VALLEY RAMBLERS           
The Valley Ramblers were a solid traditional bluegrass band from the Dayton-Middletown area fronted by Don Warmouth singing lead and playing guitar, Noah Crase playing banjo, and Bobby Gilbert playing bass and singing tenor.  They cut two singles on Jalyn in 1967 and two LPs on the same label in 1967 and 1969.  Their fiddle players alternated between Bennie Williams and Paul “Moon” Mullins.  Harold Staggs and Buck Howard were added on their first single and David Cox played mandolin on their second album.

VERONA LAKE RANCH    
Verona Lake Ranch was a country music park located five miles west of Walton, Kentucky, on Route 16, about 25 miles south of Cincinnati.  Beginning in the early 1950s, country and bluegrass music shows were held there every Sunday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. during the summer months.  It drew heavily from Cincinnati and southwestern Ohio, as there wasn’t a comparable venue in that area.  The park was started by W.D. Scroggins and later purchased by Thurston Moore, Hillbilly and Western Scrapbook publisher, whose wife Georgianna did a lot of the emcee work.  It used local name artists as well as national artists.  Bill Monroe was one of the earlier artists to appear there, Jimmie Skinner and Ray Lunsford were semi-regulars, Rusty York and Willard Hale played there, as did the Stanley Brothers,  Smokey Ward,  and big-name country artists such as Johnny Cash and George Jones.

VETCO RECORDS     
Founded by Lou Ukelson in Cincinnati around 1968, the Vetco label’s artist roster reads like a who’s who of bluegrass music in the Cincinnati-Dayton area: Jimmie Skinner, Jim McCall, Junior McIntyre, Katie Laur, the Hotmud Family, the Muddy River Band, Paul “Moon” Mullins, Earl Taylor, Harley Gabbard, Dave Evans, and J.D. Jarvis.  There was also a short-lived old-time music series which reissued 78 rpm recordings supplied by Springfield record collector Bob Hyland. 

VILLAGE TAVERN     
Located at 8087 Vine Street in Cincinnati, the Village Tavern had bluegrass on Friday and Saturday nights using local artists such as Mike Lilly and the Allen Brothers, and national acts such as the Country Gentlemen and Ralph Stanley.  George Ross, the tavern’s operator, also produced at least one bluegrass show at the Victory Theatre in Dayton.

VIRGINIA BOYS           
Jim and Jesse McReynolds named their band the Virginia Boys, in honor of their home state.  While they were at WPFB in Middletown, the band included Jim on guitar, Jesse on mandolin, Larry Roll on guitar, and Dave Woolum on bass.  Over the years it has included Allen Shelton, Jim Buchanan, Don McHan, Keith McReynolds, Vassar Clements, Bobby Thompson, Chick Stripling, Carl Jackson, Curly Seckler, and Buddy Griffin, among others.

VIRGINIA TRIO 
In the early 1950s, Jim and Jesse McReynolds and Larry Roll cut five excellent sacred singles for Kentucky Records as the Virginia Trio.  Great mandolin by Jesse and fine trio singing were highlights of these 10 recordings, which have been issued over and over again under various names on 78s, 45s, LPs, and CDs.

WBZI/WEDI/WKFI          
When Joe Mullins bought Xenia’s WBZI-AM in 1995 and changed the format to classic country with bluegrass and gospel, it made for a lot of happy listeners in the Miami Valley of Ohio.  Using name country DJs from the past such as his dad, Paul “Moon” Mullins, Jack Bartley, and Chubby Howard, he let everyone know upfront that this was a real country operation.  Joe pulled air time himself, as well as using bluegrass authority Fred Bartenstein and musician Tim Shelton, who subsequently left to form the group New Found Road.  The station had its own band that appeared at remotes around the listening area.  The whole operation had the feel of a 1950s radio station, but with 1990s professionalism.  Later on, WBZI began simulcasting on WEDI in Eaton and WKFI in Wilmington as “Classic Country Radio,” significantly broadening the local listening area, and still later began streaming broadcasts to the World Wide Web.

