We hope you’ve been enjoying our in-depth interview with Jared “Jay B” Boyd. (Here are links to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.) We conclude with a story about the time Boyd met one of his heroes: Stax legend Booker T. Jones.
Tag: Jared Boyd
In Part 3 of his We Saw You interview, Jared “Jay B.” Boyd talks about his journalism career, which began with an internship at the Jackson (Mississippi) Free Press magazine and continued with The Commercial Appeal, the The (Mobile, Alabama) Press-Register, and The Daily Memphian newspapers.
Boyd’s goal when he returned to the Bluff City was to be chosen to be in the Memphis Flyer’s 20 < 30 list within five years. “I wanted to be on that cover,” he says. “By the time I’m 30, I’ve done enough to deserve that.”
Along the way, Boyd wore many hats, including “public safety reporter” and “sitting in courts,” as well as covering music and food for newspapers.
Jared “Jay B.” Boyd tells me in Part 2 of his We Saw You interview that he wanted to rap and skateboard when he was growing up in Memphis. He has done both, while also becoming the program manager of WYXR, a DJ, a co-host of radio’s Beale Street Caravan, and a board member of BRIDGES. He was previously a reporter for The Daily Memphian.
You can catch up with the first part of our interview here.
You’ve probably seen — or heard — Jared “Jay B” Boyd somewhere. He’s the program manager for WYXR radio, but he’s also a DJ, co-host of radio’s Beale Street Caravan, and a board member of BRIDGES.
Sitting down with Boyd for the latest We Saw You interview, I asked if there was more than one Jared Boyd because “Jared Boyd” seems to be everywhere.
He responds: “I’m the only one I’ve had the pleasure of meeting.”
In part one of the four-part series, Boyd talks about his childhood growing up in Parkway Village, going to Richland Elementary School, and White Station High School. His parents, he says, “allowed me to explore my interests.”
I also learned the late Andrew Love of the Memphis Horns was his cousin — and I learned Boyd can play the viola!
See the rest of the Boyd interviews in Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
Stay tuned for more installments of We Saw You with Jared Boyd.
If you enjoy any sort of music or news that’s slightly off the beaten path, you may ultimately have a bit of Scotch tape to thank for its availability on the radio. Back in 1967, when President Lyndon Johnson was about to sign the Public Broadcasting Act into law, the language was being debated up to the last minute, including the use of the word “radio.” In Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio, author Jack Mitchell describes how the words “and radio” had been removed from the document only days before heading to Johnson’s desk. At the last minute, the bill’s author used tape to add the two words back in, thus laying the foundation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, including National Public Radio and its nearly 50-year legacy of local affiliates.
Not long after that, in the mid-1970s, there was an explosion of independent, listener-supported community stations. And since then, public (NPR-affiliated) and community (volunteer) radio stations have offered the best alternatives to commercial music and news radio. For all the touting of “choices” offered by market-driven institutions, commercial broadcasting can take on a dispiriting sameness. As brilliant as pop culture may be at times, let’s face it: A city’s creative life depends on art that rises above the demographic- and market-driven ethos of commercial media.
Memphis might have been very different if nonprofit radio had not taken root here. But take root it did, and now the city boasts four non-commercial stations that are driven and supported by their listeners. April is an especially auspicious time to honor that legacy, it being the month when two of our most venerable stations were founded. Here’s a look at the state of non-commercial Memphis radio today.
WKNO (91.1 FM): The Mother of Mid-South Public Radio
“In April of next year, the station’s going to be 50 years old,” says Darel Snodgrass, director of radio at WKNO-FM. “We went on in April of ’72, which was only like three months after NPR was formed. The only program they had was All Things Considered, so all the rest of the time was filled with classical music.”
As Snodgrass points out, that twin commitment to both news and music has defined WKNO ever since. “There are not many stations that do what we do anymore, that have programming that mixes news and classical music. Most stations have added HD channels and split it, with all news on one and all classical on the other. There are only about five or six stations in the country that do what we do, and mix them. It makes us kind of unique.”
Though one might imagine that a kind of homogeneity pervades NPR stations across the country, there’s actually a lot of diversity among them. For one, stations differ radically in the degree to which they weave local news into the content of national programs. Snodgrass is justifiably proud of WKNO’s commitment to Mid-South news. “Doing local news is hard. It’s a lot of work, and we’ve got people now who do wonderful work. That’s one of the things I’ve been so pleased with over the last 10 years: the growth in our local news reporting.”
But it’s no surprise that the onetime music major and current music host is even more proud of the station’s commitment to his preferred art. As he explains, it is not just music in the abstract, but music as curated by devoted DJs in real time.
