WZZQ the Movie

(nature sounds) (phone ringing) (phone picks up) Female voice: Hello?

Male voice: Yes.

May I speak with Edwin Dodd, please?

Female voice: Yes.

Hold on a minute, please.

Second male voice: Hello?

Male voice: Edwin?

Edwin: Yes, sir.

Perez: Good afternoon, This is Perez from ZZQ.

And I just called to tell you that you just won yourself a round-trip ticket for two to Aspen Lodging and a useful rental car while you're there-- Edwin: Wait.

Is-- is this the real Perez?

Perez: (laughing) Yes.

Edwin: It is?

First: Yes.. Edwin: I won that trip to Aspen, Colorado?

This is the Perez?

The real?...

Are you serious?

("ZZQ" by Cary Hudson playing) Ten miles north of Jackson stood a tower.

With a hundred thousand watts of power.

Oooh ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

Riding round the back roads like a fool.

Hey ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

Rocking out while I'm on ZZQ.

David: It's midnight.

WZZQ in Jackson, Mississippi, and I'm David Adcock with music for you till 2:00, at which time Keith Carter will come in with his... traditionally weird four hours between 2:00 and 6:00.

I am a 60-year-old man talking about a radio station that went dead 40 years ago.

They have no clue the amount of impact they made on people's lives.

I mean, I'm still talking about it today.

I bought a lot of records and know a lot of music and it's just one of those things in my head.

When youve got to drive, and you got in a car with somebody, the radios going to be on ZZQ.

My music world was just totally expanded.

The station absolutely changed my life.

When my friends started listening to ZZQ, I thought, Well, they're just going to hell. I just feel such a blessing from all the wonderful music that I got to hear.

I'm a better person.

I just, I love this station.

I love the deejays.

It was a big part of my life.

These guys kind of changed the culture.

I mean, ZZQ was the soundtrack of our lives back then.

We didn't realize at the time how cool it was until it was gone.

I'm Victor.

Ill be here until 2:00 in the morning.

Do you have any requests?

Why don't you give me a call at 982-1029.

You're in Jackson, Mississippi.

It's 1969 or 1970.

The cover of Life Magazine, the summer before, had been about Haight-Ashbury.

Album Rock was really coming up at that period, this underground sound, psychedelic music and sort of diverging from pop music, and I was fascinated with it.

Keith: I still remember how, sort of in a roundabout way, how I got here.

Heard you play, what was it, Coltrane one night when I was in town.

Called you up and said, God, there's a progressive station in the Deep South. Sebastian: I think people in Jackson have to... maybe they probably do realize, but they probably just don't think about it because it's here.

But ZZQ is something that could really, you know, help them keep their heads in the right place.

And I think the word needs to be spread, if its not already.

We would be late to school, you know, if American Pie or Stairway to Heaven came on.

It was just like, well, we're not getting out of the car.

Jim Messina, Kenny Loggins Watching the River Run into some Sugar right along the lines of that.

Before that Stephen Stills Sugar Babe requested Jerry Garcia with "Sugar."

It's five minutes past 4:00.

This is WZZQ in Jackson, Mississippi.

My name is Sergio.

I'm going to be with you for another 2 hours.

Sebastian in at 6: 00 and of course the Big A at 10:00, and Crazy Keith at 2:00, and Lovely Amelia at 6:00, Johnny Summer then at 10:00.

And then with me at 2: 00.

And then it goes on and on.

The vicious circle.

Can't get away from us.

Gonna move along.

Now, had to request for some hefty music.

So get out your hefty trash bags.

And dig it, whatever.

(Gypsy by Uriah Heep playing) Well, that's one of the things that's beautiful about radio.

You know, you can do it at any age.

They can't see you.

(laughing) Well, you know, if we're going to talk about ZZQ, I have to go back to WJDX-FM.

Story that we always heard was that, you know, the guys grabbed their out and they said, can we do this?

I mean, we can do this?

You know, a brand new sandbox that had no rules.

Well, let me start before that, okay?

(Dont Wake Me Up Let Me Dream by Howard Lanin and His Orchestra playing) Lamar Life was an insurance company.

Lamar Life held the FCC license for WLBT Channel 3, WJDX AM and FM.

They put JDX AM on the air and the FM on the air eventually from downtown Jackson, the Lamar Life building.

Eudora Welty was the first copywriter.

Her dad was the president of Lamar Life.

(Perdido by Ray Anthony playing) When FM became a viable format, just about every big radio company that had a big AM station applied for, and was granted an air FM frequency.

Since most consumers out there didn't have FM radios, they were just... the listenership was minuscule.

It was a tax write off, I think, to begin with.

It was a classical station, WJDX FM, and then all of a sudden the song by Cliff Nobles, The Horse, was an instrumental funky thang, to just... BAH!

Came out of nowhere.

And all these little old ladies that ah... that were, you know, listening to their classical music went, What the Hell!

? and started calling.

Some strange hippie from California, came through town and convinced the owners to change it to rock.

