

Maya was born on January 28, 1922, in either Dresden, Germany, or Alsace-Lorraine, a Germanic area of France. Different sources report different birthplaces.

After gaining some fame as a cabaret singer known for her flamboyant costumes, Maya appeared in the 1945* Mexican movie musical Bailando en las Nubes ("Dancing in the Clouds"). A 1947 review in Box Office Barometer summarized the plot:

An ambitious stenographer realizes her dream of becoming a famous dancer and singer, but heartaches beset her career. A romance that turns into real love brings a happy ending.

Canta Maya

According to Mexican Movies in the United States, Bailando en las Nubes screened at three cinemas in Los Angeles and contained content that was considered risqué for the time:

The musical melodrama featured the slender Canta Maya, a dancer with a heavy French accent. A newspaper review of the film warned: 'Señorita Maya appears in one barbaric number which our censors would probably blue-pencil pronto.' Although the musical sequence in question had Miss Maya embracing with an imposing half-naked black man, it apparently went unnoticed by the local censorship viewers.

Fast forward 13 years into the future, and Maya inexplicably ended up on Roulette Records thanks to producers and songwriters Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore (Hugo & Luigi), who signed her to what would be a short-lived contract. 

Maya's brief stint with the label resulted in one album—A Long, Long Kiss—and one single, which contained two songs from the album. 

On the single's A side, "I'm a Kitten," Maya sounded exotic, a bit like Eartha Kitt. The song was written by the album's orchestral leader, Bernie Landes, who also wrote the album track "A Kiss Will Tell You" and cowrote "There's No Sun in the Sky."

Landes had enjoyed some previous success, most notably as the composer of "Elephants Tango," a precursor to Henry Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk" that was recorded internationally by a number of artists, including The Commanders, Cyril Stapleton, Lawrence Welk, Ray Martin, and later Si Zentner. 

In the early 1950s, Landes and his orchestra backed artists such as Anne Shelton and Sandy Solo, and in 1957 he wrote both sides of a split single by The Bell Trio and The Majors for Felsted Records. His heavy involvement in Canta Maya's album makes me suspect that he played a role in bringing Maya to Hugo and Luigi's attention.

The remaining songs on the album were written by other songwriters, some of whom contributed multiple compositions. The title track, "A Long, Long Kiss," was written by Gladys Shelley and jazz pianist Larry Fotine, the latter of whom worked as an arranger for Lawrence Welk for a time. The song presumably is based on the line from Lord Byron's Don Juan ("A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth and love"). Shelley, the most heavily featured songwriter on the LP, also cowrote the album tracks "Sooner or Later," "Please Don't Go," and "Night Bird."

Other album tracks include "Answer Me, My Love," a German song with English lyrics by Carl Sigman that became a hit for Nat King Cole in 1954. Actress and singer Shannon Bolin cowrote two of the album's songs: "Hold Me Tight" and "Tomorrow May Be One Day Late." The album's closer, "Goodnight Sweetheart," was a popular song in the early 1930s, first recorded by Ray Noble (who cowrote it) and then Wayne King, Bing Crosby, and others.

A Long, Long Kiss was reviewed in the December 8, 1958, edition of Billboard, where it received two stars and faint praise:

Miss Maya has a whispery, husky quality which might be called a blend of Marlene Dietrich, Eva Gabor and other sirens of that ilk. Some of the material, such as "I'm a Kitten," in which the gal literally essays a cat's purr, will appeal to males looking for recorded kicks and atmosphere. Beyond that, appeal would be fairly slim.

Billboard doesn't seem to have reviewed the "I'm a Kitten" single but forecast its release in the October 1958 issue when it mentioned that Maya and future television star Jim Nabors were Roulette's two new signings. (Jim Nabors, then billed as Jimmy Nabors, recorded one rock 'n' roll single for Roulette that was his only disking until the mid '60s, when he recorded an album in his Gomer Pyle persona.)

Both Maya's album and single flopped. Neither one charted nationally or even appeared on any radio station surveys that I could find. Nevertheless, Apex Records picked up "I'm a Kitten" for release in Canada, and Roulette released the single in New Zealand, according to 45cat. 

Having copies of the album to spare, Roulette included A Long, Long Kiss in a Christmastime promotion that year for record dealers and distributors. It was called the "Christmas Stocking Plan" and offered two free stereo albums for every 18 purchased, and one free monaural album for every seven purchased. A Long, Long Kiss was one of the seven monaural albums included in the list of freebies from which buyers could choose.

That was both the beginning and the end of Maya's recording career, but an unusual sidebar in her biography is that her name appeared in an FBI memorandum in the John F. Kennedy assassination papers! 

Mexico City files ... reported information from a usually reliable source 8/10/53 stating that ELIZABETH SOFIA MOHL was alleged to have permitted American Communists to use her mailing address in Mexico.

It appears that she applied for a visa 1/10/64 using the name CANTA MAYA.

While she was in Mexico, in addition to allegedly aiding communists, Maya also befriended Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka, who lived in that country for a time. What Maya did career-wise in the years immediately preceding and following her Roulette album is unknown to me, but it sounds like she was quite the bohemian.

