WLAC is a clear channel radio station based in Nashville, Tennessee, operating at 1510 kHz on the AM dial.

Early history[link]

Its first broadcast took place on November 24, 1926. The call letters were chosen to contain an acronym for the first owner of the station, the Life and Casualty Insurance Company of Tennessee. Studios were located on the fifth floor of the Life and Casualty building in downtown Nashville. In 1928, it became Nashville's CBS Radio affiliate, a link that has remained to this day.

The early years of the station featured, as most big-city stations of that time, network programming, local news, studio-orchestra musical features (accompanied by an in-studio pipe organ), farm reports, and some educational programming. Its main competitor in that era was WSM, which became known as the radio station where country music essentially developed and became a national phenomenon. When country music became a big business in the late 1940s, WLAC added early-morning and Saturday-afternoon shows in an attempt to steal some of WSM's thunder. Otherwise, the station prided itself as a pillar of the community and placed emphasis on general full-service programs.

In 1942, the station boosted its power to 50,000 watts, becoming the second clear-channel station in Tennessee behind WSM. its daytime signal is somewhat weaker than that of WSM, whose daytime signal reaches parts of five states. For instance, close-in suburbs like Murfreesboro only get a grade B signal. However, its nighttime signal reaches parts of 28 states and three Canadian provinces.

The nighttime R & B years[link]

By the 1950s, however, WLAC would achieve a distinctive notoriety of its own. The station became legendary from a quartet of nighttime rhythm and blues shows hosted by Gene Nobles, "John R." (John Richbourg), Herman Grizzard, and Bill "Hossman" (or simply "Hoss") Allen in the 1950s and 1960s. Thanks to the station's clear channel designation, the signal reached most of the Eastern and Midwestern United States, although African-American listeners in the Deep South were the intended audience of the programs. Further, several foreign countries, particularly islands in the Caribbean and southern Canada, were within range of the station's nighttime signal; the music heard on WLAC played a notable role in the development of ska music as a result.^[1] WLAC was particularly popular with some young white teenagers; some^[who?] believe that the nightly shows laid the foundational audience for the rock and roll phenomenon of the late 1950s.

Nobles began the move, in 1946, toward what were considered at the time "race" records, a euphemism intended to deter supposedly respectable audiences. But he and the others discovered the large numbers of African-Americans in places like the Mississippi Delta, the Carolina Lowcountry, Louisiana, Chicago, and Detroit, people whom practically no other radio stations were serving. Gradually phasing in artists like Amos Milburn, Chuck Berry, and Fats Domino in the early 1950s to supplement the big-band artists of the era such as Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller, the WLAC announcers presided over the development of what became "rhythm-and-blues" music. They did this mainly to attract advertisers who serviced the African-American community, such as hair-care products like Royal Crown Hair Pomade or chicken hatcheries, which packaged baby scrub roosters and other undesirable stock in large quantities for sale. The jockeys developed a reputation for colorfully pitching those products on-air; some product slogans lent themselves to sexually suggestive double entendres, which only increased the announcers' popularity among teen listeners. The jockeys conducted the advertising sales on a "per inquiry", or commission, basis, meaning that ratings per se did not play a major role in the programs' successes.

Performers of later years, such as Johnny Winter, and Allman brothers Duane and Greg, have credited the station as being a valuable source of inspiration for their artistic development. A strange irony about the phenomenon was unknown to most listeners of that time: all four disc jockeys were in fact middle-aged Caucasians, not African-Americans, as their Southern, gravelly, drawling voices suggested. Richbourg and Allen in particular made frequent use of colloquialisms most familiar to their audience, thereby convincing many that they were "soul brothers," as a common expression of that day would have it.

Other regular sponsors of the four shows included Randy's Record Shop of Gallatin, Tennessee, Ernie's Record Mart, and Buckley's Record Shop, the latter two of Nashville, all of which conducted mail order business selling the recordings featured on the shows, and had affiliations with record companies in Middle Tennessee. Buckley's Record Shop folded in the early 1970s; Randy's Record Shop ceased operating in the late 1990s. Allen and Richbourg also had financial interests in recording companies, artist management, and recording studios at varying points in their careers.

Each jockey's program lasted from one to two hours per evening Mondays through Saturdays, occupying roughly (with adjustments over the years) the period between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. Central Time; on Sunday nights, Richbourg or Allen hosted programs featuring the similar black gospel genre. Richbourg and Allen took credit for helping boost (or start) the careers of artists like James Brown, Ray Charles, B. B. King, Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin; Nobles helped the likes of Little Richard.

