Tag: Art Gilliam

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We Recommend We Recommend

Say Amen to the Stone Soul Picnic

Josh Bracy & Power Anointed performs at the Stone Soul Picnic in 2023. Photo by Demarcus Bowser

What’s fresh, free, and fun even after 49 years? How about the WLOK Stone Soul Picnic, which has become a Memphis tradition with a mix of gospel tunes and modern R&B. It’s happening Saturday, August 31st, from noon to 7 p.m. at The Coronet (formerly the Memphis Music Room), 5770 Shelby Oaks Drive. 

It’s nonstop entertainment with giveaways, kids’ activities, and food trucks. Throughout the day, top musical groups will perform, including headliner The Canton Spirituals, an award-winning gospel group that pioneered the mixing of traditional gospel with modern R&B.

It continues a long tradition that’s even older than the Beale Street Music Festival (born in 1977). It was in 1974 that a couple of staffers at WLOK thought that the station’s listeners would enjoy some music and food. They didn’t know how right they were. They got the King Cotton company to provide some meat, Wonder Bread to bring the buns, and Coca-Cola to supply the beverages in hopes that a couple of hundred people would show up at Martin Luther King Riverside Park. But thousands of people turned out and it’s been going strong ever since.

Art Gilliam acquired the station a couple of years later and kept the picnic going. The station’s music was R&B but has since changed to gospel, but the event remains free and joyous. And WLOK — still under Gilliam’s leadership — remains a community station with not just music but programming that includes, among other topics, civic issues and health information.

Here’s the musical lineup for Saturday:
12:05 p.m. – Deborah Barnes
12:20 p.m. – Memphis Youth Arts Initiative
12:35 p.m. – Memphis Baptist Ministerial Chorus
1 p.m. – Cedric King & Restoration
1:25 p.m. – Tamara Knox
1:45 p.m. – The Mellowtones
2:15 p.m. – Patrick Hollis & United
2:40 p.m. – Vincent Tharp & Kenosis
3:15 p.m. – Roney Strong & the Strong Family
3:50 p.m. – Josh Bracy & Power Anointed
4:25 p.m. – The Sensational Wells Brothers
5 p.m. – The Echoaires
5:35 p.m. – The Canton Spirituals

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Film Features Film/TV

WLOK Black Film Festival

Viola Davis stars in The Woman King as General Nanisca, leader of the all-female Agojie warriors.

With its daily programming of music and information, WLOK has long been committed to community outreach. Since the mid-1970s, it has also offered the popular free Stone Soul Picnic around Labor Day.

The station expanded its cultural outreach with the WLOK Black Film Festival, which brings together both the local art community and Hollywood films.

This year will be the seventh cinema festival, presenting four features plus a collection of short films by new filmmakers. The festival runs from September 13th through September 19th at venues around town.

Opening night, Wednesday, September 13th, is “New Filmmakers Production” with several short films being screened at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. The winning filmmaker will be awarded a $1,000 prize.

On Thursday, September 14th, is 2022’s The Woman King at the Museum of Science & History (MoSH). Starring Viola Davis and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, the project dominated the 2022 Black Reel Awards and the film categories of the 2022 NAACP Image Awards. The presentation includes a red carpet and a buffet dinner with food from local restaurants.

On Friday, September 15th, the 2022 biopic Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody will be screened. It stars Naomi Ackie and was directed by Kasi Lemmons. That will be shown at Crosstown Theater, which is particularly good for this film: “We found that Crosstown has a great sound system, great acoustics, so we tried to get a place that had strong musical quality,” said Art Gilliam, president and CEO of WLOK.

Each year, the WLOK Black Film Festival honors a cinema luminary who has recently passed away. Saturday, September 16th will serve as a tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman, who plays Jackie Robinson in the 2013 film 42, directed by Brian Helgeland. The screening will be at Malco’s Studio on the Square, and a former player with the Negro League is expected to introduce the film.

The final day of the festival, Sunday, September 17th, will be at the National Civil Rights Museum with the 2022 film Till directed by Chinonye Chukwu. The screening will be introduced by a recorded interview with Myrlie Evers-Williams and Danielle Deadwyler, who plays Mamie Till in the film. There will be a panel discussion after the film.

The festival reinforces Gilliam’s vision for the station that he owns and operates. “The future is determined by ourselves in terms of what we do and how we do it,” he says. “That’s not just for us, but for any station — you have to have your identity. The benefit we have is that we understand who we are. And then we can do other things — it doesn’t have to be just radio.”

The film festival is meant to put a spotlight on a developing area for local creatives.

