Seventy years ago in 1956, the Record Wrangler rode into the sunset.

But not before the Tri-City disc jockey Loyd Aman took the radio scene by storm in the mid-1950s as the Record Wrangler, perhaps the most popular radio personality ever in the Tri-Cities.

His popularity was such that fans wrote in for autographed pictures, and new local merchants clamored for his participation at their grand openings.

As the Record Wrangler, he was the voice of KALE radio. 

As his popularity soared, he began receiving as many as 75 letters a day, along with urgent requests for personal appearances.

It was all part of a 46-year radio career in the Tri-Cities for Aman.

Aman, who retired on New Year’s Day 1992, began his career as an announcer at a fledgling Tri-City station, KPKW, that went on the air in 1945.

Radio had been a fascination for him since boyhood. During the Depression, his family lived in an Idaho home without electricity. His neighbors and friends invited him to join them listening to major events on the car radio, like prize fights.

When his family moved to the Richland Wye area in 1939, Loyd was 10, and his fascination with radio continued while following the exploits of heroes in radio series like “Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy,” and being absorbed by plots in “I Love a Mystery.”

At Kennewick High School, Loyd enrolled in a radio class where he was given weekly broadcast time on “KHS on the Air.” Other classmates shared announcing duties on the 15- to 30-minute programming, and all the students in the class wrote scripts.

“I really loved it,” Aman said at the time of his retirement.

Loyd Aman became a collector of antique radios, amassing more than 100, a few of which are now at the East Benton County Historical Society Museum at Keewaydin in Kennewick.

| Courtesy East Benton County Historical Society

The station manager at KPKW heard Aman’s voice and enthusiasm and liked what he heard. He offered him a job after graduation in 1947.

Eager to start his new job as an announcer right out of high school, Aman showed up at KPKW, only to find a new manager who replaced Loyd’s would-be mentor. Looking at the fresh-faced teen, the new manager refused him a job.

Aman did get a chance to fill in for a few spins on a rickety turntable balanced by a flashlight battery. And, he was hired as a janitor, a job that earned him $12 a week.

“All I wanted was an excuse to go down there and play hits,” he recalled.

His call to military service came in the late ’40s, and he was gone from the Tri-Cities and radio until his discharge from the Army in 1952.

He returned to the Tri-Cities to find four radio stations. While getting some airtime at KWIE, the manager of a competing station, KALE, was impressed by what he heard and hired Aman.

A license was required, however, so Aman took a two-month leave for a six-week course in California to acquire his. 

When he returned to KALE, he found another new manager who had never heard of him. The one who hired Loyd had died, and Aman missed out again under a strikingly similar scenario to his previous efforts.

Good fortune finally came his way when KALE went to 24-hour broadcasting. Aman was hired for the night shift by the station manager who remembered the young, eager would-be announcer.      

Creating a late afternoon slot to play popular western music, the station called it the KALE Korral.

That’s when the Record Wrangler was born, with Loyd taking to the airwaves as such.

It wasn’t long until he rose to popularity.

KALE mailed 5,000 autographed photos of the Record Wrangler to fans and bought him a western outfit for public appearances.

The character was retired in 1956. “(The Record Wrangler) lasted until Elvis Presley,” Aman said. “That was the end of the Wrangler.”

The Record Wrangler may have passed into history, but for a dozen years the character’s voice resurfaced in ads for Ranch and Home.

The pitchman’s trick dog, Leonard, developed a following of his own.

At the time of his retirement, Aman said he believed it was the longest single run of any ad in Tri-City radio history.

Aman joined KONA Radio in 1963, when the ownership was associated with KEPR TV, and for more than three years in the 1960s, he served simultaneously as production director for both the TV and radio stations.

His later career in radio was more on the production side than announcing.

He became a collector of antique radios, amassing more than 100, a few of which are now at the East Benton County Historical Society Museum at Keewaydin in Kennewick.

His career in radio did not disappoint: “I enjoyed coming to work almost every day. If I would pick a job again, it would be this; it fits my temperament and me.”

Gale Metcalf of Kennewick is a lifelong Tri-Citian, retired Tri-City Herald employee and volunteer for the East Benton County Historical Museum. He writes the monthly history column.