Canary Records provides yet another stunning archive album, this time from the Macedonian community in Ohio. From the label’s Bandcamp site:
“Bob Nicoloff’s Macedonian band remained active for at least 20 years, playing for dances organized by the Macedonian Patriotic Organization, weddings, and restaurants. Like the two other mid-Western Macedonian band leaders we’ve written about previously, Elia Kalkoff’s group from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Kime Nanchoff’s from Akron, Ohio, Bob Nicoloff used some of his wages to take advantage of the custom pressing services at RCA’s record pressing plant in Indianapolis. In 1954, he had four discs that we’re aware of produced on his own label Marco (named as an abbreviation of the Macedonian Record Company).
While leading the bands, working full time at the steelworks (eventually being promoted to foreman of the boiler room), working in the church, and helping bring up the kids, he also opened Nicoloff’s Grocery Store in 1959 and ran it until 1974. He retired from the steelworks in 1976 after more than 30 years there, he partnered in N & M Fabricating, doing much of the hiring through the 1980s and ‘90s.
Bob Nicoloff died at age 88 at Mercy Regional Medical Center in the town where he was born and spent nearly his whole life on January 25, 2012.”