One of the board members of the Gilliam Foundation Inc. is Levi Frazier, a longtime playwright and educator. Frazier, Gilliam says, believes that “the opportunity for films in Memphis is tremendous.” With incentives being offered to local filmmakers, Gilliam says that part of the evolution of WLOK’s new filmmakers program has been to encourage talent.

Encouraging filmmakers is nothing new for WLOK. In 2002, the 25th anniversary of Gilliam’s acquisition of the station, he called on Joann Self Selvidge of True Story Pictures to create a documentary about the enterprise. The project, Selvidge says, set her on the path to filmmaking. “It kind of became a classic in the sense that they still played it from time to time on WKNO. When I look at it and realize the nuances that she was able to bring into that, it shows how very observant she is. So, we recognize the potential for the film industry in Memphis.”

It’s reflective of the programming of WLOK, but the station goes well beyond playing gospel tunes.

“We consider ourselves a community station,” Gilliam says. “We play gospel music, but there’s a difference. Some people think of us as a Christian station, and of course the majority of our listeners are Christian churchgoers. But as a community station that has a gospel music format, we delve into areas that the Christian stations aren’t necessarily going to. In our talk programs, we deal with legal issues, with health issues, with controversial and political issues. Most Christian stations don’t deal with these issues, or if they do, it’s strictly from one point of view. We deal with all points of view.”

WLOK Black Film Festival runs September 13th through 17th. For more info, visit wlok.com.

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News The Fly-By

WLOK Celebrates 40 Years of Black Ownership

Forty years ago, WLOK 1340 AM became the city’s first black-owned and first locally owned radio station when former WMC-TV news anchor Art Gilliam purchased the soul music station from William F. Buckley’s Starr Broadcasting.

Even before Gilliam’s purchase, the station was only the second in Memphis to offer programming to black audiences. It quickly became a competitor with the first such station, WDIA, which focused on R&B.

“When I was a teenager, I listened to WLOK. It came along as a more youth-oriented station,” Gilliam said.

After Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, tensions rose over the fact that a station with programming for black audiences was owned by white management. In 1970, the on-air staff walked out in a protest over low wages and poor working conditions.

WLOK will celebrate 40 years of black ownership on Saturday, June 4th with an event at the Orpheum featuring Al Green, the Brown Singers, the Gospel Four, the Tennessee Mass Choir, and the Stax Academy Alumni Band. The show begins at 7 p.m. — Bianca Phillips

Art Gilliam

Flyer: What made you want to buy a radio station?

Art Gilliam: I was the first black television anchor in Memphis back in the 1960s and early ’70s. That sparked my interest in media. When Harold Ford Sr. was elected to Congress, I left WMC and went to Washington as his administrative assistant. That’s how I began to start pursuing the actual purchase of the station. Ben Hook was an FCC commissioner at that time. I went to him for advice, and he provided information that led me to a radio broker firm that was handling the sale of WLOK.

Your purchase of WLOK was just a few years after Dr. King’s assassination. How important was it for WLOK to be black-owned?

There was a tremendous need. As an aside, WLOK was the first media outlet in the country to make the announcement that Dr. King had been killed. The station is located just two blocks from the Lorraine [Motel], and somebody had run down from the Lorraine to let the on-air announcer know. That was Bill Adkins, who is a minister here now.

The previous owner had put Operation PUSH, which was considered by some to be militant civil rights organization, off the air because they were advocating for civil rights in some very strong ways. Some of the advertisers had approached the previous owners and told them they were going to stop advertising if they didn’t take Operation PUSH off the air. And they took them off the air.

Black ownership understood the significance of Operation PUSH and other civil rights activities in the black community. We put Operation PUSH back on the air.

Wasn’t Al Green the first person to congratulate you on the purchase?

He was a superstar, and I knew him only slightly. But because of the significance of black ownership, he came by to congratulate me. He was the first person to come by.

Weren’t there parallels with WLOK’s format and Al Green’s career?

Al Green was an R&B artist, and we played R&B and soul. And we moved into a gospel format around the same time he started performing more gospel. There was quite a parallel.

Why did WLOK switch to a gospel format in 1980s?

We thought there was a demand for gospel. We’re an AM station, and the best place on the dial for gospel was on the AM band. We’d been doing some gospel in the mornings, so we thought we’d add some additional gospel during the day, and it worked out well.

With the popularity of satellite and streaming radio, where do you see WLOK going in the future?

The key for any radio format is it’s a very personal medium. We have an extremely loyal audience at WLOK. As long as radio stations can maintain that level of personal identification with their audience, then I think radio has a very bright future.