He said, that's what's really happening out in California is FM rock, and I can't imagine why, they went along with it.

I got a job doing WJDX-FM when it was middle-of-the-road music for doctors offices and dentists.

Elevator music.

There I was sitting in a little box that we called The Booth and staring at the wall, and staring at the clock, and staring at all the buttons on the phone that were not lighting up.

And I just thought, Well, I'm going to see if anybody's listening. And so I started giving something away, you know?

And then I just kept adding stuff, you know, until it was a two-week vacation in Hawaii, the Big Island.

No lights lighting up, nothing's going on.

Nobody was listening.

So I figured it was time to change the format if they wanted to make money.

I put together a prospectus made of information that I got from Billboard and Cash Box.

It pointed out how successful FM Rock was in California; because they were playing what you could not get on AM stations.

They were playing the album cuts.

I pitched this and there was an intermediate guy, because he didn't want me to go directly to management, because they all thought I was some sort of crazy hippie.

And they were probably right.

They said okay.

(rock music playing) WJDX-FM 102.9.

The objective of 102.9 Rock is, in essence, to provide a hip radio station for the 18 to 30 age group.

This is the age group that grew up with rock music.

This is, to my knowledge, the first FM station in the South to reach this group, which is too sophisticated for top 40, and too active for, quote, easy listening unquote.

For the format of WJDX FM, which had been an arch-conservative radio station, overnight unexpectedly to change its format to freeform rock and roll targeted directly at young people was astounding.

Rock music in itself, and the messaging in rock music, was a significant catalyst for change socially in America on its own.

If not for JDX FM, we would not have had any way to have selected that music because how would we have known?

We were not researching music.

JDX FM helped young people transform their thinking on social events that were happening through the music.

So I went to WLBT to apply for a job as a news trainee.

WLBT was recruiting black people from Jackson in an effort to keep their license, which was being challenged for discriminatory broadcasting.

I wasn't hired for that, but I was hired for JDX FM, and I started out as a part-time announcer.

Six-hour shift on Sunday morning, signing on.

Willy Randall Pinkston is my birth name, but on JDX FM I was Pinkston on the Rock.

It was Pinkston, period.

Except when I had to read the news.

You know, that's how that happened.

I started radio in a little small town Brookhaven, but I dreamed of working on the 102.9 stereo rock, and that was one of the stations that was, (in a low voice) And before that, we heard a nice tasty track from Dr. John. (normal voice) And you imagine somebody in a dark room with tie dye parachutes hanging all over the ceilings, and that's what every cool kid wanted to be.

And I finally got a job there working Sunday mornings.

Couldn't work during the week, but I could work Sunday mornings.

Pinkston would let me fill in some other time, but I was suddenly a part of that cool radio station.

Kenny: There was a viewing room upstairs and then this little room that had been a storeroom, and they created a control room there, and that's where it all began.

It was a closet, actually, a fairly large closet, but it was essentially a closet.

If you were claustrophobic, not the job for you.

And there were just record racks all the way around it.

And then you had the turntable... two turntables so you could go from one song to the next, and a microphone, and a little board with the knobs.

You had to close the door because people were making a television program downstairs most of the time.

Was mono when I started.

Mono instead of stereo.

It was only one channel.

By, I think August, we were stereo.

Suddenly you got these two speakers in the back and, you know, drums are over here and the guitars over there, or they would (whoosh), they would pan across and you just couldn't believe how cool that was.

Judy?

Judy Creamcheese?

This is the voice of your conscious speaking.

Tell me, why do you have trees of life in your parlor?

Is it because everything you sell at Judy Creamcheese is different and out of the ordinary?

Well, it is.

Judy Creamcheese has clothes for the fashion-conscious chicks that want something different.

And coming soon, the Judy Creamcheese back room with far out jeans and things that chicks and guys both can dig.

Whopping bells, velvets, tapestries and suedes coming soon to Judy's back room.

Judy Creamcheese loves you.

From Jackson, Bruce Owen on The Rock.

(jingle) WJDX FM.... 102.9 The Rock.

It's a rock radio station.

What is rock?

Is it only Led Zeppelin, really loud, hard, fast stuff?

Or is it the Led Zeppelin stuff where they're doing Olde English folk music?

Is that rock?

We were not really a real hard rock and roll radio station.

We were all over the place, but virtually everything we played was pretty good.

ZZQ, Blue Sky Night Thunder.

That's Michael Murphy with Wild Fire.

Spare Me a Little of Your Love with a soul set before that.

Ann Peebles I Can't Stand the Rain.

Love and Happiness from Al Green, and Blind, Crippled, and Crazy by O.V.

Wright.

It's David Crosby with Cowboy Movie.

When I Was Little Cowboy by Harry Nielsen and Cowgirl in the Sand Neil Young.

The album's called A Night on the Town.

It belongs to Rod Stewart.

Jefferson Starships Spitfire, Earth, Wind and Fires Spirit.

ACDC from Back in Black and Have A Drink On Me.