[edit] The 1970s and the Top 40

Other than the famous late-night shows, WLAC followed a fairly conventional news/features course in the daytime until the early 1970s, when new management attempted to program a standard-issue consulted Top 40 format, competing against ratings leader WMAK (now defunct) for the Nashville-area teenage audience. This move in particular is believed to have prompted Richbourg and Nobles to retire, as they had no interest in conforming to a predetermined, pop-oriented playlist.

In addition to this, most markets in WLAC's night-time coverage area now had African-American-oriented stations of their own, most of which attracted the demographic groups that formerly listened to Allen, Richbourg, and Nobles' shows as their only source for R&B and soul music. Furthermore, musical tastes among younger listeners in particular changed in divergent directions as the 1970s approached, as Euro-American youth began to prefer the hard rock that initially modeled itself on the blues (especially on the upstart FM stations that began playing it), while African-American kids gravitated toward the grittier edges of funk or early disco and, eventually, rap. This made the Motown, Muscle Shoals, and Memphis sounds favored by the DJ trio seem passe, and the hosts' audience, unsurprisingly, began to age, something almost always unattractive to radio station managers. Changing tastes also brought about an imminent demise to record labels such as Stax, which were major suppliers of music heard on the R&B/Soul shows.

To replace the retiring jocks, the station recruited young Spider Harrison, a native New Yorker who at the time was an afternoon urban air personalty and program director at WTLC-FM in Indianapolis. Harrison steered the nighttime format into a blend of soul and rock, in an attempt to target an entire new generation of young night-time listeners throughout the country. However, WLAC appeared to gain little Arbitron improvements from local listeners, this despite nonstop promotional events staged throughout the Nashville area. Only Hoss Allen kept his program, which he converted sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s to a black gospel format, by moving it to the overnight slot before morning drive-time; despite complying with management wishes (unlike Richbourg and Nobles), WLAC never promoted Allen's shows actively again.

News and talk since 1980[link]

The station finally pulled the plug on its unsuccessful run as a Top 40 outlet and changed formats to news and talk in 1980, making it one of the first stations in the Southern U.S. to adopt that format exclusively. It continues to fill that niche of programming, and in 1986, WLAC pioneered the now-burgeoning format of sports talk in Middle Tennessee, when it began a two-hour-long afternoon drive-time sports talk show hosted by record company executive and sports fan Rick Baumgartner, along with former WSMV sportscaster Charlie McAlexander. Also, former WSM-AM, WSMV and WKRN personality Teddy Bart launched his critically acclaimed "Roundtable" interview program on WLAC's morning schedule in 1985. The show, which featured newsmakers in Tennessee politics, later moved to several other Nashville stations before discontinuing production in 2005.

Much in the same manner as in years past when network programming gave way at sunset to R&B music for a different audience, for many years after WLAC changed to news and talk, the station abruptly switched, at 8 p.m. Central Time (when the clear-channel signal settled into place) to an all-religion format. The nighttime line-up included mostly paid broadcasts of many evangelical, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal preachers, with the news/talk format resuming at daybreak (after the Hoss Allen show). This practice was discontinued shortly after the station's purchase by Clear Channel Communications.

Currently[link]

WLAC is now the Nashville home for several popular conservative talk shows. WLAC's main competitor is WWTN, an FM talk radio station. The station is an affiliate of Fox News Radio.

Weekday Schedule[link]

• Steve Gill, 5-8 AM
• The Glenn Beck Program, 8-11 AM
• The Rush Limbaugh Show, 11 AM-2 PM
• The Sean Hannity Show, 2-5 PM
• The Michael Berry Show, 5-7 PM
• Plain Jane Wisdom w/ Devon O'Day and Kim McLean, 7-8 PM
• Dr. Asa Andrew, MD, Dr. Asa On Call, 8-11 PM
• Coast to Coast AM, 11 PM-4 AM

University of Tennessee football and basketball also airs on the station.

Weekend Programming[link]

Weekend programming includes syndicated shows The Mutual Fund Show with Adam Bold and The Weekend with Mike McConnell as well as shows of local interest and week in review programming from some of the weekday line up hosts.

Call letter history[link]

The WLAC callsign once also applied to a Nashville FM station (105.9, now WNRQ) and TV station (Channel 5, now WTVF). They, along with the AM station, were once owned by the Life and Casualty Insurance Company of Tennessee (hence the callsign, also sometimes said to stand for We Love All Christians). The FM station is now owned by Clear Channel, and remains a sister station to WLAC. The TV station left the family in 1975, when it was sold to the Hobby family of Houston (it is now owned by Landmark Communications).

