Plaid work shirts, cuffed trousers, wide-brim felt hats; Western-style boots (especially the stitched details on the girl’s boots). The guitar style (flat-top acoustic, likely a budget student model common at the time). Tinted photography was common for family or promotional photos in the early ’40s and in fact the coordinated Western attire across all five members points to a performing sibling group.

The photograph fits exactly with how radio station youth or family acts were photographed in small and mid-market stations like KFXM. Everything about this photo matches what we know about KFXM at the California Hotel: KFXM regularly used local talent, especially teenagers. Western / cowboy programming was extremely popular during WWII and shows like Rancho Roundup often featured live music, family groups, and youth performers filling daytime or weekend slots.

But what does Mom say?

“The war was still going on. When I was 14, we 4 younger kids sang cowboy songs on the radio. We were known as “The Rancho Roundup.” There were two or three others who sang with us, but I only remember Norman Newberry, who came from Texas, and whom we teased incessantly because of his accent.  He is in the picture of us sitting on the corral gate.”

The country music group Rancho Roundup was a live performance band that appeared on San Bernardino radio station KFXM, and met and performed with Tennessee Ernie Ford there. Their appearances took place in the early-to-mid 1940s. 

Bonita Hinds, in an audio interview recorded for the San Bernardino Public Library in 2003, recalled that her brother (who played guitar), her mother, and other friends and neighbors performed as the Rancho Roundup as well, the name given more to the show rather than a particular group. 

“Oh, yes, California Hotel. We were called the Rancho Roundup and we were on the radio, KFXM, which was at the California Hotel, and we met Tennessee Ernie Ford and we would play – sing – for about half an hour, I don’t remember how long. My brother played the guitar – and mother and Eleanor, all three played the guitar. And there’s different people in the, friends from our neighborhood that were in the show-dozen of us, or maybe less, eight of us maybe. And we did that one whole summer for about half an hour or so.”

Later, after World War II, Country music personality Tennessee Ernie Ford worked as a disc jockey at KFXM where he hosted an early morning country music program called “Bar Nothin’ Ranch Time”. He created his “Tennessee Ernie” persona during this time and became popular in the area before moving to another station in Pasadena. 

The Inland Empire had a thriving country-swing music scene in those early years. San Bernardino was a hub for the “Dust Bowl” migration, and many local bands played live “Western Swing” in the hotel’s ballroom or the studio. Names often associated with that era’s local circuit include groups led by Cliffie Stone or early versions of the Town Hall Party musicians who were active in the Riverside/San Bernardino area.

A number of groups were active in the area during the 1940s. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys were widely known as the “King of Western Swing,” Wills and his band moved their operations to California in the early 1940s, performing extensively across Southern California venues. Foy Willing and the Riders of the Purple Sage performed both on radio and in regional venues. Tommy Sargent’s Range Boys were Southern California-based western swing group active in the 1940s as were Tex Williams and the Western Caravan.

All of these groups created a sound that lived on for years, performing in local concert and dancehall venues throughout Southern California. Western swing, which peaked in popularity during the 1930s and 1940s, began to decline in the late 1940s and saw a significant drop by the late 1950s. Key factors for its decline included a wartime tax on dance halls in 1944, the rise of rock and roll, the advent of television, and shifting popularity toward smaller-band honky-tonk. But I still love that sound!