Radio Days
The three most important things in my life are family, music and radio. My pure family is made of my daughters Anna Rose and Christina Beard who are grown and live apart from me. But my friends are family too, my tribe, those I keep close to me no matter how far apart we are. Many of my friends are people I have met through music and radio. I love all kinds of music all except the entirely commercial. Radio for me has been public radio, and except for the all-news NPR stations, public radio is about good music of all kinds.
I got my start is the 1970's in radio in the humble beginnings of WYEP. There are some cool old WYEP pictures like this one of the logo when 91.5fm predated the current 91.3fm frequency. I listened to WYEP as a college student because here was a radio place that played a variety of great music with no commercials. The short-lived heyday of FM commercial radio was gone with Lee Abrams and his radio consultants that axed playlists to 500 songs or less in tight, specific formats. From listening I became a volunteer DJ playing folk music records that I had heard from my friends in the music community of the era. When I promoted concerts for Calliope at that time, I would do interviews on my show which aired primarily on Saturday afternoons and Tuesday nights.
Today my experiences with three radio stations all come together. A station I founded in the 1980's WNCW, a newer, cool station in Knoxville, WDVX - and my early days at WYEP - all blended. I had the chance to drive to Knoxville and visit WDVX last week. This is a bluegrass and Americana music station which does live music broadcasts and features many local artists on the air. When I managed WNCW in western North Carolina mid 80's-mid 90's, I met the founder of WDVX, Tony Lawson at Merlefest, the great NC music festival dedicated to the late Doc Watson and his son Merle.
Doc Watson (center) with Merlefest founder B. Townes (left) and the World Cafe's David Dye
at WNCW in the early 90's.
WNCW was sought-after. People were inspired to raise funds to build boosters, or FM translators in surrounding cities: Charlotte, Greenville, SC, Boone, NC. Then someone even donated a translator for a time, in Knoxville. When a few of us first met and talked with Tony Lawson, we supported his efforts. I was flying high on a station I only recently had the chance to start up.
Last week WDVX General Manager Linda Billman acknowledged WNCW as the model the Knoxville people followed in forming WDVX. Engineer Don Burggraf manages a plethora of live music broadcasts in the community for WDVX and records interviews and live programming at Merlefest every year. Don remembered the early days of WNCW and thanked me for sending CDs to him for his support of my station.
Program Director Tony Lawson now manages WBCM the FM station in Bristol, TN licensed to the Birthplace of Country Music.
An upcoming Knoxville festival - The Knoxville Stomp - caught my attention, because like the Bristol Rhythm and Roots Revival, it celebrates the city of Knoxville's early recording sessions of old-time, jazz and gospel music:
From the info release: LOST ERA OF MUSIC COMES TO LIFE AT ‘KNOXVILLE STOMP’ FESTIVAL
In the summer of 1929 and spring of 1930, a novelty came to Knoxville, Tennessee – a fully-equipped, modern recording studio, installed by the Brunswick record label at the St. James Hotel on Wall Avenue in the heart of downtown. The Chicago-based label put out a call for local and regional musicians to come in and cut records for national distribution.
The Knoxville Stomp festival will run May 5-8, 2016, and will include multiple concerts, historical walking tours, lectures, panel discussions and a 78rpm record show. The festival is being presented by the Knox County Public Library’s Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound, WDVX Radio, the East Tennessee Historical Society and Visit Knoxville.
The Knoxville Stomp will also serve as the official launch party for Bear Family Records’ Knox County Stomp box-set, named for one of the songs recorded at the St. James Hotel. The Germany-based Bear Family Records is the premiere label for archival releases of American music, including the Grammy-nominated Bristol Sessions box-set.
Among the artists who recorded at the St. James Hotel were country star Uncle Dave Macon, gospel-blues singer Leola Manning, and the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, an African-American string band featuring Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong. (Armstrong is the subject of the 1985 documentary Louie Bluie, directed by Terry Zwigoff, whose other films include Crumb and Ghost World.)
The Knoxville Stomp festival will include:
A concert by Dom Flemons, a musician, scholar and cofounder of the popular Carolina Chocolate Drops, named in tribute to the Tennessee Chocolate Drops;
A public talk and film screening with renowned record collector Joe Bussard, who maintains one of the world’s largest collections of American music from the 1920s and 1930s; A 78 record show, for collectors of vintage shellac sides.
I don't remember how I learned of Joe Bussard, but we carried his show on cassette early on at WNCW around our folk, old-time, blues and bluegrass programming. WDVX keeps this program of 78 rpm recordings on their schedule and to see him come speak at the Knoxville Stomp is amazing. He would send his weekly cassette, reeking of cigar smoke for airplay. This is still how WDVX receives the show for broadcast.
The so-called Tennessee Trio, a.k.a. Tennessee Chocolate Drops, a.k.a. Martin, Bogan and Armstrong—who would have to wait more than 30 years to become international stars—made their first recordings at the St. James Hotel Sessions. Here is a clip of the Tennessee Chocolate Drops performing the Knox County Stomp.
Digging through my archives I found an audio file of an interview I did in 1980 at WYEP with Ted Bogan and Howard Armstrong who performed for a Calliope concert that year in Pittsburgh. My musician friend Matt Neiburger taped this off-air and sent me the interview electronically a few years ago.
Ted Bogan died in 1990 and Howard Armstrong died in 2003. Thankfully the music lives on...
# # #