“This [NPR] station is unique in that we individually program our own shows. We pick our own music. This just doesn’t happen anymore. Even other classical music stations have a program director who’s telling them what to play. And of course commercial stations are all heavily programmed, mostly from New York and Los Angeles. So Kacky [Walton] and I consider ourselves to be extremely lucky. We can use that freedom to respond to things. If it’s a gloomy, rainy day, we can play something uplifting.We can react to things both locally and nationally, which a lot of people just don’t get to do. It’s kind of amazing, honestly.”
Kacky Walton, the station’s music coordinator and other music host, agrees. “You can respond to events,” she says. “The best example was after September 11, 2001. We just had news for I don’t know how many days. But when we finally went back to music, there was still that feeling of sadness, and you had to be really mindful of playing something with the appropriate mood to it. It was difficult, but at the same time, I discovered a lot of music that I hadn’t really played before.”
This was especially true as the lockdown conditions of the pandemic set in last year. Radio took on a new importance in people’s lives. “In hard times, radio gives you a sense of community,” Snodgrass says. “We heard a lot from folks who were listening to a lot of classical music. They may have previously been going to their jobs every day. Now they’re at home, listening to classical music, because it’s a haven, it’s a refuge. It provides a sense of security and continuity. These are pieces that have been around, in some cases, for hundreds of years. And they’re still there.”
(Photo: Antwoine McClellan | AJM Images)
WEVL (89.9 FM): The Pioneer Spirit
WKNO was one of the first affiliates to join the NPR family, benefiting from the largess of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but not long after its launch, there arose an alternative take on nonprofit radio in the heart of Midtown. In fact, for many years, it was only in Midtown, because the station’s 10-watt broadcast couldn’t reach any farther.
“I think I came to the station in 1978, two years after it went on the air,” recalls Judy Dorsey, the longtime station manager for WEVL. “I was strictly a volunteer. I was just interested in it. I’d read about it in the paper and couldn’t believe we had something like this in Memphis. Granted, it was only 10 watts. You could only hear it in certain areas of Midtown. But just the fact that it was there and people were doing this was very exciting to me. And when I first went down to the house where it was located, I knew, ‘Here’s my people. I found ’em.’”
That esprit de corps fueled much of the counterculture, of course, including the little station that could. “There were a lot of what you might call hippies and assorted musicians. They were drawn to it almost immediately. And curious people like me, people who liked oddball music that wasn’t being heard.” As with the hippies that started the Memphis Country Blues Festival, there was an inclusiveness to the WEVL volunteers’ ethos that lent itself to diversity.
(Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)
“I remember the first time I heard a live performance on the air,” Dorsey recalls. “I think it was [local blues legends] the Fieldstones. They played live on there several times, because we had connections with them. And they had what they called a Blues-a-thon. And I remember opening the door and there was Rufus Thomas up at the top of the stairs, doing the Funky Chicken!
“That was the first night that Dee ‘Cap’n Pete’ Henderson ever came to the station. He lived way over in Box Town, and had gone to Radio Shack and bought a big ol’ antenna, and stuck it up on his roof, just so he could hear the Blues-a-thon, because he’d read about it in The Commercial Appeal. Then he called the DJ on the air and the guy told him, ‘Come on down here! You know more about this stuff than I do!’ So he came down.” That encounter led to the late Cap’n Pete becoming one of the station’s preeminent blues DJs, whose shows are still rebroadcast to this day.
Homemade antennas and chance encounters capture the spirit of WEVL well, which has become a local institution on the strength of its do-it-yourself attitude. It persisted even as the station outgrew its original wattage in 1986. “Our first transmitter building, when we went back on the air in ’86, was all built with donated materials and volunteer labor. I don’t think we paid for anything out there,” says Dorsey.
The same personal commitment, and reliance on local pledges, has helped WEVL weather the cycles of funding and attrition. The Carter years were a good time to begin. “You had a lot of little 10-watt stations starting up at the same time as WEVL. A lot of them were born in that part of the 1970s. We’re charter members of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters — we were some of the first people to join it. Our first station manager and program director were getting paid through grant money from the federal government, and when the grant money ran out, that’s when they left. There were all kinds of different grants in those days. When all that stopped, that was a bad time. It was Reagan, he ruined everything. That was sort of a dark era, because we didn’t have any money to pay anybody. There was a period where it was strictly volunteers. It was a bit chaotic.”