See also[link]

• List of Nashville media

References[link]

External links[link]

• 1510 WLAC Official site
• Query the FCC's AM station database for WLAC
• Radio-Locator Information on WLAC
• Query Arbitron's AM station database for WLAC
• WLAC Radio: The Unofficial Webpage - station history
• History of WLAC
• Aircheck of John Richbourg ("John R."), circa 1970

Coordinates: 36°16′15″N 86°45′24″W / 36.27083°N 86.75667°W / 36.27083; -86.75667

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Spider Harrison is an American national radio DJ/Entertainer who first rose to prominence after replacing John R. on WLAC/Randy's, a 50-thousand watt Class A clear channel station in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the syndicated creator and host of urban/rock radio features "Spider Harrison's Rock n Soul America" ^[1] and What Ever Happened To ..?^[2] and owner of independent record label Spido Records Ltd.^[3]

Spider Harrison

Biography[link]

Early life and education[link]

Born in Hempstead, New York, he became known as "Spider Harrison" while attending Hempstead High School, where he was a running back on the football team. Catching the eyes of a coach because of his size and speed, Harrison became known as "Spider Harrison" for the remainder of his high school days and carried the handle into his radio, recording and acting careers.

During his high school summers, he worked with a New York concert promoter, an arrangement that allowed him to meet with radio personalities from Top 40 powerhouse WABC and #1 Soul station WWRL as well as with many recording artists and record industry executives. Taking classes at C.W. Post College, Harrison worked several "fill in" air shifts on WCWP and created a show called An Introduction To Soul. He soon interned at WWRL in Woodside Queens where he honed his radio production skills and filled in on Sundays, setting up gospel "remotes" for churches throughout Brooklyn and Harlem (New York).

Spider Harrison attended C.W. Post College, Tennessee State University, LA Valley College (AA Degree in Liberal Arts) and holds a Business Administration Degree from The University of La Verne (La Verne, CA).

Career[link]

Spider Harrison's first professional radio stop was at WTLC-FM in Indianapolis. There, as an afternoon drive personality, Spider Harrison soon became program and music director. Next Spider Harrison answered the call to replace the legendary John R. (John Richbourg) on his retirement from the 50,000 watt clear channel Class A station, WLAC (often referred to as Randy's Record Mart of Gallatin TN) in Nashville. This move enabled Spider Harrison's show to reach half of the US and parts of Canada and the Caribbean. During his eight years at WLAC the station was purchased by Billboard Magazine and Spider found himself hosting the first Billboard Soul Countdown syndicated radio show. In the 1980s, when AM radio began moving more and more towards a news/talk format, Spider Harrison relocated to Los Angeles, greatly expanding his industry opportunities. Besides a stint at radio station KGFJ, he started the nationally syndicated radio show 'What Ever Happened To?' that was based on his respected column in BRE (Black Radio Exclusive Magazine). In addition to his radio career he became the West Coast promotions director for the first successful Rap record label in America Sugar Hill Records established by the late Joe Robinson Sr., Joey Jr. and founder Sylvia Robinson. To this day Spider Harrison regards with satisfaction seeing Rap Music achieve national and international significance and his experience as Promotion Director accompanying Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five on their national tours as high points in a long exciting career.

An active member of the Screen Actors Guild, Spider Harrison has appeared in national television commercials with Colonel Sanders for KFC, with Johnny Cash for STP and with Billy Carter in television spots for 'Billy Beer'. Amusingly, he has many times been featured as Hollywood's Johhny Cochran Look-A-Like. Spider Harrison's recording of his song 'Beautiful Day' (still available from Stones Throw Records) was internationally released while he was at WTLC-FM. He has guested vocally on albums by R&B greats Millie Jackson and the late Joe Tex.

References[link]

[1] What Ever Happened To..? Radio show http://www.whateht.com
[2] Spido Records Website http://www.spidorecords.com

External links[link]

• Spider-Harrison.com
• What Ever Happened To..?
• Spido Records - Record label site
• Stones Throw Records
• Urban Insite

Richard Wayne "Rich" Mullins (October 21, 1955 – September 19, 1997) was an American contemporary Christian music singer and songwriter born in Richmond, Indiana. He had two sisters and two brothers.

