The John Daniel Quartet on WSM

 

These articles usually start with a chance find, and then basic research to block in the timeline. John Daniel was unknown to me, even in the context of WSM. So the multi-decade career was very unexpected. The hymnal above says that he was born in 1906, which would put him in his mid to late 30s on that cover. It gives his wife's name as Vida Lou Miller Daniel, and their kids as Edward and James Daniel. The John Daniel Quartet was originally one of the Vaughan Company's traveling quartets. These groups performed for free like a walking advertisement for Vaughan songbooks.

It's a southern style gospel hymnal. WSM is referenced on the front and rear covers and the phrase "Tune them in and listen to them daily" from which I assume that their spot ran on weekdays. I found another hymnal that was just called Song Book No. 6. which was copyrighted in 1949.  John Daniel looks much older in that 2nd hymnal so I'm assuming his career started in the late 1930s. Books 4 and 5 are listed for sale on the back cover, and all copies could be ordered by writing to John Daniel directly at 2607 Belcourt Ave, in Nashville, TN.  I also found the sheet music for "Heavenly Treasures" under Denson Music Publishing dated to 1952.

But the microphone in the glamor shot I found for the group bore the CBS logo, not WSM. The names at that time were: Boyce Hawkins, John Daniel, Herman Grizzard, Hoyt Hawkins, Troy Daniel, and Jim Penland. Other sources site Jake Hess, "Big Jim" Waits, Clyde Roach, , Wallace "Wally" Fowler and Tommy Fairchild as members of the John Daniel Quartet. Troy Daniel, sang lead, and bis brother John was first tenor, Jim Penland sang bass.

Many mambers of the group graduated into big careers in music and radio. Herman there is certainly the same Herman Grizzard who was a rhythm and blues DJ on WLAC in the 1940s. It certainly looks like him in the headshot at Nashvillebroadcastinghistory.com. Though it says little more than that he was with the station since the 1930s. This is a bit of an understatement. Born in Nashville in 1900 he was even older than Daniel. He died in 1971.This issue of Broadcast News from July of 1932 has him on the cover.

Hoyt Hawkins was later in the more prominent singing group The Jordanaires. His work with them as a baritone appears in his obituary but The John Daniel Quartet does not. Hawkins played piano and bass fiddle and sang for a number of prominent artists: Elvis Presley, Perry Como, patsy Cline; lots of big names. The Obit also notes that his brother, Boyce Hawkins was a DJ at WSMV-TV Channel 4. Hoyt got his start singing at the age of 10 with a family quartet on a local radio show. Interestingly the only member shared between the Jordainaires and John Daniel were Hoyt and Gordon Stoker, not Boyce oddly. Boyce obituary says that they ended up performing regularly on the Eddy Arnold TV show in Chicago in 1955.

Boyce Hawkins had a heart attack while swimming at Percy Priest Lake, just East of Nashville and drowned in 1987 at the age of 58.  He had a long career in music. Boyce Hawkins was even in the Oak Ridge Boys in 1948 playing piano. Speaking of pianists, Gordon Stoker was recruited by John Daniel straight out of high school as a church pianist. He was born in 1924, much younger than the rest of the group. Some articles call him the leader of the Jordanaires. Stoker died in 2013 at the age of 88.

Clyde Roach and his brother Wilford Roach went on to sing in one of the many iterations of the Stamps-Baxter quartet in the late 1950s. In fact when Clarice Howard "Ma" Baxter died in 1972 she willed the company to four employees: Lonnie B. Combs, Clyde Roach, Videt Polk, and Dwight Brock. They sold it in 1974 but for about 2 years Clude owned a 25% stake in Stamps-Baxter keeping the shape note dream alive.

 Jim Penland died at the age of 77 in 2003. He had traveled with the John Daniel Quartet in the 50’s and 60’s who was inducted into the Hall of Fame at Dollywood in 1997. He got out of music and with his wife they operated two shoe stores in Tennessee.

Around 1950 the John Daniel Quartet recorded a few 78s, and 45s on their own label the "Daniel Record Co." But some sides where released or re-released on Bama, Bullet, and Liberty records. One 45 released in 1964 lists them as "(The late" John Daniel Quartet. Possibly a post-humous release. I've started a small discography below...

