♫Name that Tune

While searching the Peanut Whistle archive I stumbled upon some long, long forgotten recordings of our jingle package that was part of our imaging at my first radio station, WEAS-AM in Savannah, Georgia. Most modern stations consider these singing radio legal ID’s passé. I agree, but it was refreshing hearing them again.

As Recorded June, 1983

Stay tuned

E93

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My first misadventure with Gospel 90 behind me, I returned to thoughts of life after high school. I was wrapping up the 11th grade supposedly college bound needing some sort of diversion for the coming summer vacation. Returning home from one of our—probably last minute—tape delivery runs to the radio station that spring, my dad and I began listening and talking about the broadcast we had only recently started airing on WEAS-AM.

We noted that the DJ was running a phone-in contest involving listeners guessing the number of eggs contained in his imaginary Easter basket. They would offer a guess then he played a tape of a presumably randomly generated number. The DJ was prone to stammering and often at a loss of the right words that he delivered with a slight lisp. Knowing of this DJ’s skill with the English language my dad asked, “You think you could do that, Neal?” It was a loaded question for sure. I didn’t know weather to be honored or insulted. He obviously lacked the skills of the FM DJ’s I was accustomed to.  “I guess so,” I replied weakly. “Well, if you’re interested, then I can talk to the ‘acting’ station manager for you.”

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“If Neal wants the job, then it’s his,” the manager later phoned Daddy, “So I can [honestly] tell this other guy that the position’s filled.”

She had listened to the voice-over introduction I had taped for the Jesus is Lord Broadcast and claimed to like it. Retrospectively, I was a cheaper button pusher. The Easter Basket DJ trained me. Much of what he taught took me years to un-learn, especially when I moved to the Atlanta market four years later. Only the basic mechanics of radio were part of his curriculum.

We became fast friends, though. We could talk shop for hours visiting each other at work over the years. I last saw him on a return trip to the new studio facility in 1988 when I had considered coming back to my original radio home. I never saw him or any of the AM jocks equal to our counterparts at our sister FM, E93.

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Magic E-93, as it became known, was the consistent number one radio station year in and out. Its music format appealed to the market’s predominant population. Featuring  songs by the Gap Band, The O’Jays, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, The Commodores, and Prince, E-93 brought soul to all the Coastal Empire.

In those days prior to the invasion of Rap and Hip Hop I actually listened. The initial appeal of working with my Gospel 90—ironically, a mostly white Southern Gospel station—was that it shared quarters with a station I secretly tuned in at home.

I witnessed first hand the likes of E-Man, Don “Casanova” Jones and “Stormin’ Norman” Wright weaving word tapestries of Funk, Rhythm and Blues. I was star-struck.

Like the famous reveal in the Wizard of Oz, I eventually saw behind the curtain. But, that’s another story.

Stay tuned

We will take an extended break from radio topics for the time being and delve into more relevant fare, next time…

©2010 Neal Rhoden, The Peanut Whistle. All rights reserved

A DJ Saved My Life

I was nervous. My dad had prepared a cassette tape of the first two weekly episodes of the Jesus is Lord Broadcast—a half hour brokered time preacher’s show on local 5,000 watt WEAS-AM in Savannah, Georgia. In a scene reminiscent of the 1987 movie Broadcast News, the tape was rushed—hand delivered— to the station just in time for the 12 noon airing that first Saturday we went to air. It was a small miracle that I got there in the first place.

Finally finding it, the station was not at all what I expected: located in a residential neighborhood, a fairly large two story clapboard house. A large wide wooden staircase led up to a screened porch and an unlocked front door to the reception area. Somehow I found myself on the upper floor having been misdirected around the obvious studio downstairs by a musical commotion. 

I heard loud music from a direction that I assumed was emanating from the studio. I never forgot the song playing: Indeep’s “Last Night a DJ Saved My life”. “Please,” I thought, “Somebody save me, I can’t find the studio!” It was a ghost town in there. Now clear as crystal, I realized the music and disembodied DJs were from a stereo cabinet the FM used to monitor their air. But, where was the studio? I tried a couple doors that opened into empty offices. Nothing! Time was wasting. I felt like a cat-burglar. Had all the DJ’s, like Elvis, left the building? Maybe I could steal all those gold records and certificates of live remotes promoting something called a “Budweiser Beer Bash” proudly displayed on the office walls. What sort of Christian station allowed such vulgar trophies in the first place? In the mind of a conservatively raised 17 year old Bud and Gospel Preaching did not mix. But, I digress.

