Throughout my days in small market Southern Gospel radio there remained one constant: local individuals wanting their music on your station. One thing these individuals did not understand was that the station’s image often rested on a listener’s first impression. If these unsolicited recordings had been allowed airplay willy nilly, I dare say these stations would have met a very early demise due to an overwhelming lack of sponsors.
Admittedly, Southern Gospel was a different animal. A lot of its artists got their start doing “vanity pressings” (recordings made at the artists’ own expense.) The most kind term for some of these acts was “unsigned talent”. In other words, a major recording label had yet to express interest in them.
Unfortunately, that lack of interest was often deserved. A vast majority of these singers were passed over for very good reasons.
As a deejay I shied away from playing local artists. Most of their music was sub-standard. A SG format is already an uphill fight, so playing the best songs from artists with national exposure, thanks to the backing of a major record label and professional representation, was a plus. Bad sounding music only diluted format. Disk jockeys didn’t often play to their personal preferences; I didn’t even like gospel music in the beginning. Ultimately, I learned to predict listener tastes and choose accordingly, winnowing a dubious playlist along the way.
My selection standards came into question at my 4th, and final, Gospel radio home. A popular young morning deejay there defined the term clueless. He was one of those individuals blissfully ignorant of any type of professionalism, yet arrogant. He conducted his show as if he were on a personal phone call; often interrupting the middle of a song or even a (gasp) commercial to announce trivial messages. Most of the music he played was from poorly recorded cassettes of unsigned artists. (I found out later that his family was a local singing group that owned a very small recording studio located in their thrift store backroom, where a majority of those tapes were recorded.) A frequent song he played on-air was one that he actually sang: the single worst version of Amazing Grace my ears have ever heard. (Off key, awash in phony echo, accompanied by a toy Casio keyboard—cheap, cheap demo recording.)
By comparison, my show was polished and featured only the top artists of the genre using pristine Nashville production values from vinyl and CD sources. The difference became a point of contention between us. Our egos often clashed. I eventually “won”, replacing him after an off-the-air argument escalated. The kid had sicced his irate mother on me—defenseless—while my general manager (a presumed friend) looked on. The boy quit. He evidentially had used the station for self-promotion and was threatened by losing that free publicity, no matter how small our signal was.
In the aftermath, the mother bought a 15 minute block of time during my show that featured her group, which was named after her. Ironically, she was paying more for a quarter hour than her boy had been paid his whole 5 hour day.
Here’s the scenario: Let’s say I own a recording studio and my son works at a radio station. I promise clients that if they record at my studio I will guarantee them airplay on my son’s station. This of course is unethical and illegal. It’s called Payola.
Stay tuned.