Joni Mitchell, For the Roses, America with Three Roses.

Sean Phillips Withered Roses.

Chick Corea with Return to Forever.

Billy Paul from an album called War of the Gods.

David Guring The Land is Sleeping.

One of last year's best albums by far, Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd with Time and The Great Gig in the Sky.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road from Elton John, and All Things Must Pass from George Harrison.

Led Zeppelin from their newest Houses of the Holy with The Ocean, it started out from Trout Mask Replica.

The Rolling Stones from Get Yer Ya-Yas Out!

by request, Street Fighting Man.

Music from Charlie at ZZQ L.A.

Dreamer, and of course, The Eagles King of Hollywood.

And for a little good bye music, some Quicksilver.

There were some vignettes of American life from various and sundry artists, including John Denver and Judy Collins and Simon and Garfunkel and Jerry Jeff Walker and Gordon Lightfoot.

It's 19 minutes after 1:00 on ZZQ.

The very first incarnation of this station was completely freeform.

You did whatever you wanted to do.

You could play sets, you could play anything you want to play.

And it was wonderful.

It was just, you know, Thank you, Jesus. Just the way God intended radio to be.

Whatever you thought it was, it was.

You had two walls of records.

One was on the east side of the room.

That wall was supposedly the good wall.

The one on the west side of the room was the weird wall.

That's where all the things that didn't make it to the good wall went.

I tried to work a lot from the weird wall, because that's where all the fun stuff was.

Management didn't really listen to JDX FM anyway.

And, you know, they didn't care what we were doing.

I played what I wanted to hear.

(Let It Rain by Eric Clapton playing) I played theme sets almost exclusively.

Three songs about tires, or washing machines, or three songs about rivers, or rain.

Let it rain, let it ra-ain.

Rock and roll talks about everything there is.

(Castleshire by Chris Haugen playing) Pinkston: Because it was an FCC license, there were certain requirements.

Lamar Life was supposed to serve the entire community.

When people like Thurgood Marshall or some other Civil Rights leader on national news would show up, Channel 3 would throw up a sign saying Technical Difficulty. In other words, they blocked points of view that they didn't want to be broadcast, when it had to do with Civil Rights.

WLBTs license was challenged by the United Church of Christ.

It's a landmark case, and I guess at some point when Lamar Life realized they were not going to get this station back, they moved JDX AM and FM out of that building.

I continued both jobs until JDX moved out of the building and I had the option of staying with radio or staying with TV.

TV paid more, so I stayed with TV.

That's just the honest to God truth.

I'm Randall Pinkston.

Goodnight.

Reverend Parker, who initiated the lawsuit that basically changed the face of broadcasting in America, but started here in Mississippi, he said to me, years later when I was working at CBS at the time, he said, You are an example of what I hoped would happen "because of our lawsuit.

"It gave you the opportunity to become a journalist, "to share stories with viewers, and also to give people "a different idea about who could do the news, who could tell the news. He said, You are an example of a success story "for that long-ago experiment "when we wanted to make sure that everyone "had the opportunity to participate in federally-regulated broadcast journalism. (White Bird by Its a Beautiful Day playing) When the station moved out to Beasley Road, it became a little bit more of a corporate thing, but still not really.

This is when it changed to ZZQ.

Hello, this is Johnny Summer.

As program director of The Rock, I'd like to thank the many kind people who called to express their concern over the future of WJDX FM.

Midnight last night marked the end of WJDX FM.

On July 29th, 1968, just five years ago, WJDX FM became Jackson's and Mississippi's first and only FM rock station.

We've been through a lot of changes in those five years; some for the better and some for the worse.

And now we announce still one more change.

With the dawn of the new day comes The New Rock.

What was WJDX FM is now WZZQ.

We've changed our name to establish an identity all our own, an identity rooted in, but not limited to, rock and roll.

And don't be surprised if you discover that that's where we've been all along.

So let's not mourn the passing of the old, but rather celebrate the birth of The New Rock, WZZQ.

(Blue Rondo a la Turk by Dave Brubeck playing) Sergio: I learned so much about music during my stint at ZZQ.

I really like jazz music.

I like to best with the people because the people would be (inhales sharply) and then, of course, that, you know, Wow!

"Did you hear that?

"What was that?

Wow! I was more, you know, trying to make people laugh.

I remember I was I was program director at ZZQ for a brief period of time, which meant that the manager of the station would call me when there was something to complain about.

And I remember getting like a 2: 00 phone call, woke me out of bed, and there was a manager of the station, and he said, Dave, Sergio's playing something that has "bedsprings and heavy breathing in it, and you got to go over there and tell him to take it off! So I went over there and I told him, you got to take that off the air.

And then I went in and resigned as program director the next day.

I said, I can't work this way.

I don't need 2:00 phone calls about bedsprings, so...

But we did, maybe late at night, we did play around with the public sensibilities from time to time.

There was also a lot of comedy.

We played a lot of Firesign Theater.

