Herman Grizzard
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Herman Grizzard (died 1971, Nashville, Tennessee) was an American radio disc jockey who attained fame and notoriety from the 1940s through the 1970s for playing rhythm and blues and music on Nashville radio station WLAC. Grizzard was one host of a nightly series of four programs on the station; he shared the block of programs with "John R." (Richbourg), Bill "Hoss" Allen, and Gene Nobles.
Grizzard began his affiliation with the historic clear-channel AM station during its early years in the 1930s and hosted a variety of different programs up to the mid-1940s or so. By 1950, however, he joined the station's move to a nighttime format (after network programming ended for the day) of R&B, soul music, and gospel music, initially developed in order to sell advertising to African-American-oriented products and businesses.
Grizzard's own program was sponsored for many years by a local Nashville record store, Buckley's, located on Church Street near downtown and the Vanderbilt University campus; most of his programs were mainly devoted to promoting the store's stock, often sold in packages of three to six of 78 or 45 RPM discs. Buckley's, along with Randy's Record Shop in nearby Gallatin (sponsor of Nobles' program) and Ernie's Record Mart (sponsor of Richbourg's show), conducted a large mail-order business, providing customers in many states the opportunity to purchase music that, prior to the late 1950s, was not readily available to many Euro-Americans, at least not from "respectable" outlets. Much of Buckley's inventory consisted of recordings on Nashville-based labels, often by locally-based artists, whose songs Grizzard featured quite liberally on his program. After Grizzard's death, Buckley's took over sponsorship of Allen's program for several years, before closing sometime in the early 1970s.
According to a book by Wes Smith, "The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s" (Longstreet Press, 1989), Grizzard was also an early baseball broadcaster, apparently announcing play-by-play action of minor-league teams in Nashville.
For most of his show's run, Grizzard used the Erskine Hawkins tune "Blues After Hours" as an opening theme.
[edit] External links
- WLAC Radio: The Unofficial Webpage - station history (features a rare aircheck of Grizzard and a full-length recording of "Blues After Hours")