Gospel 90 and its 100,000 watt FM were sister stations in the same building. Obviously, the FM dominated the decor choices. Had my dad seen what I saw that day he would have turned tail and run. But our sponsor—Manning’s Discount Furniture—was counting on us to deliver a product. So, I resumed my search. It was one minute to show time when I discovered stairs leading down into a pit of ugly brown carpeting; both on the floors and the walls located inside a haphazardly constructed addition encased in cinder block and plywood. The place reeked of cigarette and God knows what other type smoke, both legal and not. To the right was the FM control room. In the middle was the “Production Room.” And to the left was my future work home, WEAS-AM, “Gospel 90.” The doors were unlabeled; my ears had to determine which studio to enter. I chose wisely.

3, 2, 1, cue tape! Jesus is Lord was broadcast via 5,000 watts from the AM side. Our premiere went on without a second to spare—literally. Dennis; the DJ on duty, sighed relief as he politely waved me away returning to conversation with another visitor, presumably his wife. I was happy. Then I questioned, “How do I get out?”

We will continue the story of our FM soul sister next time on the Peanut Whistle. Read about E-Man, Casanova Jones, Stormin’ Norman and the other DJ’s who shared our space. Until then…

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden, The Peanut Whistle. All rights reserved

Let's Roll!

At the close of the Disco era was a fad known as Roller Disco. The popular dances and music moved into the roller skating rinks for those skilled enough.

I was not one of them. I had two left feet but learned to circle around the floor until I fell and hurt my backside on an eighth grade field trip and experienced pain for most of my high school years thus ending my skating “career.” I was too chicken to ever try again until tempted thirty years later when I had my own children. I'm still as clumsy as ever, but as far as my kids know, I can skate even though I am actually wearing shoes. That will be our little secret, dear reader. Shhh!

Disco is dead, but not forgotten. The genre evolved into “Dance” music. It is still played sometimes in its original form at the rinks around here, especially on special skate nights for old folks like me. Well, I'm not a fan of the music but it was designed to dance and later roll to; not many other forms of music are as compatible.

For those of us schooled in the Pentecostal and Southern Baptist conventions dancing was taboo in any form so the youth of my day needed a substitute. The ultra conservative of our sects would argue that even innocuous substitutes for the raunchy dancing and skating was just as bad and viewed as a gateway to Hell. Shoot, in modern churches dance teams are very common; my, how times have changed. I recently attended a church youth presentation of a mainline denomination that featured fast paced dancing to secular popular music accompaniment with no pretense of using a Christian substitute. Funny how even the churches are becoming more politically correct, omitting Christ. Those kids knew nothing of the restrictions I grew up with so I took no offense, especially considering the current character of Christian music.

Winning the “lost” teens of my day involved using our gospel music set to a modern beat. As I have noted in a previous post; I briefly moonlighted as DJ on Christian skate nights. The pairing of Southern Gospel and skates has always been surreal to me. I never thought the genre was compatible. So in 1984 I jumped at the opportunity to spin rock derived Contemporary Christian music (CCM) for the attending youth groups each week at the Savannah Skate Inn on Saturdays . The tunes were fast paced and skate-able. Not so in today's more bland homogeneous CCM. Christian skate night simply would not work for the present generation.

It was hard enough selling the idea of rolling to gospel music in my day when CCM was better. The unchurched laughed; we were preaching to the choir of those who attended (maybe a few invited their “unsaved” friends.) The ultra conservative simply weren't allowed or came without the knowledge of their pastor. It was a wholesome activity, I figured, so why did it fail? It might just boil down to a fickle public that summer. Who knows or cares?

Stay Tuned

© 2009 The Peanut Whistle. All rights reserved.

The Truth with My Hand Up

My hand to God this is the truth. If it had not happened in church to someone I know and trust. Yada, yada… In my last post I spoke of some gospel lyrics near and dear to my heart; this next song is especially touching to a car guy such as myself (the actual words from my cousin Ray):

Actually it’s...Jesus, he will be my snow tires, in the winter he’s my anti-freeze, when I need him, he is my oil filter, and he's my windshield when there is a breeze!!! C'mon, sing it this time if ‘ya know it!!.. (true song....written by a well-intentioned, but hardly mentally gifted girl from my childhood)

At least it rhymes. Thanks Ray! She took a metaphor and ran with it. Now on to something completely different.

I first met gospel comedian Wendy Bagwell in 1983 at a big gospel music show in Savannah, Georgia. He was over six feet tall with curly dark hair. The only man I have ever met named Wendy. Like Johnny Cash and his Boy Named Sue I believe Bagwell would have had a great story to tell with the origin of his name. This was about the time he first told his Three German Police Dogs story about the disruption that ensues when a yellow cat is introduced to three seeing eye dogs belonging to a group of famous blind singers at the Ebenezer Freewill Baptist Church all day singing and dinner on the ground homecoming. “Those blind folks didn’t know what was going on,” he said, “They just thought they done took that job too cheap.” His theory was that the blind group, unaware of the ruckus, assumed the crowd had broke out in an old fashioned shouting revival.

