DJ Al Shade

I keep meaning to write this article. I met Al Shade a few years ago at a flea market. He was selling old radio trade magazines like Country Round Up, memorabilia, a nice Reel-to-reel deck and copies of his autobiography. I bought some of everything, shook his hand, and regret to this day not buying that reel-to-reel deck. He stood around and told stories to people all morning. I wanted to interview him. I didn't make time and I lost the opportunity when he died in January of 2026. [SOURCE]  Dammit. 

Allen Shade was born on October 21st, 1927 in Gratz, PA. The town sits at the base of Short Mountain in the Appalachians. A small town even today with only 742 residents. The population has been flat for all of shades life, the population when he was born was 615. It's about an hour north of Harrisburg, near nothing in particular.  It was the Lykens Valley Coal operation which sustained the town through the 1800s, but that pinched out in 1933. Shade is surely the most famous person from Gratz.  More here. 

In his autobiography (Which was equally about him and his wife) he wrote that on Saturday nights he listened to Lonnie Glosson and Wayne Raney on WCKY-AM out of Cincinnati, OH; and the WWVA Jamboree out of Wheeling, WV with Doc Williams, and the Border Riders with Chickie Williams. He started guitar lessons at the age of 12. His wife Jean did the same but with WSM, and The Grand Ol Opry.  In 2026 The Lebanon daily news published a nice bio which I'll quote here: 

"As a child, Shade first started getting into music by listening to what his parents tuned into on the radio at his home in Gratz, Pa. Often he would sneak into his grandmother’s living room to press the pedals on the old player piano or escape to the outhouse to sing his favorite tunes in private. Sometimes he would even draw in a crowd of up to 10 people on his front porch when he thought he was only singing to himself." 

He played his first gig, a square dance, in 1945. He started his first radio show in 1952 playing just ten minutes a month on 1270 WLBR-AM in Lebanon, PA. The station began broadcasting on July 26th, 1948 from North Annville, and moved to Ebenezer in August of 1950. In 1948 WLBR debuts it's FM stick, on 104.1. It was reassigned to 100.1 in 1949 and became WUFM in 1974, and WQIC in 1992. Today it's 100.1 WFVY. Throughout all those changes, in location format, frequency and ownership, WLBR-AM never changed calls, only the brand and format. That 10 minute spot on WLBR-AM turned into a weekly 3-hour music program. For the first 8 years it was mostly live music, which after 1955 included the Gesford sisters (Jean and Joann) It gradually became a DJ program, flipping records. He stayed with WLBR for 25 years, with a gap in the middle. Al and Jena married in 1955.

WLBR schedule of Sept. 6, 1953 - Lebanon Daily News

In 1961 Allen "Al" Shade and the Short Mountain Boys were in full swing doing live shows every Sunday at Himmelreichs Grove in Wommelsdorf, PA. Now definitively a duo, the Shades went to 940 WADV-AM in Lebanon in 1976.  This is sometimes cited as 1967, but that's surely a typo, as the station only signed on in 1976 as WVLV, the Voice of Lebanon Valley. It only picked up the WADV calls in 1987 making for a continuity issue with many Shade biographies. 

It's worth mentioning that WADV was only nominally online for years operating illegally. In 2007 fined WADV Inc. $4,000 for broadcasting over powered at night. [SOURCE] The fine included a warning that WADV previously has received three Notices of Violation, two of which included violations for over-powered operation. It went offline for a period in 2011, and again in 2016.  Eventually the station went dark again in 2019 and getting a large FCC fine. The Kochel family struggled to run it, but it did resume in 2021, and go dark again in 2023.[SOURCE] They managed to file a proper STA for being off air temporarily but it was a very protracted kind of temporary. It's gospel audience is small but loyal. More here.

Al Shades official bio on his website reports that he made the move for better pay, a decision that comes up for us all. Country singer Jo Ann Thomas was also a DJ there. Ted "The Bear" Foreman was the original morning host, also did time at WSHP and WCBG. The station signed on with a country format, and switched to AC in September of 1981. Foreman died in the late1980s.