WCKY        
Originally licensed to Covington, Kentucky (hence the call letters), WCKY-AM went on the air in 1929, and moved its studios to Cincinnati in the early 1930s.  In the 1930s, acts such as the Skillet Lickers and Hugh Cross broadcast live shows daily from WCKY.  In the 1940s, the WCKY Jamboree became the best known hillbilly DJ show in America with Nelson King voted the top hillbilly DJ in the country for eight consecutive years.  He was followed by Wayne Raney in 1956.  In 1961, WCKY began broadcasting the live WCKY Ohio Jamboree from Madison Lake Park in London, Ohio, with Clay Eager as the emcee and featuring both country and bluegrass music.  

WLW                     
Dubbed “The Nation’s Station,” WLW-AM went on the air in Cincinnati in 1922 and was a pioneer broadcaster of hillbilly music.  Some of the early entertainers were Cousin Bob and His Kinfolk and Bradley Kincaid.  John Lair used WLW as an interim stop for the Renfro Valley Barn Dance, between WLS in Chicago and its final home in Renfro Valley, Kentucky.  In 1939, the Boone County Jamboree was founded and, because of WLW’s 50,000 watts of clear channel power (at one time 500,000 watts), the station attracted some of the best musicians of the day.  The Boone County Jamboree was eventually phased out and the Midwestern Hayride was born in 1945, went to TV in 1948, and continued until the early 1970s.

WMUB        
WMUB-FM is licensed to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and broadcasts from Williams Hall on Miami’s campus.  It began operations in the late 1940s.  For 25 years, Jan McLaughlin played bluegrass records on her “Oak Street Ramble” show on the weekends.  That run came to an end in June of 2006, when Jan left the station.  As the station said goodbye to Jan it would appear they have also said goodbye to bluegrass music.

WNKU        
WNKU-FM, licensed to Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, Kentucky, went on the air in 1985 with a broadcast format of folk and bluegrass music.  Although that format has changed over the years to its 2006 format of Album Adult Alternative and NPR, it still broadcasts a bluegrass show that has been a fixture on the station since 1989, “Music From the Hills of Home,” featuring Katie Laur and Wayne Clyburn.  Long-time Cincinnati area musician/DJ/host Laur and engineer/banjo player/bluegrass fan Clyburn have a Sunday evening 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. slot that attracts fans from the Tri-State area as well as worldwide listeners to the station’s internet stream.  In addition to records, there is a lot of history, commentary, and banter between the two hosts.  In 2006, WNKU program director Grady Kirkpatrick produced and hosted a two-hour documentary on the career of the Osborne Brothers that is distributed internationally by Bgrass, Inc.

WNOP        
A Newport, Kentucky, station that went on the air in 1948, WNOP-AM was heavily involved in hillbilly music during the 1950s.  A live show was broadcast daily from the Jimmie Skinner Music Center in downtown Cincinnati.  Jimmie himself did a DJ show on the station for a time.  The Sandy Valley Boys presented a long-running WNOP program for Sims Furniture in the 1950s.

WONE        
WONE-AM went on the air in Dayton, Ohio, in 1949, and was owned by Skyland Broadcasting Company.  Their hillbilly DJ show was known as “Skyland Ranch” and was emceed at various times by a couple of the most popular hillbilly DJs to ever hit Dayton, Tommy Sutton and Bill Hamby.  Mornings were hillbilly and afternoons were pop.  This all changed when the station was sold and went through a series of owners and format changes.  Around 1970, it went top-40 country with no older country, no local artists, no sacred music, and no bluegrass.  Then, amazingly, in the late 1970s, the station employed Fred Bartenstein to do a Sunday-night bluegrass show on the station for a few years, which probably reached an audience previously unfamiliar with bluegrass.

WPFB                   
Located in Middletown, Ohio, WPFB-AM was originally owned by Paul F. Braden and signed on the air September 1, 1947, with Ranny Daly as the program director.  Braden had two refreshing ideas that started drawing listeners immediately.  He instituted remote news broadcasts several days a week from smaller towns around Middletown, such as Lebanon and Eaton, which had been under-served by the larger radio stations, and he programmed hillbilly music which appealed to the hundreds of thousands of transplanted southerners who had come north to work in the factories of Middletown, Hamilton, Cincinnati, and Dayton.  The Osborne Brothers, Red Allen, Dave Woolum, Hylo Brown, Jimmy Martin, J.D. Crowe, Jim & Jesse, Smokey Ward, Old Joe Clark, and Fairley Holden all worked at WPFB on the live daytime shows and the Saturday night “WPFB Jamboree,” which was broadcast from a tent on the grounds, later a barn, and finally the Middletown National Guard Armory.  National name acts including Hank Williams made appearances in WPFB’s tent.  In 1964, DJ Paul “Moon” Mullins came to WPFB and built himself into a bluegrass broadcasting legend.