But sometimes you can make chaos work for you, as WEVL’s longevity bears out. Today, they carry on much as before, still using the homemade record shelves made years ago, the epitome of listener-supported radio, with last year’s mid-pandemic pledge drive being one of the station’s most successful ever.
(Photo: Courtesy of Tommy Warren)
WYPL (89.3): Serving the Underserved, Dishing Out Memphis Magic
Though WEVL’s original 10 watts may have been rather weak, a station now using one of the region’s most powerful transmitters had even more humble beginnings. “We are now a 100,000-watt station, covering a 75-mile radius from the tower in West Memphis. That tower was actually donated to the library in 1997, and its power and size is a bit of overkill, but that’s the situation we’re in.” So reflects Tommy Warren, broadcast manager for WYPL, the station based in the basement of the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.
Yet the station still retains its original mission of offering the vision-impaired and others readings of current newspapers, magazines, and books — one of only two such stations in the country. “It started out in 1978 as a ham radio kind of situation,” says Warren. “I am only the second radio manager here since then. Before me, there was a manager who was himself vision-impaired. He organized volunteers, and they’d sit in a little booth and read, and you had to have a ham radio at home to pick it up. It operated like that for about 15 years.”
When Warren came on board, he added an element to the readings by tapping into the huge digital archive of Memphis music in the library system. That has seen its audience increase dramatically, especially overseas, where the station can be heard online.
“We started doing all the music shows five or six years ago. Now we’re bringing in DJs like Randy Haspel and Lahna Deering and Barbara Blue. People who actually play Memphis music also come in here and produce shows.”
The new emphasis on music has made WYPL a real player on the community radio scene, although they, unlike the other stations mentioned here, do not depend on public donations. “Because we’re paid for by the city of Memphis, we feel there’s an obligation that we have to live up to. Especially through COVID. When there are emergencies, people turn to over-the-air radio for their first source of information.”
(Photo: Jamie Harmon)
WYXR (91.7 FM): The New Kids on the Block
Yet another player in the nonprofit world of the airwaves arrived right in the middle of the pandemic lockdown last year, but the timing does not appear to have slowed its roll. Its frequency was already familiar to Memphians, having been where the University of Memphis’ station, WUMR, had lived on the dial for decades. But sometime in 2019, the U of M decided the jazz-only format and station management needed a change of course.
Robby Grant, executive director of WYXR, describes the process as an evolution of goals. “The University of Memphis knew they wanted to do something different with the radio station. They had an existing relationship with the Daily Memphian, and reached out to them, but the folks at the Daily Memphian said, ‘We don’t want to run an entire radio station.’ So they approached the Crosstown Concourse. The U of M wanted to get more connected with the community, so this was another way for them to reach outside of their campus. It made sense for it to be a partnership.”
For Grant, who has a background in software and web development, a crucial element was also making the most of digital technology to archive every show put on the air, which community stations in other cities have implemented. But once that infrastructure was in place, the shows themselves had to be created. (Including Flyer Radio, a show produced by Flyer staff featuring news, interviews, and Memphis music, and airing every Friday at noon.)
“They brought me in,” he says, “and I brought in Jay B [program director Jared Boyd] soon thereafter to really shape the programming. I had some ideas. I knew free-form radio allows a lot of flexibility for the community to be involved. I wanted some talk programming. I felt like that was missing. There’s some talk programming on a national level, but I thought there was a way to elevate more of the community talk. The Daily Memphian has their news part of it. So I was working on the nuts and bolts, bringing that together, getting agreements in place. When Jay B came on, we hit the ground running with the programming. We built on our networks, along with the applications process, to find DJs.”
By the time of their debut broadcast on October 5th of last year, they had 70 volunteer DJs, arguably with a greater programming diversity than any other station in the country. But it felt a bit like a minefield. As Boyd explains, “Frankly, moving from WUMR’s jazz-lover focus to a new format, a free-form radio station, was going to be a hard change for a lot of people, no matter what our content was. We were taking something away from the community that was extremely needed, in some people’s eyes. And that can be rough.”
Nonetheless, Boyd was determined to raise the stakes of the diverse programming. “People may not expect to hear community radio in Memphis, in the South, that has a space for hip-hop, house music, or punk. But the reality of Memphis is that those people are as much if not more representative of our community than the genres most people think of when they consider community radio. So how and why could we be representative of the community if we’re not representative of those people?
“And there are still places where we haven’t been able to find the right person, who understands what we do, and can present to their segment of the community. Like the Latinx community. But also the Vietnamese community and the Chinese and Japanese and Ethiopian and Somalian and Kenyan communities. There’s tons of cultures who pair their origins with the identity of being American and being a Memphian. But there are only 24 hours in a day, so we have to be creative about how to bring everybody on.”