Catalog	Format	A	B
215	78	Echoes from the Burning Bush	Heavenly Treasures
228	78	Justice called and Mercy Answered	When We All get there
230	45	Heavenly Treasures	Just a Rose will Do
231	45	I will Live Forever	When The Savior Reached Down For Me
232	45	Heaven Joys I'll Share	Come And Dine
233	45	Joy Bells	Sing A Happy Song
N/A	45	You Can't Streamline Salvation	Echoes In The Valley
N/A	45	Beautiful Star of Bethlehem	He Said If I Be lifted Up

Mac Odell the WLAC Dream Interpreter

Odell McLeod was known by his stage name Mac Odell. He was a country and gospel singer who wrote a number of tunes performed by the Stanley Brothers, Roy Acuff, Hank Williams, and Flatt & Scruggs to name a few. But he was also a frequent radio performer. He sold song books, harmonicas, and even live baby chicks. He also was a radio "Dream Interpreter." (see above) Nobody does that anymore either.

Born in 1916 in Roanoke, Alabama, Mac first played on the radio as "Harmonica Mac" at the age of 12. According to a biography in Bluegrass Unlimited he later added mandolin, guitar, banjo, piano, and vocals to his act. But that would have been in 1928.  There is one AM station local to Roanoke but WELR-AM didn't sign on until 1952. Back in 1928, the whole state of Alabama only had 5 radio stations: WAPI, WBRD, WKBC, WJBY, and WIBZ. It is not recorded where his debut occurred but I favor WKBC. Regardless by 1934 he was performing on WWL-AM in New Orleans with Slim Bassett as Mac & Slim. More here.


After Odell  married Addie Wood in 1940 they became a husband and wife team "Mac and Little Addie." They were played for Suppertime Frolic show on WJJD-AM until the start of World War II. During the war, McLeod was a factory worker, btu continued songwriting. After the end of the war in 1948, they went to Nashville and began performing at 1510 WLAC-AM  still under the brand Mac and Little Addie. Some sources describe him as leaving the station in 1952, but he was still using the callsign in his advertisements as late as 1959. This includes a classified ad  in the February 1959 issue of Popular Mechanics offering to write songs to peoples poems. Odell was on Mercury Records label from 1949 until 1952, leaving then to join King Records, where he cut a few more sides.

 In 1957 (or 1959) McLeod moved to Benton Harbor, MI where he ran a signage business. In the late 1970s, he began songwriting again and wrote and recorded for the label Folk Variety in Germany. In the 1980s he was sort of rediscovered and with Addie he traveled to the Netherlands for a gospel tour. He died in 2003.

The Old Dirt Dobber

In the American slang of the last century "dirt-dobber" meant farmer or an unsophisticated rustic. On CBS the Old Dirt Dobber was Sam Caldwell who had  been on air for over 20 years. His book the Garden Gate was published in 1954. But earlier books like Thru The Garden Gate by The Federated Garden Clubs of Michigan list the Dirt Dobbler as a man named Tom A. Williams. The book Idiot America also refers to Tom Williams as host of the same Gardening Program broadcasting from the studios of 1510 WLAC-AM in Nashvile. It even correctly identifies his announcer as Paul Oliphant.

In 1944 Broadcasting Magazine described the program as airing Monday through Friday,

The program was running on Saturday mornings back in 1946, but was airing daily by 1954. But an Illinois Library trade magazine described "Open the garden gate," by the Old Dirt Dobber airing only on Saturday mornings. This matches the "airing each week" description on his book jacket.

The USDA lists horticulturist Tom A. Williams as being born in 1891. But the 79 year old dirt dobbler in 1983 would have been born in 1906. It seemed likely that Caldwell inherited the program from Williams, but there is little documentation. I confirmed this from a single article in the Sherbrook Telegram Newspaper from January of 1950. The program has been airing for 17 years at that time. That puts it's debut in1933. It was probably one of the first gardening programs anywhere, and it was syndicated all over the country and into Canada across over 100 radio stations..including 1010 CFRB-AM in Toronto.

References to the program seem to peter out in 1958. The original Dirt Dobber, Mr. Williams largely vanished from view in 1950. There is little written about him. From a single reference I know that Williams was big on Irises. From a much later reference I learn that at 79 years old he was still making celebrity appearances at flower shows. That would have been in 1970, a decade after his radio program ended.

