BluePower To Present 50,000 Watts Of Pure Soul....WLAC Radio!

Back in the 1950s, when white teenagers were just beginning to discover that Pat Boone's version of "Ain't That A Shame" was not the original, a radio station in Nashville, Tennessee, was beeming rhythm and blues and gospel music to millions of young listeners, each discretely tuning his dial to 1510 on the AM dial late into the evening hours.

It was 10:00 pm in the East, bed time for many a schoolboy. But, if the weather was cooperative and the tuner sensitive enough, wonderful sounds soon began to issue forth. Not Perry Como, not the Chordettes, certainly not Pat Boone. No, here streaming directly into our bedrooms were the strange, new, and wonderful tones of Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed, Lowell Fulson, Lightning Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Little Junior Parker, The Spaniels, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howling Wolf, and Etta James.

Here was something special, something to be shared only with your very best friends, not with those jerks at school who didn't know about it and couldn't understand it if they did. Here was something that made you wish you could soundproof the door to your room or, perhaps, buy a pair of headphones, all to insure that listening bliss might continue into the wee hours when your mother assumed that you had long been asleep.

In 1962, I had the great pleasure of meeting the gentlemen to whom I had listened for years covertly, late at night, through my "pillow" speaker. If my step-father had only known.

As I pushed the button in the elevator to take me to the floor on which the WLAC jocks ran their controlled madness, I realized that I was as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Soon however, that nervousness was quelled by a man who would become a mentor to me in many ways....Mr. John Richbourg. Through John, I met all the great jocks who nightly played the best of rhythm and blues. Mr. Gene Nobles (though he no longer worked at WLAC), "Big" Hugh Baby and Bill "Hossman" Allen. Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to meet Herman Grizzard.

I have been putting the pieces together for several years now and am finally in the position to put together several hours of history and comments as to how influential WLAC became to so many people in the music business; players, writers, performers and businessmen alike.

Hopefully, I will find the time this weekend to assemble the first in the series dedicated to those great pioneers in Blues and R&B. Without these men and the station which allowed them time to create the demand for James Brown, Otis Redding, Hand Ballard and The Midnighters and many other artists which today are taken for granted. Without WLAC and the few stations which played black music, the world would be a great deal poorer musically.

Stay Tuned!
John Rhys-Eddins
BluePower.com

* The first three paragraphs of this piece were so beautifully written I had to use them. Mr. Jim Lowe is responsible and you should certainly go to his site regarding the mighty WLAC Radio.

Click here to go to WLAC Radio.

Gone, But Not Forgotten....Piano Red!

Willie Perryman went by two nicknames during his lengthy career, both of them thoroughly apt. He was known as Piano Red because of his albino skin pigmentation for most of his performing life. But they called him Doctor Feelgood during the '60s, and that's precisely what his raucous, barrelhouse-styled vocals and piano were guaranteed to do: cure anyone's ills and make them feel good.

Like his older brother, Rufus Perryman, who performed and recorded as Speckled Red, Willie Perryman showed an aptitude for the 88s early in life. At age 12, he was banging on the ivories, influenced by Fats Waller but largely his own man. He rambled some with blues greats Barbecue Bob, Curley Weaver, and Blind Willie McTell during the 1930s (and recording with the latter in 1936), but mostly worked as a solo artist.

In 1950, Red's big break arrived when he signed with RCA Victor. His debut Victor offering, the typically rowdy "Rockin' with Red," was a huge R&B hit, peaking at number five on Billboard's charts. It's surfaced under a variety of guises since: Little Richard revived it as "She Knows How to Rock" in 1957 for Specialty, Jerry Lee Lewis aced it for Sun (unissued at the time), and pint-sized hillbilly dynamo Little Jimmy Dickens beat 'em both to the punch for Columbia.

"Red's Boogie," another pounding rocker from the pianist's first RCA date, also proved a huge smash, as did the rag-tinged "The Wrong Yo Yo" (later covered masterfully by Carl Perkins at Sun), "Just Right Bounce," and "Laying the Boogie" in 1951. Red became an Atlanta mainstay in the clubs and over the radio, recording prolifically for RCA through 1958 both there and in New York. There weren't any more hits, but that didn't stop the firm from producing a live LP by the pianist in 1956 at Atlanta's Magnolia Ballroom that throbbed with molten energy. Chet Atkins produced Red's final RCA date in Nashville in 1958, using Red's touring band for backup.

A 1959 single for Checker called "Get Up Mare" and eight tracks for the tiny Jax label preceded the rise of Red's new guise, Dr. Feelgood & the Interns, who debuted on Columbia's "Okeh" subsidiary in 1961 with a self-named rocker, "Doctor Feel-Good," that propelled the aging piano pounder into the pop charts for the first time. Its flipside, "Mister Moonlight" (penned and ostensibly sung by bandmember Roy Lee Johnson), found its way into the repertoire of the Beatles. A subsequent remake of "Right String but the Wrong Yo-Yo" also hit for the good doctor in 1962. The Doc remained with OKeh through 1966, recording with veteran Nashville saxist Boots Randolph in his band on five occasions.

Red remained ensconced at Muhlenbrink's Saloon in Atlanta from 1969 through 1979, sandwiching in extensive European tours along the way. He was diagnosed with cancer in 1984 and died the following year.

From: allmusic
By: Bill Dahl