Although Maya's single was unusual among Roulette's offerings on 45, her album didn't come entirely out of left field if you look at the label's album releases. Early Roulette albums included such international titles as Italy by the DiMara Sisters (1957), Jamaica by the Lennie Hayton Orchestra (1958), and Oriental Delight by the Hank Mardigian Sextet (1958). Some of Roulette's "international" offerings had an ersatz quality, but Canta Maya was the real deal.

Here are the anonymously penned, grammatically challenged liner notes of A Long, Long Kiss:

Few things in life quite compare to the thrill of discovery, and this album for music devotees is "the discovery"! Within the covers of this album is a new personality, a warm, caressing, seductive and, at the same time, provocative and exciting new voice. It is, in fact... A new sound...

"A Long, Long Kiss" brings to needle point for the delight of the listener the thrilling new voice of Canta Maya. This album marks the debut in America of this renowned continental chanteuse. Born in Alsace, this exotic beauty has enthralled audiences in the chic boites and music halls of France, Germany, Mexico and South America. What is this all-encompassing spell which Canta Maya casts over her audiences? What is this quality she possesses that has made her the toast of so many countries? 

Some of the answers can be found in this her first album. Her cat-like grace and enticing sensuousness personifies the songs she sings. Her voice sings out like the voice of wordliness and experience. The answer too lies in the intimate devotion to the lyrics of the songs she presents here. It is this devotion of every word she caresses that has not only endeared her to a legion of fans, but to the composers of many lands who have tailored creations especially for her style. 

Throughout the pleasurable moments of this album, Canta Maya creates and maintains a mood which completely charms and disarms the listener. It is a mood that is warm, tender, languorous and puts you completely at ease. From the very first few notes, her voice becomes a vehicle of escape from the harsh realities of everyday life. It is an escape from boredom, from the ordinary, mundane routine of existence to the thrill of perhaps a clandestine romance. Canta Maya sings as though the listener was the only person in the world and because of this the listener's world becomes a new and exciting place unlike any other place he has ever known.

Listen now as Canta Maya purrs "I'm A Kitten" or when she sings "Ask Me." Her arrangements and accompaniment by Bernie Landes and his orchestra fits the setting beautifully; the violins in unison enhance the mood every note of the way.

The voice of Canta Maya is a voice you will not forget. Her delivery is smooth, dramatic and always oh, so inviting. The "invitation" is worth taking up, it is a musical experience you won't want to miss. Here, then, is Canta Maya as she offers you "A Long, Long Kiss."

Side A

A Long, Long Kiss

I'm a Kitten

Ask Me

Answer Me, My Love

There's No Sun in the Sky

Sooner or Later

Side B

Hold Me Tight

Please Don't Go

Night Bird

A Kiss Will Tell You

Tomorrow May Be One Day Late

Goodnight Sweetheart

*Most sources say that this movie was released in 1946, but the 1982 book Cartelera Cinematográfica 1940-1949 (PDF) says that it debuted at Teatro Iris in Mexico City on April 8, 1945, where it ran for three days. 

Ruth Lyons for Ocean Spray on WLW c. 1963

I recently got this old poster that advertises Ruth Lyons' WLW television and radio show, The 50/50 Club, as well as one of her sponsors, Ocean Spray, which has a facility in Cincinnati, where Lyons was based. I assume that the poster was created to hang in grocery stores.

Lyons was such a pioneer of women's talk television that a 2009 book credits her with creating talk television (Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons, the Woman Who Created Talk TV). Lyons' show debuted in 1949 and ran until 1967, when she retired and handed over the reins to Bob Braun, whose discography was previously published here on The Music Weird.

Lyons' show featured a number of local and national celebrities, including Bonnie Lou of "Tennessee Wig Walk" fame and Ruby Wright of "Let's Light the Christmas Tree" and "Three Stars" fame, and also produced some ensemble Christmas albums such as this and this.

1959 newspaper ad for a Ruth Lyons grocery contest at Kroger

For at least some of its run, Lyons' television show was simulcast on WLW AM. Like Braun's later show and fellow Cincinnati host Paul Dixon's show, Lyons performed the product pitches for her sponsors instead of running prerecorded commercials, and her show was such an effective advertising medium that the trivia section on its IMDb page says:

The show was ... a powerful outlet for advertisers; potential sponsors had a one year waiting period before there were openings for their commercials to be able to be scheduled. The mention of a product name on the program meant stores would quickly be sold out of the item.

After getting this poster, I tried to pinpoint when it was made beyond my guesstimate of the early '60s.

According to old issues of Product News and Product Marketing magazines, the low-calorie variety of Ocean Spray cranberry juice cocktail—which is featured alongside the regular stuff on the poster above—was already available in 1964, but I don't know when it was introduced.

The photo of Lyons on the poster was also used in this 1963 newspaper advertisement on the right, so I'm guessing that the poster dates from that time.

Lyons is still fondly remembered in the Cincinnati area. In 2011, a DVD with a documentary about Lyons' show and a bonus CD of songs from her show was released and became a big seller locally. The documentary won six Emmy Awards, the first pressing sold out in 10 days, and a 2013 news article said that sales of the DVD, which is now out of print, raised $75,000 to buy gifts for hospitalized children. 

Bob Braun was also involved in this charity program to buy Christmas toys for hospitalized children, and yours truly was a beneficiary as a child. As of late 2019, the documentary is still airing on television in the Cincinatti area,