It turns out that Mr. Bagwell was quite the shrewd businessman as well. He owned Bagwell Sales in metro Atlanta, Georgia. My parents, who were both blind, did business with his furniture store several times over the years. My mom, who is not the least bit shy, confronted Wendy about his comments in the famous bit. “I’m blind, but I know what’s going on,” she commented to him. “I know you do,” Wendy replied with a broad smile and a wink in his voice. “This is the truth what I’m telling you with my hand up,” he would often say before one of his stories which were probably slightly exaggerated. Stretchers, if you will, were his calling card. He was a master showman of the Gospel world. Wendell “Wendy”Lee Bagwell died in 1996 and now has a stretch of US 278 in Georgia, our home state, named after him. Rest in peace.

Stay tuned.

nealrhoden@thepeanutwhistle.com

My First Radio Station

Gosh. My first station; what an odd, yet wonderfully unique format. It was a Gospel station with at least three dayparted formats. That meant we played a different style of music or programming depending on the time of day you were listening. Southern Gospel in the morning then time brokered religious programs mid-day, followed by traditional and urban contemporary Black Gospel. I loved it all. By 1986 I began my afternoon drive show with 30 minutes of Southern Gospel; the the rest of my broadcast was Contemporary Christian till 9pm. The listeners were confused, but what an education I gleaned from Gospel 90 WEAS AM (later WWJD) in Savannah, Georgia. I got from it a deeper appreciation for all forms of music as well as a priceless lexicon of Gospel trivia. 

The station was originally licensed to Savannah on 900kc in 1950 despite legal objections from the local broadcast community. See http://www.lawskills.com/case/ga/id/18820/Then it was known as WJIV. They played what was termed at the time "race records". Modeled after the highly successful WDIA in Memphis, Tennessee, WJIV served the African American community exclusively for about a dozen years. Forward to about 1963; WJIV station owner, E.D. "Dee" Rivers, Jr, moved the call letters "WEAS" from his Atlanta station on 1010 AM, today known as WGUN, to the Savannah station. In my research I discovered that Rivers also made an unsuccessful bid for a TV station called WJIV-TV. Coinciding with the call sign change was a shift to a "Hillbilly" format, what we know now as Country. What a contrast! But it seems these listeners were under served and Rivers once again filled a demographic need. I imagine the sounds of Patsy Cline and Hank Williams were interspersed with preachers and the occasional Gospel tune. A few years later in '68 the 100,000 watt WEAS-FM was born. It began as an automated "Beautiful Music" or "Easy Listening" format. The FM later programmed  "Progressive Rock" till the mid 70's. That's when I believe the "E-93" brand became reality. They were now serving the black community full time, the format that's a ratings winner for them until this day. I understand that the AM and FM were simulcasting in the morning in those days. The AM split away from the FM mid-day with preachers and Southern Gospel music 'til sun down.

By the time I joined WEAS-AM in May of 1983 it was mostly Southern Gospel. During the next 3 years the format evolved into the hybrid I described. Each disk jockey picked his own music. I could usually tune in at home and know which DJ was on by the music he or she played! It sounds as though it would be chaotic, but it worked, mostly.

Late 1983 enter a new manager from Arkansas one Charles Lewallen. He was a minister and believed in strict format. He objected to diluting our music selections with other variations of the Gospel form. One time he told me not to play a certain New Gaither Vocal Band selection because it sounded too "rock". That seems so ridiculous now. Gaither? Rock? I was 17 in October of 1983 when Charles changed our call letters to WWJD. The new call sign didn't easily roll off my tongue and was ten plus years before the unrelated WWJD bracelets. The acronym did NOT represent "What Would Jesus Do". Our name stood for, "Walking With Jesus Daily". A possible motive for the switch was a disassociation with our sister, WEAS-FM. Being a green teenager I complied with whatever management said. I had very little to do with the business end of radio until much later in my career.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in their January 30, 1985 issue that Mr. Lewallen had wrongfully fired a female black announcer, Lucy Frazier, in summer '83. The report said she was suing the station for damages in US District court in Atlanta. I don't know how the case was settled but it explains a lot! Charles abruptly disappeared early 1984 or slightly before. The paper quoted him as saying, it was, "inappropriate for a black woman to play white gospel records ."

At the time we had a staff meeting admonishing us to remain quiet on the situation.  Obviously, this manager had an eye on brand issues and image of the station, hopefully not skin color or gender. I'm not qualified to psychoanalyze his motive as racial. His side is not very well represented in the article. I think this incident prompted the addition of black Gospel music to our line up. Borrowed from our FM, Lester "Leck" White was eventually added mid-days to provide some soul.