Though there are more ambitious plans ahead, Boyd feels that the mix WYXR has settled on passes one key test, perhaps the toughest test of all: “The feedback we’ve been getting is that people don’t know how to explain what we do, except that it just feels and sounds like Memphis,” he says. “I wanted to lead with that.”
Editor’s Note: This month, WKNO, WEVL, and WYXR all have their seasonal pledge drives. We urge you to tune in and give generously.
Local artists Mia Saine and Toonky Berry have given the area outside FedExForum a major glow up in celebration of Black History Month.
Memphis Tourism
Earlier today, Memphis Tourism unveiled the “Roots of Memphis Music” public art project in a press release. Twenty-four of the round concrete bollards surrounding the Forum’s entry plaza (at the intersection of B.B. King Boulevard and Beale Street) are now emblazoned with the likenesses of both the past and present Memphis music royalty. Think major players like W.C. Handy, David Porter, and Three 6 Mafia, as well as historic locations like Stax Records and Royal Studios.
Saine is a Memphis-native illustrator and designer, whose images consist of “simplified shapes, fun colors, and chalky textures.” Quantavious Berry, known as “Tooky Berry,” developed a style he dubs Toonkifcation while a student at the Memphis College of Art, which is an amalgam of “surrealism, caricatures, and graffiti.”
Each piece of artwork includes a QR Code that will provide interested patrons with the backgrounds and context of the images depicted on the bollards. Hosted on the Memphis Tourism website, these stories are curated by the Memphis Rock ’n’ Soul Museum, Memphis Slim Collaboratory executive director Tonya Dyson, and WYXR 91.7 program director Jared “Jay B” Boyd.
Memphis Tourism
Artists Mia Saine and Toonky Berry incorporated both the past and present of Memphis musical culture into the ‘Roots of Memphis Music’ project.
“The goal of this activation launching during Black History Month was to tell a visual story of prominent figures and landmarks that are connected to the Memphis music legacy, along with the music that is coming out of our city today,” said Regena Bearden, chief marketing officer for Memphis Tourism, in the release. “Our I Love Memphis murals across the city have become a destination for visitors and locals alike. For this project, we not only wanted to create a public art space to honor people and places at the heart of the Memphis sound but also educate and inform those who engage with the art through scannable QR codes on the bollards provide a wealth of information.”
“We are excited to celebrate the history of Black music here in Memphis with our partners at Memphis Tourism,” added Anthony Macri, vice president of partnership marketing for the Memphis Grizzlies. “The outdoor plaza in front of FedExForum is a front porch for the city, and featuring these great musicians, moments and locations will add richness to the experience of millions of tourists and visitors all year long.”
The artwork will remain in the FedExForum plaza through June 2021. To learn more about the project, visit MemphisTravel.com. For more ways to celebrate Black History Month in Memphis year-round, read this itinerary.
Wah-wah clavinet introduces the song, announcing that you are deep in the 1970s. “Talkin’ about a good time, we gonna have a time!” It’s one of the best party tracks you’ve never heard, though it’s possible you have, if you ever chanced upon the single by Jacqui Verdell in 1973, on a label under the umbrella of Stax Records: The Gospel Truth.
While music historians usually give a nod to the gospel roots of so much of the Stax soul sound, the actual gospel records released by the label are often overlooked. And yet, late in the Stax story, from 1972 to 1974, The Gospel Truth played a pivotal role in the genre. Some would even deem it a revolution, as the label championed gospel music with a funky, contemporary edge.
Craft Recordings, second to none in the business of reissues, and a longtime purveyor of classic Stax albums, has made that history easier to comprehend than ever, thanks to their new three-LP collection, The Gospel Truth: The Complete Singles Collection. If that’s not your medium of choice, the set’s also available as a digital release, but the grooves and textures of these tracks benefit immeasurably from their vinyl incarnation, cut to lacquer by Jeff Powell. It’s how the Good Lord meant for them to be heard.
Either way, you’ll get the in-depth essay by Jared Boyd, program manager at radio station WYXR and music columnist for The Daily Memphian. As he notes, “From its very launch, [the label] was formed around the strengths of the Rance Allen Group, a Michigan family band whose electrifying leader had a remarkable vocal range and an unabashed infusion of blues, soul, and rock-and-roll.”
Indeed, Rance Allen, who just passed away last October, was a force of nature. As Robert Gordon puts it in Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion, “Stax liked them so much, they created a new imprint, The Gospel Truth, just so they could sign them.” Beyond Allen’s singing, they were pioneers of a fresher, funkier version of gospel than what was common in their day. Many secular fans got their first taste of the group at the 1972 Wattstax festival, where the raw funk of their “Lying on the Truth” sat nicely alongside the Bar-Kays.