I'm a star on WLBR - AlJean records in 1966

At the time shade was still mostly a songwriter and live performer. But let's back up a little bit. In 1958 he advertised his band in a classified ad for gigs at "parks, fairs and carnivals."  He went through a series of nicknames but nothing stuck:  The Goose Pimple Kid, The Jolly Green Giant and Rattlesnake Daddy. He would use his real name for most of his career. He used the Rattlesnake Daddy stage name on his one hour weekly WVLV program. He later added a a 3-hour Saturday show. His biography makes clear he was at WADV for 14 years. He was earning enough between gigs and radio that he quit his factory job in 1963. 

That Rattlesnake Daddy nickname was very idiosyncratic; the only one originating in the blues idiom. It has a likely origin in Cliff Carlisle's single in 1933, Also covered by Homer Callahan and Jesse Rodgers. But in Shade's active years it was notably covered by the Bailey Brothers in 1949 and Marvin Taylor in 1951. Shade didn't cover the tune until 1978. Blues and even Rockabilly were strictly on the periphery of Al Shade's works. His heart was in country music, so later Shade formed the Short Mountain Boys and recorded three LPs with them and his wife Jean. Those were released in 1965, '66 and '67 respectively. [SOURCE] Even after he left WADV Shade continued his radio career at other regional stations. Today WADV-AM is white gospel station, still on air, kinda, sometimes... 

In 1966 the Shades started their own record label AlJean records, an amalgam of his and his wife's first names. The Billboard Country Music Source books of 1978 & 1979  lists the address as RD4, Myerstown, PA.17067. I don't think it ever moved. I think the road was renamed Colonial Ave sometime in the '80s.  If you check Google Maps, the 2012 image shows Al Shade in the drive way walking toward his garage. The painted image on the mailbox is too blurry to read... 

Bridging the unreliable income of a performer, Al Shade also managed Williams Grove Park, near Mechanicsburg, from 1966 to 1971.  In one bio he wrote ominously that "changes occurred" at WADV and they changed his schedule. So Shade took his sponsors and left for 92.1 WCTX in Palmyra, PA. It was an FM station where he stuck is out for 4 months. WADV caved in and invited him back for a weekly 5&1/2 hour on Saturday mornings. More here.  So it came as a shock to them when the station flipped formats to what his bio calls "rock music."  His bio is short on dates but the 1988 Broadcasting & Cable lists the format as MOR. So lets' assume his departure then. WADV also had a horrible fire around then, and the owner was arrested for arson.  Looking for a new home they discovered WLBR was happy for them to return in 1989. More here. 

Al has also had a show on 1280 WHVR-AM in Hanover, PA for 25 years. It appears in most of his bios but I'm left wondering which 25 years. He barely mentions the station even in the autobiography he sold. The sole reference I found was the March 5th 1966 issue of Billboard lists him as a DJ on two stations "WHVR, Hanover, PA., and WLBR, Lebanon, PA." That particular article was about his launching the Shade Agency" to specialize in packaging country and gospel music shows. Anyway, his spot on WHVR was on Saturday mornings, clearly concurrent with his tenure at WLBR. When they were little, their two kids, Faron and Debbie Ann, sang on the program. Faron went on to become a musician himself.

Al Shade and the Short Mountain Boys, probably about 1955

Al got a spot on 1320 WGET-AM in Gettysburg, PA by 1987. There he had an hour show each Saturday morning from 9:00 to 10:00 AM. I did find some oddball references, outsourced that reported him on WEEU and WCOY. These are apocryphal. By 2012 they had moved to 1500 WWSM, in the the former WCTX studios three days a weekBy 2016 his arthritis was bad enough he had to give up playing guitar but he still sang 40-50 shows a year. 

business card sized photo, undated

Jean died at the age of 87 in 2017 and Al pressed on performing and broadcasting.  When I met Al Shade in the Fall of 2020 he was already 93 years old. He dug in his pockets, and got out a big overstuffed wallet and handed me his business card and a wallet photo of him and Jean. The photo was old, probably from the 1980s. His hair was still blonde in the image, and it was now fully gray; mostly white. The business card was clearly printed at home, with the tell-tale perforated edges. 

Business card circa 2020

It plugged his program on 1510 WWSM-AM, gave an address and phone number, and in the upper right hand corner it read "Championship Harmony Yodeling." On the back it gave the name of his radio program "Your Kind of Country, With Al and Jean Shade, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday 11:00 AM to 12:00 Noon..."  He had just celebrated the 70th anniversary of his radio program in 2022.