During this whole time the glue that held our little 5,ooo watt station together was my dear friend and mentor Gloria. She had interviewed and hired me in the spring of 1983 and served as manager for my entire 3 1/2 year tenure. She had been pushed to the side briefly when Lewallen took over. I overheard a conversation between she and another DJ. She had felt slighted by the apparent demotion and threatened to quit. Long story short, she outlasted the new "manager" many years.

I would describe Gloria's management style as easy going, much like her on-air persona. Our DJ's pretty much had free reign. Not that we were allowed to play Led Zeppelin records or anything, I just mean we played almost any Gospel we wanted. We all felt trusted. She had a few exceptions though.  A lot of upbeat Contemporary Christian numbers were forbidden, such as the Imperials' "Water Grave", from the "Sail On" album. A great many of the "Do not play" list were deliberately scratched through on the record album and rendered unplayable; a primitive, but effective insurance of compliance.

This changed in September of 1986. We were going to switch to Contemporary Christian! As a 20 year old Christian youth who loved mainstream top 40 this was super news. The station had now been granted approval for 24 hour operation. For the 36 years prior to this occasion we were a "Daytimer", signing on at sunrise and signing off at sunset. As a concession to more powerful clear channel AM stations, our transmitter power was greatly reduced at night. We probably deferred to the powerhouse 890 AM WLS Chicago. I was made music director and coined  J-900 as a brand for our new sound.

The novelty wore off. I  found out that the "format" would only apply to certain dayparts. CCM would be heard only after 3:30 pm. I saw this as a weak commitment to the music. The local conservative preaching shows must have dictated our sound. Bummer! Our aim was to reach the youth demographic with the hotter sound. It was reasoned that most kids listened after class. A few outspoken callers to the station during that time of day were Christian private school students who reported that parents did not allow them to listen to any secular music. In them we had a small captive audience to supplement our regulars probably confused by our diverse sound. (Click on the Mp3 below for a sample.)

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We ventured past midnight to the likes of Michael W. Smith's "Rocket Town" and maintained the show until I left the station for the Atlanta market in late November of '86. I had declined an opportunity to work for the 50,000 watt sister station WGUN in Atlanta, interviewed at Love 86 WAEC-AM, and by February of 1987 found my self at a new home, the 1Kw daytimer, WSPZ-AM in suburbia.

Stay Tuned.

Live from the Traffic Circle

Talk about a one of a kind personality. I grew up listening to this guy in Savannah. It was a peanut whistle in Garden City, Georgia owned and operated (literally) by one man, Chris Watkins.

The station has been long abandoned. A daytimer that served most of the coastal town’s market. His format was hillbilly music served with Chris’ homespun humor, random musings and Paul Harvey news.

Chris preceded me as a DJ at WEAS-AM by at least 15 years and we never crossed paths. It’s a mystery how this guy got into radio much less how he had a successful local Country music show on the 5,000 watt WEAS and eventually his own station known as WNMT an ABC news affiliate. His was a gravely voice instantly recognizable. Imagine pulling your tongue all the way back into your throat affecting a deep southern accent and and odd chirpy staccato delivery while munching on rocks and you’ve got Chris.

He was known to do some odd things on the air seeing that he was not only the owner but sole DJ sunrise to sunset for a period of time. Once I was listening to him ramble off a local announcement then out of the blue he remarks, “Hmm, thought I heard a dog bark.” Then he goes back to his copy without missing a beat. Those long air shifts must have addled his brain temporarily.

Chris was opinionated and apparently a shrewd businessman. He refused to take on any religious brokered programs as he told my preacher father, “I’ll never have any pastors on my station.” I understand a few years later he rescinded his vow and allowed a few preachers on shortly before the station’s demise in the late 1980’s. He must have realized that despite his negative opinion of religion, carrying these brokered shows is almost a given in the peanut whistle world. It pays the bills.

When I moved to the Atlanta area, a top 10 major market radio town in 1986, I thought I had left behind the quaint radio personalities of Savannah. Surely all the radio announcers in the big city were golden throats speaking the king’s English with great precision. Boy was I naive. I was surprised to find Ludlow Porch on 50,000 watt clear channel WSB-AM. This guy did a mid-day talk show and later became syndicated all with Chris’ voice. The man could have been his twin. Sure his banter was more coherent than Watkins but this was a major market for crying out loud. I mean no disrespect to either of these unique men because my whole point boils down to realigning my own perceptions as a listener. Instead of fodder for ridicule I’ve learned to accept these unconventional voices for what they are or just simply listen elsewhere.

I did an audio parody of Chris Watkins years ago and will include it in a future Radio Rewind podcast so…

Stay tuned.