History of Home Recording : In 1939, the Wilcox-Gay Corporation in Charlotte, Michigan, introduced an inexpensive recording device that offered Americans their first opportunity to make audio recordings. Nearly all machines were built with both a phonograph and a radio, allowing the home enthusiast the ability to record a favorite song or radio show directly onto a 10", 78rpm record. Many homemade records fall into this category. Others chose to use their recorders to take an audio snapshot of themselves, their friends, or their loved ones. The fad of home record-making ended in the mid-1950s with the introduction of magnetic tape recording devices. Now, half a century later, small numbers of these original home recordings have become available on the open market as families evolve or bloodlines disappear all together. Lineage is quickly forgotten and only the content of the record remains.

Folk Art is the visual product of the common man - an amateur whose unpolished work can capture us with its beauty, sincerity, or humor. Unpolished audio performers offer us a similar experience. For some folks, mimicking the behavior heard on the radio was a common theme, and creating skits or vamping commercial ads was as popular then as it is today.

The majority of home recording enthusiasts did not make records with the idea of achieving celebrity status, yet many musicians did use the device to polish an act. Most discs offer little or no information about these performers. At best there is a name or a date scribbled on a paper label from a company like Presto , Recordio , Melodisc , or Zephyr . But who were The Shallow River Boys, The Blueridge Rangers, or The Man With The Thunder Head? Names without faces. Names known to only one family; the listener. (http://www.catamountco.com/thunderhead/homerecording.html)

Wilcox-Gay ...... A company based in Charlotte, Michigan, USA that started making amateur radio equipment in the late 1910's and branched into the manufacture of consumer radio products in the late 20's, that proved to be a growth market and their 30's models are some of the more common radios from that time... In the WWII the company started the manufacture of tubes and radio transmitters for the US Army and immediately after the war they started selling transmitters for small radio stations and modulators for larger transmitters. In the late 30's they introduced the Recordio instant record cutters both for consumer use and also in the form of record cutting booths that where installed in stores ... and in the early 50's a tape recorder and where one of the pioneers of television manufacturing, did indeed take part in the testing of colour broadcasts in the 50's and was one of the few USA manufacturers that built their colour TV sets from the ground up, but had financial trouble and closed it's doors in 1960. .... The company may also have traded using the Majestic brand. (http://audiotools.com/deadz.html)