60 Years of Albert Batts

The second radio station to sign on in Chattanooga was 1420 WAPO-AM in September of 1936. WDOD literally beat them by a decade. It had been on air since 1925. The third was WDEF which signed on in 1940. Radio grew slowly in Chattanooga. It was a city of barely more than 50,000 people. The original studios were on Foust Street off Rossville Boulevard.  WAPO has it's place in history. I;m not as sure about Rev. Albert Batts. More here. 

Rev. Albert Holmes Batts remains an obscure figure. This songbook is undated. But I found a newspaper ads from 1947 and 1965 which match. A 1948 issue of the Church of God Evangel lists it on 1340 WDEF-AM daily at 4:45 with Rev. Batts. [SOURCE] It appears that Batts was on both WDEF and WAPO at the same time, or that he crossed the street multiple times in the 1940s.

The front cover of the hymnal reads "Listen to the Word of God Daily 6:15 AM - Sat. 12:30 PM Over North Alabama network each Saturday 12:30 to 1:15 PM from WAPO Chattanooga"  It gives an address of 411 Forrest avenue, Chattanooga, TN. It's a small but tasteful Colonial brick house. Copies were only 35 cents, and it refers to a monthly paper called The Word of God DEFENDER, spelled just that way. 

On the interior there is a head shot of the reverend himself, and  a group photo of the Bell Avenue Quartet. It's membership included: Mrs. A. H. Batts, Rev. A. H. Batts, Doyle Blackwood, Grady Hurst at piano and Mrs. Grady Hurst. Ms. Hurst I think is actually Ruby Wright Hurst, who taught piano at Lee College 1947 to 1952 and again from 1954 to 1970. For a local piano teacher, Roby is a well documented figure in Chattanooga.  [SOURCE] Ruby died in 2016. Her obit says that she and Albert performed with the “Word of God Quartet.” No word if Doyle was in that troupe. But that obit reports that she and Albert first met at Vaughn's School of Music, prior to working at Lee.  

But the big name there is Doyle Blackwood. He can only be one of the Blackwood Brothers. Their eponymous singing group formed in 1934 in Choctaw County, MS. They broke big in television in 1954 and stayed big on a Quartet circuit. I've written about them before.

I think Doyle appears in the Blackwood Brothers pictures at the Dollywood museum. The KMA guide of April 1946 commemorates his involvement with the radio station. [SOURCE]  The book A History and Encyclopedia of Country, Western, and Gospel Music by E. Linnell Gentry further confirms Doyle Blackwood was an announcer on WAPO. This somewhat dates the hymnal to the late 1940s.

"Doyle Blackwood, who is now an announcer in Chattanooga, TN will visit the Blackwood quartet from April 8 to April 26. He is a brother of Roy and James Blackwood and was former manager and master of ceremonies of the group. While here, he will make guest appearances with the Quartet."

Batt's "Word of God" radio program became a TV program.  They released at least one LP which has one small picture of Batts on WTVC channel 9 and gives the PO Box 21305 in Chattanooga. WTVC signed on in 1953. I'd guess that picture is late 50s early 60s.  But in the top corner of that LP it reads "On radio and television for thirty-five years." But without a date that's not terribly helpful. Few sources help the dating of his career. There was a book published in 1965 transcribing a debate he had with Rev. Harold Sain. Then another published in 1967 of a debate he did with Rev. Gus Nicols. He wrote the forward in 1969, quite lively and even somewhat salty.

 

A 1993 compilation of some newsletter called Evangel [SOURCE] records Batts turning 90 years old that year, and having been broadcasting, in Chattanooga for 58 years. He was now on WFLI-AM 11:00 Saturday mornings. Station 1070 WFLI-AM was a later AM stick, signing on in 1961. Initially a contemporary hits format, it became a christian radio format in 1962. They rebranded as "The Mid South's Most Powerful AM Gospel Station". They played Southern gospel music with some Christian talk and teaching shows. Sounds like somewhere Batts might fit in with his Pentecostal rhetoric. 

But using this date we can finally work backwards to date the rest of the story. If Batts was truly on air for 58 years then he first was on radio in 1935. But that's before WAPO signed on. I'm assuming there was a little rounding, and he was on air the first year WAPO was broadcasting, which is 936. It also means he was born in about 1903, which matches the one correct obit. He was about 33 years old when he first had a program at WAPO.  It also dates that LP to approximately 1971. 

I found an image of Batts at WBMD, a station in Baltimore. I am assuming that was a guest appearance.