We played a lot of Monty Python audio stuff.

We played a lot of the National Lampoon Radio Hour.

We had so many different kinds of special programs on that station.

I mean, the list is this long.

You know?

With Live from Lafayette's Music Room, you know, Live from the Reservoir with Larry Raspberry and Let's Eat.

You know, we did a lot of live broadcasting or broadcasting of recorded concerts.

You know, we were a full-service radio station.

We weren't just hit after hit after hit.

We just did everything, you know?

It was great.

(laughing) If you want to know the truth.

(Jive Ass by Larry Raspberry playing) Back in the early seventies, mid seventies, not a lot of car radios had FM radios.

They were just AM radios.

We tried to bridge that gap by actually selling FM converters to our audience.

They were little deals, and they were not expensive, and you hooked it up to your car radio and you could pick up ZZQ!

We did a whole slew of a FM converter commercials.

(old Soap Opera music playing) Male Announcer: And now The Streets of Jackson.

Today's episode on The Streets of Jackson, The Pothole Patrol. Man 1: All right, Columbo, it seems another car has fallen into one of the giant potholes of Fortification Street.

We better get over there.

(police siren) (screeching tires) Man 1 & 2: All right.

All right, people, stand back.

Let us through here.

Man 2: Hey, well have you out of that hole in no time.

Just hang on.

Man 3: There's no rush.

We're having a good time down here.

Our ZZQ converter is still working fine.

Man 1: What are you talking about?

Man 3: The ZZQ FM converter.

We got it at the ZZQ Studio for only $28.25.

Man 2: Kojak, there's only one thing that's bothering me.

What's the funny smelling smoke coming out of the hole?

Man 1: Well, Columbo, it's a pothole, isn't it?

Male Announcer: Tune in again when you feel like The Streets of Jackson.

We used to get requests for the commercials that they produced.

People would call in and say, I want to hear that commercial.

I want to hear that thing about the FM converter.

There was a guy named Michael G. Brown.

I remember he came over to my house, and we recorded in the kitchen him doing I Don't Care If It Rains or Freezes, As Long as I Got My Plastic Jesus. No, that was the real song.

Well, we took it in.

We had I don't care if it rains or freeze as, long as I got music that pleases riding on dashboard of my car. (Plastic Jesus by Rush and Cromarty playing) Man singing: I don't care if it rains or freezes.

As long as I got music that pleases.

Riding under the dashboard of my car.

You know, how AM radio's murder.

Glad I got my FM converter.

Went on down to WZZQ.

Male Announcer: Yes indeed.

You can pick up your very own FM converter from nine to five on weekdays at the ZZQ Studios, at the corner of Watkins Drive and Beasley Road.

Man singing: It was only $28.25.

Whoo!

No more Top 40 jive.

You ought to get together with WZZQ.

(song ends) Might seem a little ridiculous to compete against ourselves, but we have something else for sale: tickets for the Cat Stevens bus trip to Memphis are still on sale.

We have to fill up another bus.

We have one filled, and most of another.

We have 17 tickets left on the second bus.

Party bus!

(laughing) Uh... boy.

Getting naked out at the Reservoir first, then getting on the bus.

We're going to Memphis.

We're going to hear Chicago.

Okay.

And we go on this bus, and it was a party.

We left the night before.

We still got there late.

The bus broke down in the middle of Memphis and we were trying to get out and push it.

We got... We went... All I can remember is Fly Flier taking a bite of this pimento and cheese sandwich.

And there were-- I don't know if you know yellow jackets.

Yellow jackets will kick your ass.

Don't mess with them kids.

Fly Flier takes a bite of that.

And all of sudden, these Hell's Angels are there, and these yellow jackets are going after him, and the Hell's Angels were just circling us.

This is, its some weird place in Memphis.

Okay, you just saying go back to the party bus, and then we got, we went and the bus broke down.

Remember pushing it.

We had to push it through intersections.

We finally got it started again.

And got it to run.

We got to the Chicago concert and Chicago had just started.

So all the lines that would-- we didn't have to wait for any line.

We got there and got in.

The show had already started and everything.

And it was a great time.

And there's a lot more involved to it, but that's all I share with you.

It's all the party busses were great.

Just be careful for the exhaust from the bus.

(deep sigh) The charter busses was a giant nightmare.

Um... Not because people are inherently bad.

It's just sometimes their inhibitions go out the window when mommy and daddy aren't around.

And these were already adults.

It was just... Ah..... (harmonica plays) There, there, there was a lot that went on that we couldn't talk about at the time.

Probably shouldn't talk about now.

(laughing) Illegal substances?

(stammers) Yes.

Of course.

We were, all we were freaks.

We were all underground, longhaired, hippie freak, weirdo people.

And yeah, there were things.

It was illegal to smoke the marijuana, but we did anyway.

Because I was the youngest guy there by a long shot, but I did seem to have a better weed connection than anybody.

I got called into Marshall Magee's office.

Bill, he said, I'm hearing things about you might be, you know, with, you know what... What?