It’s telling that the first track in this collection is Allen’s take on the Temptations’ “Just My Imagination,” subtitled “Just My Salvation.” Nor is it surprising that the group accounts for 10 of the 34 tracks here. But the label’s other featured artists stick with that same commercial sensibility.
“Ooh, I got the vibes you’re sending with your eyes,” sings Joshie Jo Armstead on “I Got the Vibes,” a 1973 track that anticipates the onset of disco so presciently that Joshie should get royalties from the Bee Gees. “If the Shoe Fits Wear It” and “Who’s Supposed to be Raising Who,” from the same year, mine similar ground, and the group that sang them, the 21st Century, would later have a bona fide disco hit with “Tailgate,” under the name 21st Creation.
And yet the repertoire here doesn’t represent a complete break with gospel tradition, either. Rev. Jesse Jackson’s People’s Choir of Operation Push, which arose out of the Civil Rights struggle, supplies plenty of the gigantic, singalong choruses typically associated with gospel, albeit with a rhythm section that could have been right out of a Stax pop record.
In truth, the regular Stax session players don’t make much of an appearance. With Clarence Smith being the only Memphian here, among many from Chicago or Detroit. Most of these bands had their own provenance. In fact, label head Dave Clark had a knack for buying up bands’ unreleased tracks, shelved by other labels, and readying them for release by having the Stax engineers brighten up the mixes a bit. The fact that these sound so cohesive is simply a sign that this was a whole movement of bands forging a new, modern form of gospel. And most of them loved the hits that had made Stax what it was.
WYXR
New radio station WYXR’s initial staff includes (from left) Shelby McCall, Robby Grant, and Jared Boyd.
WYXR, a new, non-commercial radio station will hit the air (and digital devices) here this fall in a partnership between Crosstown Concourse, The Daily Memphian, and the University of Memphis.
The station’s radio home is at 91.7 FM and its call letters stand for “Your Crosstown Radio.” That’s where the station’s staff will produce and air its daily broadcasts. The station partners came together to reimagine the U of M’s WUMR station back in November.
The station will be led by executive director Robby Grant, who spent 15 years at advertising firm Archer Malmo after first starting his own online marketing company. Grant is also a staple on the Memphis music scene, touring widely and also as a member of Mellotron Variations.
“I’ve been wanting to help make a change with Memphis radio, specifically community radio, for a long time,” Grant said in a statement. “The fact that it has organically become real is exciting.
[pullquote-1] “We are going to amplify voices in Memphis and the Mid-South. By taking a freeform approach, we want to begin finding personalities and DJs who have their own tastes and things they’ve grown up loving and sharing with people.
“A freeform station allows those DJs to turn people onto music, whether it’s the music they’ve loved their whole lives or what they’ve heard this past week.”
Jared “Jay B.” Boyd will serve as WYXR’s program director. Boyd is a DJ, reporter with The Daily Memphian, and host of NPR-syndicated radio program “Beale Street Caravan.”
“Aside from the opportunity to be hands-on in cultivating new and emerging broadcast talent in the Mid-South, I’m most gratified by this radio partnership’s potential to truly reach people in the Mid-South area by virtue of being open and welcoming in nature,” Boyd said in a statement. “When you walk into Crosstown Concourse, it won’t be hidden. The nuts and bolts of the operation will be showcased behind glass right in the lobby of the Central Atrium. By design, this community-minded radio station will not just broadcast to its audience but live and breathe alongside it.”
WYXR
Former WUMR staffer Shelby McCall, who works now with Entercom Memphis, has signed on as WYXR’s operations coordinator. The University of Memphis is also searching for an instructor for student radio. This position will facilitate student involvement with the station and also program and plan a second university-focused internet stream, on which students will broadcast news, sports, and music.
The station’s programming will be made up of volunteer contributions from regular content producers and special guests to achieve a freeform format, providing room for a rotating cast of local personalities and an educational ground for university students.
WYXR
From left: Grant, Boyd, and McCall
The WYXR studio is now being built in the space once held by The OAM network, an independent podcast company. The new space will have a redesigned control room, production room, and live audio connections from Crosstown Theater, the Green Room at Crosstown Arts, and plans to simulcast event’s from the U of M’s new, $40 million Scheidt Family Music Center.
For more information or to volunteer, go to wyxr.org. Initial programming will be posted on the site in the coming weeks.