Buddy Starcher

The Wandering Boy from West Virginia
The Story of Buddy Starcher in Miami

Probably nobody embodied the rambling 1930s country radio singer better than Buddy Starcher. The West Virginia native appeared on dozens of different radio stations from the late 1920s up to the 1960s. In the early to mid 1950s, Starcher was living and working in Miami, where he appeared on different radio stations and was part of the city's music scene. While we'll look on his whole career, we'll also focus on his Miami years in this post.

Early Life
Born on March 16, 1906, near Ripley, Jackson County, West Virginia, Oby Edgar Starcher was widely known as "Buddy" from an early age. Reportedly, he did not even knew his real first name until he was a young man. His family were longtime residents of the area and one of his ancestors was the founding father of Ripley. He grew up in adjacent Nicholas County and soon learned to play banjo and guitar, accompanying his father Homer Francis Starcher, who was a fiddler, at local dances.

First Steps and Wandering Years

Smiley Sutter and Buddy Starcher,
late 1930s

Starcher enjoyed his first taste of music business when he won a talent contest in Baltimore, Maryland, and won a spot on the city's WFBR station. This marked the beginning of a long career as a radio entertainer and Starcher would criss-cross the country, hopping from one radio stations to another. Frequent stints included those at WCHS in Charleston, West Virginia, where he also appeared on the Old Farm Hour, WMMN in Fairmont, West Virginia, where he started the Sagebrush Roundup, and WSVA in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Until 1937, he appeared solo on radio and personal appearances but founded a band in 1937, the Mountaineers, to enhance the act. Lee Moore and Smiley Sutter were early members of this outfit.

World War II took many of the members overseas, which broke the band up, but Starcher stayed behind and continued his career. During this time, he moved west to KXEL in Waterloo, Iowa, and KMA in Shenandoah, Iowa. By 1944, he had returned to West Virginia and started recording transcriptions the following year. This enabled him to appear on multiple stations simultaneously, a practice he would continue well into the 1950s.

1948 advertisement for Gretsch guitars
featuring Buddy Starcher

In June 1946, he married band mate Mary Ann Estes. Around the the same time, he operated his own country music park, a venue format that was popular during these years in the northern and eastern states. His popularity had grown so much that a recording contract with Bill McCall's California based 4 Star Records was the result. During his time with 4 Star, he scored one hit with his own "I'll Still Write Your Name in the Sand", reaching #8 on Billboard's Best Selling Folk Records chart. He also went into partnership with songwriter Marion Goddard to found the Dixie and Autograph record labels, on which he recorded such artists as the Franklin Brothers, Big Slim the Lone Cowboy, Rusty Gabbard, and Bobby Cook. However, Starcher and Goddard failed to built up a distribution network and the labels folded eventually.

Starcher had enjoyed a drink from the time he had appeared on barn dances with his father but during the 1930s and 1940s, he became more and more dependent on alcohol. A radio pastor took care of him and finally, in 1948, he overcame his addiction and became a newborn Christ. Though, he continued his work in radio and music business but often enriched programs and appearances with religious material and topics. In 1949, he signed with Columbia and recorded mostly sacred material but despite his popularity on air, failed to achieve another hit record.

In Miami
While he was working in Philadelphia on two stations in late 1950, a year later he had relocated to Miami Beach, Florida, where he worked as program director of WMBM and also had his own DJ show there. Also on the station at that time was the comedy duo of Salt and Peanuts, whom Starcher knew for some 20 years by then since all three of them had worked at WCHS in the early 1930s.

Starcher's continuing religious inspiration found express in the fact that he was part of a committee that organized a special service held in January 1953 by Reverend Billy Graham at Miami's Orange Bowl, which drew about 25,000 people. Until the end of 1952, Starcher could be heard over WMBM but left as the new year began and started working with WMIE.

The station was a driving force in Miami's country music scene in the 1950s and Starcher was in good company there as luminaries such as Cracker Jim Brooker, Happy Harold Thaxton, and Uncle Harve Spivey were working the same station. Although he had left Miami by March 1954 to work at WESC in Greenville, South Carolina, where he also managed the station, Starcher obviously split his time between Miami and Greenville.

In July 1954, he held a session for the DeLuxe record label, a subsidiary company of King Records from Cincinnati, Ohio. The Miami office was headed by Henry Stone, who was an influential and well-connected music business man. Stone scouted several Miami singers for the label, including Starcher. Praguefrank's Country Music Discographies lists the session for July 19, 1954, at the WMBM studio, though it seems more probable to me that the session was done at WMIE. Four songs were recorded, "String of Broken Hearts", "We Won't Be Wed", "I Was Crying Then (But You're Crying Now)", and "Don't Call No More", of which the last two saw release on DeLuxe #2025 in September 1954. It remained Starcher's only disc for the label.

By late 1954, Starcher was general manager of WLBS in Birmingham, Alabama, but was heard over different stations at that time, also including WMIE. Being the wandering boy he ever was, he had left Miami for good by May 1956 and became station manager at KCUL, Fort Worth, Texas, where he directed the station's new Cowtown Hoedown live stage show, working with such acts as Jackie Lee Cochran, the Callahan Brothers, Charlie Adams, and Frankie Miller. He would not return to Southern Florida again - at least not for radio work.

The Starday and Boone Years
In 1959, Starcher began recording for Starday Records, which had become a home for many older, traditional country musicians like him. The following year, he returned to West Virginia and started his own morning TV show on WCHS-TV in Charleston. This show lasted until 1966 and held Starcher's popularity in West Virginia and in some parts of Ohio high.

In 1961, Starcher had founded another record label, B.E.S. Records, which released a string of singles until 1965. One of those was Starcher's own "History Repeats Itself" b/w "Sniper's Hill" (B.E.S. #45-91) in 1965. The disc was successful enough that it was picked up by the bigger Boone label and it was  "History Repeats Itself," a spoken word number recounting the parallels between the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, which finally reached #2 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs and #39 on Billboard's Hot 100. The accompanying album of the same name peaked at #37. It was Starcher's second and last big hit.

Starcher's newly found fame led to a few releases on Decca but none could repeat the success. His cover of Johnny Sea's "Day of Decision" went to #131 in June 1966. He eventually ceased recording and went into retirement in 1976 and moved to Craigsville, Nicholas County, West Virginia. Though, he remained active and partly worked as a car salesman and performed occasional reunions of old live stage show casts, like the Old Farm Hour and Sagebrush Roundup reunions.

At age 92, Starched moved to Harrisonburg, Virginia, to be in the range of medical facilities and passed away on November 2, 2001. He was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2015.

Sources
• Buddy Starcher entries at 45cat and 45worls/78rpm
• Praguefrank's Country Music Discographies entries
• Hillbilly-Music.com entry
• West Virginia Music Hall of Fame
• Hul Herald obtiuary
• Ivan M. Tribe: "Live Country Music on TV!"