WLOK-AM is OK

Some claim that WLOK 1340AM in Memphis was the second radio station in the Memphis area to air black programming. That's a little dubious, but when it was purchased in 1977 by Art Gilliam's company Gilliam Communications, it certifiably became the first black owned radio station in Memphis. The gap between those two dates is certainly worth talking about. There was even a documentary released about WLOK-AM in 2002. More here.

If you read the version on their website, the 1,000 watt  WLOK-AM rose to prominence in the decline of WDIA-AM in the late 1950s. The truth is that WLOK adopted it's all-black format on June 18, 1954. But that is the same year that WDIA bumped up the power from 50k watts daytime / 5k nighttime. They covered such a large area there was no real competition. WLOK was a local Memphis station, and they made the best of it.

And another side note, they still under the calls WBCR until 1956, and on the 1480 frequency until 1963.  (It's engineering piffle to an anthropologist, but this is Arcane Radio Trivia. We use real numbers here.)  The truth is that WLOK didn't over-take WDIA in ratings until the mid 1960s. DJ's like Dick "Cane" Cole were tied to artists like Rufus Thomas through alliances with WLOK. members of their bands worked at it's record store. (That odd WLOK logo below is for a football a franchise which operated in 1974 and 1975.)

Their other claim is more certifiable "The station and its personalities were a major source of musical support and information during the trying early '60s, the sanitation-worker strikes and the murder of Dr. King." The studios of WLOK were only a few blocks away from the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Their ties were cultural and political, and they were certainly involved as a local news source.  But, King never set foot in their radio station. [Source]  Their relationship with Jesse Jackson was much tighter. His organization, Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) broadcast it's meetings live on WLOK starting in 1972.  It probably helped that a few of the founding members of the Operation PUSH were DJs at WLOK. Operation PUSH continues to air today and is the longest-running show on the station. The organization became Rainbow Push in 1996 when the National Rainbow Coalition merged with PUSH.  strangely on their modern website the 1380 WAOK-AM  logo is shown on the front page with no mention of WLOK.

Another notable WLOK DJ was Hunky Dory. I should first note that "Hunky Dory" was actually a couple different DJs, much as Poppa Stoppa was. The Hunky Dory Show was a trademark of the station. Ruben Washington played the role first and Roland Porter took over in 1964. It was programs like these and their connection to Stax records that kept their programming hot.  The co-owner of Stax, Al Bell, even had his own show. They were fully immersed in the Memphis sound. But the Soul sound didn't last forever. WLOK-AM dropped the soul, and the rock n' roll and went all gospel in the mid 1980s. In 1997 the station was recognized by the Tennessee Historical Commission as a Historical Landmark.

DJ Sam Phillips

Everyone knows Sam Phillips because everyone knows Elvis.  But the history of Elvis starts with Sam Philips, and Sam is pretty obscure in his career both pre and post Elvis. Since I'm writing about him here, you probably already guessed that some of that is in radioland. I wrote about one of his projects once before WHER-AM here.

It was not just musicians that came from radio. It was the promoters, the recoding engineers, the booking agents and every other money-grubbing, sleazy hanger-on as well. Nick Tosches mentions by name Sam Phillips as a former radio man in his book Country: the Twisted Roots of Rock n' Roll. I quote at length here:

"Sam Phillips got into the Record business by way of radio...Phillips began working as a radio announcer after dropping out of high school in 1941... In 1942 he was a disk jockey at WLAY in Muscle Shoals, and next year at WHSL in Decatur. In 1945 he worked at WLAC in Nashville, and from 1946 to 1949 he worked at WREC in Memphis where he also promoted shows at the Hotel Peabody."

It's a great book, and all of that was true so far as I can tell; except he means WMSL in Decatur. that and so much more. Phillips died quite recently , on July 30, 2003.  He sold Elvis to RCA in 1955 for the oft quoted sum of $35,000. Sam backed off recording after Elvis, tapering off to a trickle in the 1960s. In 1956 Sam opened WHER-AM the first all female-staffed radio station in America. The experimental station went on for seventeen years sticking with the format until 1971.

But that was not Sam's first foray into radio. He started out in radio. It's often cites that he dropped out of high school to announce at WLAY-AM and that much is true. What they skip is that he dropped out in his Senior year in 1941 to support his mom, deaf mute aunt and six younger siblings after his father died. He took night classes at Alabama Polytechnical Institute in Auburn, AL and studied audio engineering.

