Thanks Peter,

I really doubt that it was playing before we got it. It was rescued from the barn and in very bad shape on the inside. Thank you for all that good advice. I need to start printing out everyone's advice.

Where do I start? Is there a beginners course I can start??

You're very welcome.
Where you start depends on what you may already know.
If you do not have any kind of experience with electronics or radio theory then there are two parts:
1.) You can read a little article about simple AA5 (all American 5 tube radios)
http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/fun ... AA5-1.html
2.) Basic electronic theory... is a bit more complicated but there are lots of primers on-line.
Electronics for Absolute Beginners:
http://lushprojects.com/absolutebeginne ... sbegin.pdf

If you do already have a smidgeon of understanding about electronics and radio.. then maybe all you'll need is some understanding of how to un-solder and replace capacitor and resistors.

There are tons of those beginner tutorials out there making it very simple to understand.

Some new- comers to the hobby have been able to just swap out old capacitors and resistors quite well enough to get these old radios going again without really having to know or truly understand much of electronic theory.
So there's many ways to approach the hobby.

Here's some good places to start;
http://antiqueradio.org/howfix.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/fun ... ering.html
http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/fun ... Codes.html