In 1940 WAPO moved from 1420 to 1140 AM at 5,00 watts. Around that time the studios moved to the Read House, a fancy hotel. Today WAPO is WGOW, as it has been since Ted Turner bought the station in 1968. It flipped to a news talk format in 1988. Batts died in 2001 at the age of 98. WDOD signed off the air permanently on May 31, 2011. Thus WGOW became the longest running active radio station in Chattanooga. Next year they will celebrate their 90th anniversary. Hopefully they have something to remember about the long radio career of Rev. Batts.

DJ Lucky Lang

Above is a scan of the cover of the Lucky Lang Original Song Folio. My copy is in poor, maybe even vile condition. It's been stored in a moist place, it's biodegrading at the spine and bears strange brown and purple stains related to the moisture. It could be mold, possibly Stachybotrys leprosus. The staples are even rusted and have further stained the pages. It's a tad gross really. But the hand notations on the cover make up for all that. I had to soak it in bleach to proceed.

This copy is  Book #1, and I've seen that there actually is a Book #2. Interestingly it's cover is identical except for the "No. 2" text. Both editions list the following radio stations: WLS, WSBA, WSAL, WDBJ, WAPO, WSB, WJAX, WNAX, WGST, and WAGA. My copy continues with hand notations: WORK, WHBB(?) WHHB, and WLBR. I was able to corroborate the WLBR reference from January copies of the Harrisburg Evening News, and the Lebanon Daily News.

He appears to remain in the music biz through about 1959 and then he disappeared. In this songbook is a very short biography. I'll paraphrase: Lucky was born in Georgia on January 27th 1913. He's 5 foot 9 inches tall, and has brown hair and brown eyes. He didn't finish medical school but did take music lessons from Bob Burns in his home town.  The first radio station he played on was 740 WSB-AM in his home town where he teamed up with Chuck Swain.

So we can infer from this that Lucky is from Atlanta, or at least near Atlanta. Chuck Swain is much better known Lucky. Swain also played on WLS with Langdon L. Howe on the Smile-A-While program, and the National Barn Dance as the Blue Grass Boys. In the folio Lucky refers to it as the Blue Ridge Boys. One may be wrong, or perhaps both are right. But it's clear that Langdon L. Howe is Lucky Lang.  After they parted ways, Swain later played on WZIP in Covington, KY back in 1948.  He was a member of the Fiesta gang which also included Shorty Hobbs.  An October 1943 Billboard article notes that Swain had come to WLS from WLAV in Grand Rapids, MI, and Lang had come from WAPO in Chattanooga, TN.

Also notable about the song book; Lucky isn't listed as the author on all the lyrics. Some are unattributed, but the last few are by Mary Jean Shurtz. She was a well-known another country song-writer, and poet, but more importantly one of the earliest journalists in country music. So in addition to writing songs for performers such as Webb Pierce, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas, and Hank Snow. In 1948 she signed an exclusive deal with Hill & Range Songs Inc. You may not know the name but they also controlled much of Elvis Presley's early recorded material. She has a short bio at Hillbilly-music.com HERE.

Excluding their mutual levels of concurrent fame, the only connection I've found between them is radio station WORK-AM. WORK is a very annoying station to research as it's one of those rare call signs which is a common word. 1000 WORK-AM signed on in York, PA on March 17, 1932. After NARBA in 1941 they moved to 1350.  Shorty Fincher and His Prairie Pals of WORK-AM played Shurtz's songs and even published her poems in their song books. When Lucky Lang's folio was printed he was playing with the 101 Ranch Boys who were also based in York PA and reputedly played at WORK-AM twice daily in 1947.  But their publicity photos usually bear the  900 WSBA-AM calls around the mic.  But WSBA didn't sign on until 1942.  It appears they played both stations at different times in the 1940s. (WORK changed calls to WOYK around 1983).  It's also possible that WORK is a red herring, and  Lucky thought it was just good business sense to score points with columnist Mary Jean Shurtz.

But back to 1946 and my folio: There is a notation on an interior page from 1946 that Lucky was playing in December with "Coco." The August 3rd, 1946 issue of Billboard does reference Coco...

"...Golden Valley Boys featuring Ray Myers, the armless wonder boy, headlined show at Mount Gretna (Pa.) Park, together with Mickie McKay, Pop Melchor and Marie, and The Blue Ridge Boys and Coco."

The Lebanon Daily News on August 30th also mentions Coco with the Blue Ridge Boys. Lucky Lang is on that same bill, so it's possible Lucky ran off into the sunset with Coco, whomever or whatever it was. But as far as the rest of Lucky's career, I see he played the West Coast Shows carnival in 1955 and again in 1959, then he disappears.
As for the folio, I've uploaded all 25 pages HERE