As the legend goes, Station Manger Jim Connolly the station manager at WLAY hired him based on his emceeing at a high school show.  I suspect he had a little sympathy for the kids family situation. In 1942 he moved on to 1400 WMSL-AM in Decatur, Alabama where he stayed for three years.  Then to 1510 WLAC-AM in Nashville, TN where he only stayed for one.

In June, 1946 he got a new gig at WREC-AM in Memphis.  There he hosted the program "Songs of the West" show daily at 4 PM with the on-air name 'Pardner.' He also began hosting a pop program called 'The Saturday Afternoon Tea Dance" which was broadcast live from the Skyway Room of the Peabody Hotel. There he spun records on a syndicated program carried on the CBS network. It was there he met a very hurried Art Mooney who wanted to cut a cover of the Pee Wee Hunt tune "Oh!"  Sam arranged to use the WMC-AM audios and recorded them in the stairwell for the echo. There it began, Sam began to transition out of radio and into the studio. He kept working at WREC and at the Peabody dogin sound even after he recorded Ike Turner's "Rocket 88" in 1951. He started Sun records in 1952, and released Elvis's first single in January 1954. He didn't really get back to radio (except promo) until his post-Elvis phase.

Soul Countdown!

Spider Harrison hosted the Show Soul Countdown on 1510 WLAC-AM starting in 1978. This was a bad ass R&B program that couldn't even exist today under the male constraints of contemporary R&B. He was a New York native, but for him the Big time was at WLAC in Nashville.He was a college radio DJ on WCWP, Post College Long Island, and interned at WWRL. He became a Program and Music Director at 106.7 WTLC, Indianapolis. He was brought on at WLAC to replace Hep cat John R. (John Richbourg) at WLAC in 1973, which led to his hosting Soul Countdown 5 years later. The program ran until 1980. personally, I blame disco for it's untimely demise.

Let me frame that a little. Between 1977 and 1980 WLAC was the only radio station in America owned by Billboard magazine. They bough it from orignal owners Life and Casualty Insurance Company of Tennessee. Life and Casualty Insurance had made a big mistake. In 1972 they brought in a consultant who tried to go Top-40. John R. was essentially forced out. Amongst this chaos spider rose up. Kent Burkhardt, the man who brought you AOR, (WKTU, WQXI etc) came in to consult on their poppier format. But WLAC held onto the evening soul programming. That was where Spider came in and killed. He's got an aircheck up on his website.

Wood Sudbrink bought the station in 1980 and went all talk. In the 1980s the soul and gospel that once was carried at night was trimmed back until there was just brokered religious talk. When Clear Channel bough the station at least that distateful practice ended. On the other hand now its' another cookie-cutter conservative talk outlet under the Fox News talk brand. More here.

Spider survived his departure from WLAC just fine. He became the west coast director for Sugar Hill records. In 2008 it was rumored he was in talks with XM about his own program. In the end I don't think that happened.

WLAC and Nashboro records

John Richbourg returned to Nashville in 1946. He'd worked at 1510 WLAC-AM in 1942 and after being interrupted by WWII he returned with a vengeance. He became the voice on "Ernie's Record Parade", a nightly show that featured hot new Rhythm and Blues and eventually Rock n' roll. It was the verge of the 1950s and white suburbanite kids were discovering black music. More here.

The program ran on on weekday nights, at 9:oo PM. Ernie Lafayette Young was already operating a bustling mail order business in southern gospel music. He was already supporting gospel programs on WLAC. But now he was also selling the early cross-over artists like Otis redding, James Brown, Joe Simon, etc. But that wasn't' enough for Young . He wanted to play a bigger part. He was creating demand for these artists

Ernie decided to to start a label in 1951. Nashboro Records, started out with Gospel music. then in 1952 they started Excello to move the Rhythm & Blues records. John R was the producer for the first records. These were recorded late at night in the WLAC studios. Later Ernie built a simple studio in the attic above his shop. More here

In 1966 Ernie sold off Excello to AVI Entertainment and currently resides in the hands of MCA Records. They're re-released very little, but in the Uk the rights are held by Ace records which hasn't been so stingy. John R. left WLAC in 1973 and died February 15, 1986 at the age of 75.