Mullins was best known for his worship songs "Awesome God" and "Sometimes by Step", both of which have been embraced as modern classics by many Christians. Some of his albums were also considered among Christian music's best, including Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth (1988), The World As Best As I Remember It, Volume One (1991) and A Liturgy, A Legacy, & A Ragamuffin Band (1993). His music has been covered by many artists, including Caedmon's Call, Five Iron Frenzy, Amy Grant, Carolyn Arends, Jars of Clay, Michael W. Smith, John Tesh, Chris Rice, Rebecca St. James, Hillsong United and Third Day.^[1]

Rich Mullins is also remembered for his devotion to the Christian faith. He was heavily influenced by St. Francis of Assisi (1181–1226). In 1997, he composed a musical called Canticle of the Plains, a retelling of the life of St. Francis set in the Old West.^[2]

Biography[link]

Richard Mullins was born to John Mullins, an Indiana tree farmer, and Neva Mullins, a Quaker.^[3] Mullins' family called him by his middle name, Wayne, which he went by until college when his friends called him Richard. Mullins grew up attending Arba Friends Meeting, a church in Lynn, Indiana.^[4] The Quaker testimonies of peace and social justice later inspired many of his lyrics. Mullins was baptized when he was in the 3rd grade.^[5] His great-grandmother had taught him to play hymns in four part harmony when he was very young;^[6] he began to study classical piano with a Quaker teacher while in elementary school.

An important part of Rich Mullins' musical talents in Richmond, Indiana was being the piano player, songwriter and vocalist for the New Creations Choir which was started by Tim and Bonnie Cummings in the early 1970s. The choir had a bus, toured several states and even produced a record album. Today New Creations is a church and school for teens and Rich Mullins was a contributing factor in its beginning.

In 1974–78, Mullins attended Cincinnati Bible College. He worked in a parking garage to help pay for his schooling.^[7] From 1975 to 1978 he was the Music Director and Youth Director near Cincinnati at Erlanger United Methodist Church, Erlanger, Kentucky.^[8]

In the 1980s he moved to Nashville, Tennessee to begin his professional recording career.^[9] Mullins was engaged sometime between the late '70's and early '80's and had written the song Doubly Good To You (recorded by Amy Grant on her album Straight Ahead) for the wedding. However, his fiancée broke off the engagement, at which time Mullins wrote Damascus Road.^[10][11]

Years later Rich shared thoughts about his relationships and personal life in a radio interview with Rick Tarrant:

I would always be frustrated with all those relationships even when I was engaged. I had a ten year thing with this girl and I would often wonder why, even in those most intimate moments of our relationship, I would still feel really lonely. And it was just a few years ago that I finally realized that friendship is not a remedy for loneliness. Loneliness is a part of our experience and if we are looking for relief from loneliness in friendship, we are only going to frustrate the friendship. Friendship, camaraderie, intimacy, all those things, and loneliness live together in the same experience...

In 1988, Mullins moved to Wichita, Kansas where, in 1991, he enrolled as a student at Friends University and lived with his best friend, David Strasser (a.k.a. Beaker). He was the director of Worship Ministries at West Evangelical Free Church. In Wichita, he met the other love of his life at Central Christian Church which inspired many of the songs on the Brother's Keeper album. He graduated with a B.A. in Music Education on May 14, 1995.^[12] After graduation, he and Mitch McVicker moved to a Navajo reservation in Tse Bonito, New Mexico to teach music to children. They lived in a hogan at the reservation until his death.

The profits from his tours and the sale of each album were entrusted to his church, which divided it up, paid Mullins the average salary in the U.S. for that year, and gave the rest to charity.^[13] Mullins was also a major supporter of Compassion International ^[14] and Compassion USA.^[15]

His faith can be understood by a quote he gave at a concert shortly before his death. He stated that:

Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these my brothers you’ve done it to me. And this is what I’ve come to think. That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my Savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in a beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken....(concert recording cuts off at this moment, losing any further context for this particular quote) ^[5][16]

Music career[link]

Mullins had a distinctive talent both as a performer and a songwriter. His compositions showed distinction in two ways: unusual and sometimes striking instrumentation, and complex lyrics that usually employed elaborate metaphors.

Mullins did most of his composing and performing on piano and acoustic guitar, but he also had a prodigious talent for obscure instruments. He displayed arguably virtuoso skills on the hammered and lap dulcimers (in "Calling out Your Name" and "Creed") and the Irish tin whistle (in "Boy Like Me/Man Like You" and "The Color Green").

Mullins formed his first band in 1976–77 while attending Cincinnati Bible College.^[9] His musical career formally began with Zion Ministries in the late 1970s, where he wrote music and performed with a band called Zion.^[9] The band released one album in 1981 entitled Behold the Man.^[9] While working for this ministry, Mullins wrote a song called "Sing Your Praise To The Lord" which was recorded by singer Amy Grant in 1982 and became an immediate hit on Christian Radio.^[9] In 1983 Debby Boone recorded Mullins' "O Come All Ye Faithful" (first presented on January 19, 1977 during a concert entitled In Worship of the Coming King), for her Surrender album. In 1984, the song was also featured in a TV movie called Sins of the Past.^[9]

In 1986, Rich Mullins released his eponymous debut album, followed in 1987 by Pictures in the Sky.^[17] Neither album sold very well,^[14] but the Christian radio hit "Awesome God" on his third album, Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth, brought his music to a wider audience. The song "Awesome God" was written at a Christian camp "Rock Lake Christian Assembly" in a small town in Michigan.

