Saturday, June 30, 2007

Off-site Galleries

The collection of photographs from the Bob Bailey and Bailey Brothers Studio in the Heights has wound up at the Center for American History at University of Texas at Austin. This collection is one of the most remarkable collections of photographs documenting a city available and there are many, many photos of radio and television included but they are difficult to find. The collection has been arranged for the convenience of archivists.

On this page, scroll waaaay down on the page to the Radio TV folder and click on ‘Click to view images.’ There are only a few dozen there but there are more scattered throughout the other folders. There are dozens, probably 100s more related to radio and TV in the collection. Stations featured in the 30s and 40s included KPRC, KTRH and KXYZ, in the 50s and 60s, there were lots of KNUZ, so many that it leads me to think Bailey may have been the official KNUZ station photographer.

One way I've found to try and locate these is to search by call letters. You can also search by personality name and may find a few that way. There are a few photos of KHOU-TV and many of KPRC-TV and KHOU-TV personalities.

The collection used to be maintained locally and was very conveniently organized for searching but was transferred to UT a couple of years ago. I still have not found many of the photos that I remember from the old site.

Another way to access the collection is to go to the home page of the Bob Bailey Collection and start scrolling. There are 5000 photographs and that's just what's on line so far!

And another way: this is what comes up when you search for 'communication.'

Radio Emporium - navigate the drop down menus on this site to see a collection of station logos. The Call Letter history section only goes back to about 1980 and is not very accurate.

Reverse Time Page is maintained by Mike Schultz. Mike has been very helpful in identifying equipment in the early WCAK photos and he has a fascinating site.

Chalk Hill Museum in Kilgore also has a lot of interesting stuff, including a couple of items relating to Houston.

The University of Maryland Libraries holds an extensive collection of materials collected by Parks Johnson concerning the Vox Pop program which originated on KTRH in 1932 and went national in 1935.

If anyone knows of any other photo archives on line that would be of interest to readers of this blog, please let me know.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

In the 20th picture from Bob Bailey's site with Paul Berlin, you will see the the news unit that Paul is standing beside interviewing an America Miss Beauty Queen. At the top of the unit is a plastic mic flag. Recently, I described that portion of the mic flag on Radio-Info dot com. I have the flag portion. I wish I had the whole mic. That would be a great collector's piece.

Bruce said...

If I understand what you are talking about that was rather large for a mic flag, wasn't it? Did they light up, like the marker on top of a cab?

There are many pics of the KNUZ Big Mike units plus some of people you and I have worked with including a couple of a a very young Arch Yancey. I know they were on the old site but haven't searched for them on this site.

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure that's what it is. There is a clear palstic strip that is sanwiched by two black strips, which have the KNUZ call letters on it. Therefore, the light would hit the clear plastic and would illumiate through the yellow call letters. On the site you provided, it was atop a 1956 Chevy station wagon, which was pulling a "Big Mike" studio/trailer and again on top of a 1961 El Camino.

There are a treasure of pictures on that site. that was a good find, Bruce. Thanks for providing it.