"Me?

"No!

"Why would I need to do that?

"I'm making $2.10 an hour, right?

I don't need to supplement my income by committing a crime. He never in the course of that conversation said, I tell you what, why don't we give you a raise so that you don't have to turn to a life of crime? Naw.

I'm sure he was rightfully concerned about losing the FCC license for the station, which is a legitimate concern, you know?

Sebastian saying good night to you.

And for our first all-nighter.

(two people clapping) Yay!

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sebastian: Here he is, Uncle Dave.

David: Well, let's see.

There's this new radio station up on the hill, and I saw it, and I thought I would just drop in and see what was going on.

Sebastian: And you got hired.

David: It was nothing much.

So I left.

What is it?

3 minutes, very nearly 3 minutes after midnight.

And this is WZZQ in Jackson, Mississippi.

And everybody out there has their very own personal Midnight Rider now.

And I ain't going to let them catch me.

(Midnight Rider by The Allman Brothers Band playing) David Adcock was brilliant.

Bill: One of the most creative people, I think, that ever walked through those doors.

He was a good deejay.

He was a great copywriter.

He was an artist.

David Adcock was the music director, and he was Heaven-sent.

He is a-- was a-- stubborn genius.

He was the glue, my mentor, all of our mentors.

(Midnight Rider continues) Mm hmm hmm.

It's time for Listener Classifieds.

Yes.

Once again, it's time for Listener Classifieds.

Listener Classifieds was a little feature that they ran two or three times a day.

Listeners could call in if they needed a roommate, if they had a room to rent, needed a ride somewhere.

Just about anything to do with anything you might need.

In the Rides Department, Debbie needs a ride from South Jackson to Hinds Monday through Friday, and will share expenses.

Myst needs a roadie.

Lots of travel involved, so if you like to travel and can carry heavy equipment, they're looking for you.

Kathy left her purse in Randy's car and would like to get it back.

Sounds interesting.

If any of those strike your fancy, you know anything about them, give us a call at 982-1029 or if you like to put something on, call us at the same number.

Sergio: There was Sex in the Morning with Gary Phillips, and he was a real deejay.

He was great, though.

He had the first wet T-shirt contest in Mississippi.

I miss those days.

Aint gona lie.

I was doing an all-night shift at JDX AM till I started just taking callers and putting them on the air, talking to them about, you know, weird stuff, and it turned into Gary Phillips and the All Night Radio Weirdos.

And then the management came to me one day and said, Hey, dude, how would you like to take that show over to ZZQ in Morning Drive? And I went, Oh, well, let me think about that for a sec.

Yeah, I'd love that. I get a call early on from a girl.

She wasnt explicit with me about her interest in me, but she made her point known.

(laughing) We talked two or three minutes on the air, and to where it got to the point where, you know what?

I better shut this phone call down.

So I said, Well, thank you for calling. And I hung up and I just said, Hey, welcome to the Gary Phillips Sex in the Morning Show on ZZQ. (chuckling) Got a lot of feedback from that.

People loved it.

People hated it.

But people listened.

75,000 people have left their homes in Mississippi in the seven counties on the Gulf Coast as Carmen does move ashore.

As far as news went on WZZQ, it wasn't obviously the main thing.

It was all about the music, right?

But I like to think the news complemented what we were doing with the music.

Randy Bell and I kind of shared duties.

He kind of became in the morning the JDX news man, and I kind of became the ZZQ news man.

On the ZZQ side, I probably was a little more relaxed and loose with a little more cutting up, as I liked to call it.

We're still news people.

Yeah, even though we were on an album rock station, we still had to, I guess, maintain some dignity or, you know, there was a certain line that we couldn't cross, I guess, as news people.

(Chase by Giorgio Moroder playing) Victor: As a listener, I listened to Perez, like, a lot.

It was wonderful.

He would do these fairy tales and he would tell, I mean, the later at night he would, but he would write these 15 minute stories.

I mean, it was not just playing records to keep the music-- to keep the beat going.

He was actually using it as art.

Sure, Cindy.

'I understand.

'Take care.

Talk to you soon. Putting the phone in its cradle.

I saw the words hanging there.

Empty.

And floating formlessly like ancient prayers.

Across the room, the TV flickered.

The sound was down, but I noticed the commercial for Robert Stack hawking Chevys.

On the couch, the cat extended a paw seeking comfort.

I could understand why I felt compelled to put on Cat People as in-room entertainment.

I like the film.

I can understand Sophocles.

The Theory of Relativity.

Chimps dancing.

The Ginsu knife, and Fortran.

I can understand Sart.

Hell, theres other people.

Come on!

What I cant understand, Cindy, is you.

David: I nearly neglected to mention that Dan Fogelberg started us out in that segment with Be On Your Way.

Fogelberg is on his way to Jackson.

Keith: Ah, it's public knowledge?

David: Yeah.

Keith: What date?

David: I think February 22nd.

As it is, I don't want to cause any uproar.