In the early 1990s, Mullins released a pair of albums entitled The World As Best As I Remember It, Volume One and Two.^[18] These albums featured more of a stripped-back, acoustic feel than his earlier work, with nods to Irish music. "Step By Step", a song written by good friend Beaker and included on volume one, and incorporated into "Sometimes By Step" with additional lyrics by Mullins on volume two, became an instant hit on Christian Radio, and, like "Awesome God", it became a popular praise chorus.

In 1993, Mullins assembled a group of Nashville musicians (including Jimmy Abegg, Beaker, Billy Crockett, Phil Madeira, Rick Elias, and Aaron Smith) to form A Ragamuffin Band, whose name was inspired by the Christian book The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. The band recorded A Liturgy, a Legacy, & a Ragamuffin Band, which was later named the No. 3 best Christian album of all time by CCM Magazine. Liturgy was a concept album that drew its inspiration, in part, from the Catholic liturgy. The Ragamuffins also appeared on Mullin's 1995 record Brother's Keeper.

Mullins recorded a duet called "I Believe" with Hokus Pick on the album Brothers From Different Mothers in 1994. In addition to his vocals, Mullins performs on the lap and hammer dulcimers.^[19]

In 1997, Mullins teamed up with Beaker and Mitch McVicker to write a musical based on the life of St. Francis of Assisi, entitled The Canticle of the Plains.^[2] Mullins had great respect for St. Francis, and even formed "The Kid Brothers of St. Frank" in the late 1980s with Beaker.^[20]

Death and legacy[link]

On September 19, 1997, Mullins and his friend Mitch McVicker were traveling on I-39 south of Bloomington, Illinois, to a benefit concert at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas, when his Jeep rolled over. They were not wearing seat belts and were both ejected from the vehicle. When a passing semi-trailer truck swerved to miss the overturned Jeep, Mullins, who was too injured to move out of the path of the oncoming truck, was hit and died instantly at the age of 41. McVicker was seriously injured but survived.

His funeral was open to the public and had a massive gathering. He is buried at the Harrison Township cemetery in Hollansburg, Ohio, alongside his brother, who died in infancy, and his father.

Shortly before his death, Mullins had been working on his next project, which was to be a concept album based on the life of Jesus Christ and was to be called Ten Songs About Jesus. On September 10, 1997, nine days before his death, he made a rough micro cassette recording of the album's songs in an abandoned church. This tape was released as disc 1 of The Jesus Record, which featured new recordings of the songs on disc 2 by the Ragamuffin Band, with guest vocalists Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Ashley Cleveland, and Phil Keaggy. "Heaven In His Eyes" was not a new song, but one that had been written over two decades earlier, a beloved favorite of Rich's.

Rich's interest in Saint Francis of Assisi led to an attraction to Roman Catholicism in his final years. There was no daily Protestant service on the Navajo reservation, so Rich frequently attended daily Mass. He never converted, and there is dispute over his intentions.^[21][22][23]

The year that he died, Rich himself declared,

In 1998, the tribute album Awesome God: A Tribute to Rich Mullins was released, featuring favorite Mullins songs reinterpreted by his Christian music peers.

Mullins' family founded The Legacy Of A Kid Brother Of St. Frank to continue his mission to develop programs of art, drama and music camps for Native American youth and provide a traveling music school serving remote areas of the reservations. Today it is administered by Tammy Pruitt.

Color Green Films with Kid Brothers of St. Frank Co. are currently developing a full length feature film based on Mullins' life and legacy. Filming is slated to begin in July 2011 and the film will be directed by David Schultz. www.richmullinsthemovie.com

Discography[link]

• Behold the Man (1981)
• Rich Mullins (1986)
• Pictures in the Sky (1987)
• Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth (1988)
• Never Picture Perfect (1989)
• The World as Best as I Remember It, Volume One (1991)
• The World as Best as I Remember It, Volume Two (1992)
• A Liturgy, a Legacy, & a Ragamuffin Band (1993)
• Brother's Keeper (1995)
• Canticle of the Plains (1997)
• The Jesus Record (1998, posthumous)

Awards[link]