New Year’s Day — Late morning as I was driving up College Street on my way to the grocery store, I switched on the radio and The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra was playing “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” by Johann Strauss. I thought of my father.
It’s waltz music; you would recognize it if you heard it.
Back when we were kids, my dad owned a small AM radio station, WCBI, “550 on your dial.” The station was first located in the Gilmer Hotel and then above The Dispatch. In those days d.j.s played LPs and 45 records. I’m not sure what they were thinking, but the publicity departments at RCA and Columbia Records would send my father’s little AM station boxes of classical records.
Maybe there were AM stations in the rural South that played Chopin etudes and Wagner operas, but WCBI was not one of them. Boxes of classical records still in their cellophane wrapping would end up at our house on Chickasaw Drive.
The album covers had big stickers on them declaring, “Columbia Records Radio Station Service/Not for Resale.” I loved to look at the covers, idyllic scenes from nature, portraits of composers, beautiful women in exotic costumes — the album with Ravel’s Bolero had a Spanish dancer.
My father would play the albums occasionally and even made an ill-fated attempt to inculcate us with the music. My parents declared we would have a classical music night once a week. We would have dinner, then one of us would deliver a report on a composer and play his music.
We made it through Beethoven and Mozart before the project was abandoned.
What got me enthusiastic about classical music were Stanley Kubrick’s “2001, A Space Odyssey” and “A Clockwork Orange.”
While vinyl has seen a modest resurgence in recent years, its glory days are behind us. Though, audiophiles say vinyl provides the best listening experience. With its revival, the LP might outlast CDs, the technology that replaced it.
Gregory Martin teaches art at Mississippi State University. He credits his career choice to record album art.
Martin, who grew up in California, said the covers that sparked his imagination as a kid were “Cheap Thrills” by Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company with cover art by Robert Crumb, and “Disraeli Gears” by Cream with cover art by Martin Sharp.
“My hippy cousin who was 10 years older brought them to our house at Christmas,” Martin said. “It was my introduction to art influenced by surrealism and psychedelia. Both artists were a part of the cultural scene the music and musicians came from. It was also my introduction to music based on blues from Chicago and Mississippi. Willie Dixon, Robert Johnson, and Big Mama Thornton.
“This was the start of my interest in art and led to my pursuing a professional career.”
Martin has a Merle Haggard LP cover to his credit.
Saturday morning I got Doug Moulds on the phone. Doug went to work at WCBI Radio in 1963 or ’64 just as the station was moving from the Gilmer to The Dispatch. The memory is vivid because, as he said, “We had to tote all that stuff down to The Dispatch.”
Moulds said station manager Jack Cochran was a classical music buff and responsible for the trove of classical records.
“He would call or write the record companies, and they would send 10 or 15 albums,” Moulds said.
We reminisced about radio days, different personalities. I asked about the late Whit Whitlock. Whit had a velvet smooth voice and hosted a late night show called “Moonglow.” In later years, Whit broadcast his show from a studio in the back of a sewing center he ran with his wife on Airline Road.
Doug says he has a reel-to-reel tape of Whit he’s going to try to find for me. I’m telling you, he was smooth.
Going through my albums just now it turns out I still have some of those unopened “Not for Resale” LPs of classical music. There’s a beautiful boxed set of Johann Sebastian Bach and the nine symphonies of Beethoven. I bet ole Johann Strauss is in there somewhere.
It being a new year, maybe I’ll fire up the turntable and give them a listen.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