WYSO        
Licensed to Antioch College (now University) in Yellow Springs, Ohio, WYSO-FM went on the air in 1958.  As early as 1973, the station was programming bluegrass and old-time country music with shows such as “Live Music Crawling Out Of Your Radio” and “Traditional Country Music,” followed in 1974 by the “WYSO Country Jamboree.”  Other shows which have featured bluegrass over the years include “Walkin’ In the Parlor”, “Rise When the Rooster Crows”, “Saturday Night Request Show”,  “Faded Love’, “The Country Music College of the Air”,  and “Bluegrass Breakdown,” and “Bluegrass Countdown”.  All of these shows were staffed by volunteers who provided a wide and varied music selection and opinion about bluegrass music.  In 2006, hosts included Joe Colvin and Steve Shaw’s “Down Home Bluegrass” and “Rise When the Rooster Crows” (Sunday morning gospel), Fred Bartenstein’s “Banks Of the Ohio,” and Ray Garrison’s “Midnight Ramble.”

WYSO COUNTRY JAMBOREE  
Started at the Living Arts Center on Linden Avenue in Dayton in April of 1974, the “WYSO Country Jamboree” was broadcast live each Wednesday night.  The Hotmud Family was instrumental in getting it started, but before it went off the air, most of the amateur and professional bluegrass musicians living in the Miami Valley had appeared on the show. When the Living Arts Center closed in 1977, the Jamboree had a succession of homes: Kelly Hall at Antioch College, Wilbur Wright High School in Dayton, Blair Hall at Sinclair College, and finally the UCB Cafeteria at Wright State University.

WZIP                     
Located at Sixth and Madison in Covington, Kentucky, WZIP-AM went on the air in 1947 and was a presence in Cincinnati-area radio in the early 1950s.  Larry Roll had a live show daily from WZIP in 1950, and Ray Scott was a long-time musician and hillbilly DJ at the station.

WALKER STREET BAND  
A Cincinnati band from the early 1980s, the Walker Street Band included Mark Rader, Wayne Clyburn, Bill LaWarre, and Joe Brashear.

WHEAT STRAW          
Wheat Straw was a Dayton group that consisted of Alan Gray on rhythm guitar, Miles Hathaway on mandolin, Joe Gibbs on bass, and Julie Gray on banjo.  Alan, Miles, and Joe did some soft trio harmony which was somewhat folk-oriented and Julie was a pretty, petite woman who played some of the hardest driving bluegrass banjo you would ever want to hear.  They cut two albums on Old Homestead in the mid 1970s.

WIGGLE INN      
Joe “Cannonball” Lewis played for a long time at Cincinnati’s Wiggle Inn bar, after he got out of the service in the late 1940s.

WILD CHERRY PARK          
Wild Cherry Park was located 16 miles north of Dayton on Garland Road, just off State Route 48, between West Milton and Union.  It had shows irregularly during the mid to late 1960s, featuring both bluegrass and country acts -- sometimes on the same show.  A good example was “Tennessee Day” on July 17, 1966, when they had bluegrass artists Bennie Birchfield & Jim McCall and the Bluegrass Partners, Red Spurlock & the Powell Brothers, Herman Holt & the Mountain Boys, and country artists Donnie Bowser & the Stonehearts, Mary Lou Turner & the Twin Valley Boys, Ronnie Dale, and Luke Gibbons, among others.  They also had nationally known artists from time to time, including Bill Monroe.

WILDWOOD VALLEY BOYS        
In the beginning, the Wildwood Valley Boys could easily have been called the “Boys From Indiana Number 2,” since three of the original members were sons of Aubrey and Jerry Holt and  Harley Gabbard.  Tony Holt, the lead singer and guitar player was Aubrey Holt’s son; Jeff Holt, the mandolin player and eerie tenor singer was Jerry Holt’s son; and Harlan Gabbard, the resonator guitar player, was Harley Gabbard’s son.  The band also included Glen “Cookie” Inman on bass, Wes Vanderpool on banjo, and Gerald Evans on fiddle.  Eventually, all departed except Tony Holt, and Aubrey Holt has become a member of the band.  Through early 2006, the band had issued six CDs on Rebel Records.