Keith: Any uproar.

David: Tickets are not available as yet, but they will be.

Keith: I'm glad you said that.

I was just waiting for the phone to go crazy over the next hour.

Fogelberg?

I'm the one who started it.

Another thing I took home when I first started working here a couple of years ago, Dan Fogelberg Home Free, and listened to it one night, and it just blew me away.

You take an artist like Dan Fogelberg.

Nobody had heard of him, except for Jackson, Mississippi.

We were playing Dan Fogelberg.

He had an incredible following here.

Only here.

I was in Clive Davis office in New York at the Black Rock.

Clive was President of Columbia Records at that point.

I remember he moved around.

He got a seven-inch reel-to-reel reel, which we had.

He slid it across and it said "Fogelberg".

He played everything, including the drums.

He did all the harmonies, and here are the lyrics.

The lyrics were good.

He's 19 years old!

We finish the record and send it in to Clive.

He called and said, I hate the record. But all the women at Columbia Records was telling Clive, This guy's great! He said, But Norbert, I got to tell you, pal, I'm not spending a penny on this record. The record was released silently.

It was sent out to the stations, thank God, because later on they wouldn't even press any records and send them out if he didn't like it.

There didn't seem to be any formal way of adding new music by unknown artists.

So I asked Johnny if I could take some records home to listen to them to see if there was something we could play.

I listened to the Dan Fogelberg record and that was it.

I took it back to the station.

Said, Johnny, we have got to play this record. The record just sort of blew up and all of a sudden Fogelberg, who is on a solo acoustic college tour, they put him in the City Auditorium and it is slap to the rafters with people.

And he comes out and he is freaked be doing this show.

And we essentially broke him as an artist in Jackson at the City Auditorium, and it was one of those shows.

You go, Holy schnikes, this is, like, a show. It sold out, but we broadcast the show live.

You know, that was unheard of.

At the end of the show, after everybody was singing Let It Shine, Let It Shine, Let It Shine" at the end of Theres a Place in the World for a Gambler, Dan came just, like, back like this and fell on Rick Fernandez and said, Oh, Richie, I am so high! because he was blown away!

I was home that night.

And the phone rang.

Dan was like, (emotional) Hey!

"I'm down here in Jackson, and theres 3,000 people here!

Can you hear them? And I'm going, You're kidding! You know.

Are you joking?

Really? Yeah!

They play our record on the radio! And I can't tell you what it did for his state of mind.

And as the saying goes, that's when the worm turned for Dan Fogelberg.

Usually what happened if three or four stations started playing it, then New York or LA would say, we got to jump on this record because it has fonts.

People are calling and saying, Would you play Dan Fogelberg? Yeah, that's a big deal.

And then they would say, Well, maybe we are wrong about this. No major stations were playing this record anywhere in America.

And suddenly there's one in Jackson, Mississippi.

That's because of Dave Adcock and Sebastian going Hey, this this is good.

Let's play this. You know.

And the power of ZZQ.

(Shake Some Action by the Flamin Groovies playing) Dan Fogelberg came out to Jackson, and that was the beginning of Bebop.

Kenny: You know, you take Wayne Harrison, who partnered with the Bebop folks, Kathy and Drake.

They built their record business, I think, to a great extent, off of the success of that radio station.

Wayne Harrison was the music director the most years I was at ZZQ.

He was also one of the three owners of Bebop Record Shops.

And that made for an interesting dynamic between the record store and the radio station.

They also produced concerts that came to town.

Victor: Emerson Lake and Palmer came to Jackson, and Gregg Lake came to the radio station and did an on air interview.

The record labels would send the artists to the radio station to do interviews in order to promote their artist, which then in turn promoted the concert, which also promoted the radio station because, of course, if Greg Lake or, you know, the Grateful Dead are going to show up at the radio station for an interview, they're going to listen.

Bill: You'd hear it on ZZQ and buy it at Bebop, and they were kind of both big components of that community.

(From the Beginning by Emerson Lake and Palmer playing) (song ends) (mumbles under breath) Has anybody told you about this glass thing?

I don't know if it was a trailer.

I don't know what it was.

Magic Bus is what they called it.

And they drive it down, set it up at the fair, broadcast live every night from the fair.

And of course, people love to come see the deejays they listen to.

From my memories even prior to me working there, it was one of the must-see things at the state fair for the kids.

(crowd noises) I think the name of my show, somebody may have called it The Punk Show.

Carlas a Punk.

Carla West.

I don't know.

I gave her some life lessons and also some radio lessons and told her what not to play.

So while I was working hand-in-hand with Perez, you had a very strict program that you had to follow.

And then when I was finally allowed to do shows on my own, I immediately began to misbehave, because I thought Judas Priest should be played and I thought the B-52's should be played.

Well, this was a very big station, a very big album-oriented rock station with a lot of money on the line.

And I got in trouble.

But I kind of kept doing it, and they kind of kept letting me get away with it.

So then finally they gave me my own specific slot, midnight to 3:00 and said, Fine, play your garbage, do whatever you want. And that evolved into The New Wave Punk Show.

Okay, I want to have a little talk with you.

Ive been doing this New Wave Show every Saturday night from these ungodly hours, about two months now, I think.

Now, this station, and a lot of people in the music business, think that New Wave is a fad like Disco and that it's going to just come and it's reached its peak like something with The Clash and it's about to go.

I want to know what you think.

I have to prove to this station, if it's going to last, that I can keep up the show.

The number is 982-1029.

(Funk #49 by James Gang playing) Wayne Harrison.

Yeah.

Where do I begin?

Bill: He knew every song, every artist.

He was just energy.

And it came across that he loved this music.

And he wants you to love it, too.

7:31 now.

I'm Wayne Harrison.

Weve got some good things coming for you.

King Biscuit Flour Hour at 9: 00 with the J. Geiles Band and Foghat.

National Lampoon Radio Hour at 10: 30.

The California Show.

After late night stuff, where are we going, Wayne?

Wayne lived wide open.

Wayne lived to party and have fun.

He was down in a bad part of town, trying to make a deal with somebody that he shouldn't have been making a deal with.

And something happened.... and a guy shot him.

(The Chain by Fleetwood Mac playing) I remember at Wayne's funeral, you know, people were giving their remembrances of Wayne and talking about what a great guy he was.

But then there was a guy that stood up, and he may have been one of the preachers and kind of brought everything back down.

He said, "Look, Wayne was a great guy, "but yall, Wayne was out of control.

"And this is what happened because Wayne was out of control."

And that was kind of a dose of reality.

Wayne was a god.

He was the man.

He was the messiah.

(laughing) (police siren wailing) (The Chain continues) Many Voices: Winkle dinkle, bar sweet wrangle, parlez vous, all holler for Q-Ballers or well take care of you.

(blowing a raspberry) Man: Its half time at Gary Phillips Memorial Coliseum and the WZZ Q-Ballers lead the Marauding Munchkins from the Broadmoor Daycare Center, 8 to 7.

This is Rubensteinabear handling the play by play with my color man.

Kareem Corn.

Right, Rubin, re-frying the first half.

It was a real sizzler, highlighted by the Q-Ballers famous Basket Case play.

Let's watch it now on our Hideotape Constant Replay.

There's Randy Bell passing to Bill Ellison.

Ellison stumbles into Wayne Harrison.

Harrison falls on Perez, and Bill Fitzhugh calls timeout.

Now that's exciting basketball!

(Youve Got That Right by Lynyrd Skynyrd playing) We had a basketball team on ZZQ.

Why don't we come over here and play your faculty and raise some money?

Maybe a big basketball game, popcorn smell in the gym, and cheerleaders, and that whole thing.

We traveled around doing that all over the state, and it turned out to be a huge, huge thing.

It was interesting because a lot of times the student body would pull for the ZZQ team against their coaches and teachers, as you might imagine.

We had some air staff that had played ball that were pretty good, but not a lot.

But we also pulled in some ringers that were pretty good basketball players.

Retired SCC players and smaller college players.

I mean, six-foot-five, six-foot-seven guys.

They were pretty competitive games.

We just kicked booty.

By the time I joined, we really were a more legitimate basketball team.

We went back to some of those schools and they had loaded up for us.

So I recall going down, I believe it was Taylorsville, we got down there with our legitimate station employee team, and they had an actual ex-NBA player on their team.

(laughing) And they beat the ever loving daylights out of us.

Sho got that right.

Announcer: Saturday night at midnight at the Deville Cinema, ZZQ brings you the Rocky Horror Costume Contest.

Come as your favorite obsession because we've got... Audience: Say it!!

Announcer: Prizes.

$100 for the best costume.

Well do The Time Warp together at the Rocky Horror Costume Contest, Saturday at midnight, in the Deville Cinema and ZZQ.

(triumphant music playing) The manager at Deville Cinema and I were friends.

I had read about this movie called The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

We were sitting in my apartment on Northside Drive, and I said something about the movie, and he said, I don't know.

I will have to look into it. And he came back to me and said, I think I can get it. It was a big deal.

It turned into a big deal.

Man: Ive seen it five times in Dallas.

Ive seen it three times in New Orleans.

I've seen it twice in Houston.

And I've seen it about, I bet, nine times here in Jackson.

People would bring candelabra with, you know, six and eight candles and light the candelabra.

Because it was what it was, and I'm in Jackson, Mississippi, we had to escort people to their cars afterwards because there were people riding through the parking lot yelling horrible things, and trying to intimidate those people who were going to Rocky Horror Picture Show.

At a point later on, there were more restrictions added, more of a case of what you can't play rather than what you can play.

We still had free form, but there was a limit.

The end of it for me was Dave and myself bailing out to go do Fernandez Adcock Creative to try to work for ourselves.

You know, I got there sort of the very tail end of Do What You Want.

And over the course of the time I was there, the format got tighter and tighter and tighter.

The library, you know, shrunk.

It was increasingly format-driven and hit-driven, and it was just it was going downhill.

ZZQs ratings were very good.

Probably better than you would have expected for such a targeted format.

Money.

Money, money, money, money gets in the way of everything.

The word filtered out that the station had been sold and that there was probably going to be a format change.

It was pretty... it was pretty earth shattering for a lot of people.

And then when we found out that ZZQ was completely going away, and it was going to be converted to a country station, it really was a big deal.

Everybody at that point said, screw it, and just started playing whatever they wanted to play.

I mean, we just played.

We just-- rock and roll, man.

We go to the weird wall.

Suddenly, it didn't matter that you played Eleanor Rigby by Pure Food and Drug Act, or that you were playing stuff by Pacific Gas and Electric.

It didn't matter.

Bill: We found out that the station would come to an end on a Sunday night and that the new station would sign on the next morning.

I think the last deejay who was scheduled to be on the air was Warren Strain.

(The End by The Doors playing) (static) This station was radio for so many listeners.

It wasn't just a radio station, it was radio.

That's all there was, as far as they were concerned, was this station.

And suddenly it was gone.

That next morning I got in there on a Monday morning at about 5:00 and the new owner was there as well as all of the management.

And they gave me my instructions, which were to read this card at 6 a.m.

So I sat down in the news booth and at 6 a.m. they turned the transmitter back on and he pointed at me and I read the card, which was a big secret, you know, the name of the station.

I said, It's 6:00 at WMSI Jackson. Put the card down, read the news, and they started a country song.

That's how it started.

Miss 103.

(laughing) (Country Rock by Lite Saturation playing) Marshall was the General Manager at the station when I came here.

A lot of people, I'm sure, thought this was just something that he decided to do, when it really wasnt.

The company sold.

We were owned by Lamar Life.

They saw an opportunity to sell it.

Revenues were high.

They were not broadcasters.

They were insurance people, and that was the only radio company they had.

Plus, there were stockholders out there.

A lot of, you know, stockholders like to make money.

The Lamar Life folks made it pretty clear that this change is going to happen.

And we knew, we knew that we had to do it.

Country music was on fire.

Revenue wise, it shot sky high.

But it was difficult.

It was difficult for the staff.

It was difficult for the listeners.

They really lost a big piece of their heart, of their life, of the way they grew up.

And they had nowhere to go.

Ward Emling, Save Our Station: Save Our Station was a very loose, amateurish attempt to forestall a foregone conclusion.

We had petitions and fliers.

We had a concert at Riverside Park.

We had insider information.

And so it's like we got to tell people.

People have to get this.

This radio station is going away.

I believe they just wanted to, you know, pack up the truck and move all them rock records out of here, and move all that country stuff in.

And, you know, too bad for you.

(crowd chanting) (This Medicine, Love by Chords of Orion playing) All I wanted to do was point out that if they played rock music, they would make money.

I guess I wanted to entertain and enlighten.

The kind of music that we played and the kind of ideas that were explored were definitely radical for the time period, and the place where we were.

That stations music format was opening up a whole new universe for the listeners.

You were allowed to make a mistake, or put on put on something that was dreadful.

And then you go, Ah, guess I don't need to play that again. Which, later in life, you find out you don't get that opportunity much.

People that listened to ZZQ listened all the time, and they knew everybody on there.

They went to the community events that ZZQ supported.

ZZQ was a home.

It uplifted our spirit is what it did.

To hear that coming through WJDX FM, WZZQ on the Jackson, Mississippi airwaves.

Cosmically, it could not have been an accident.

Robert St. John: Willie Morris had something he called a mutual commonality.

When he would meet somebody in New York or in England traveling, someone from Mississippi, they would always, within just about 30 seconds, have this mutual commonality, this thing that brought them together that they had in common.

And that's what WZZQ was in the 1970s.

There was this thing that you shared.

To this day, I've never-- I have not listened to 102.9.

Once The Doors ended, I turned off 102.9, and never listened to it again.

The fact that a station of this caliber was here in Jackson, Mississippi, it was it was just a thing of beauty.

It was a heartbeat and a conscience for a group of people who felt not like everybody else in Jackson.

You knew you weren't the only one who was a freak.

It was just this fleeting little thing.

And we had a really good version of it in Jackson, Mississippi, which, you know, what are the odds of that?

So I'm sorry it didn't last longer.

Interviewer: Anything else you want to say?

Not except for the fact that I am flattered that you invited me to do this.

And I just feel like I was blessed to be part of something as iconic, something as wonderful as WZZQ.

And, you know, it it's something that I'll take with me forever.

(song ends) (Lawyers, Guns and Money by Warren Zevon playing) One, two, three, four I went home with the waitress.

The way I always do.

How was I to know.

She was with the Russians too?

I was gambling in Havana.

I took a little risk.

Send lawyers, guns, and money.

Dad, get me out of this.

Ha!

(music continues)