Woody Windham Blog

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A chronological look at Woody Windham’s career.
I guess you could say it all started in 1952 when I was 12 years old. I started a record collection of rock and roll records , 78’s and 45’s, that I had obtained from the juke box man. They were so worn out you could see through them. I would lock myself in my bedroom and play like I was a disc jockey and talk into a pencil. I only had one record player, so I had to talk about the next record while I was changing the tunes. I remember several times my father would burst into the room and shout, “What are you gonna do, play records the rest of your life?” I would tell him that I sure hope so. He would say, “Get out of this room and go cut the grass!”
Late at night I would lie in bed with my radio under the covers listening to WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee. I loved rhythm and blues music and all the black disc jockeys. I found out many years later that none of them were black. They were all white guys sounding black. They were so cool and I tried to emulate them by rhyming everything like, “Top of the pops and crème of the crops, needle noise for the girls and boys, tippin light fantastic through the land of spastic plastic.” There were many more.
My father spent the last year of his navy career at Charleston Naval Hospital in 1957. I attended North Charleston High School my senior year and got a job spinning the records for the sock hops at Park Circle Recreation Building. When I started at the College Of Charleston, I joined a fraternity, PI KAPPA PHI, and met Doug Randall who worked as a disc jockey on WTMA, from the Target Drive-in. He let me go with him several nights to do the show and I got the radio bug.
Then in 1959, a year later, I had dropped out of college to become a professional bowler. I had a 202 average in three leagues. That was pretty good back then but not good enough. My parents had moved back to Windham’s Crossroads in Darlington County and I ended up on their doorstep sick, broke, and hungry. My father said I could stay there as long as I was getting unemployment and as long as I gave mother half the money. I would hitchhike to Hartsville once a week and pick up 26 dollars and bring mother 13. After 6 weeks she said, “You’ve always wanted to be a disc jockey. Why don’t you hitchhike up to Darlington and go by WDAR and ask them for a job? You’re a real good liar. Just tell them that you’ve done it before. They will believe you.”
She was right on the money. The owner of the station was Walter Pierce. I told him I had worked at every radio station in Charleston and he believed me and said I could start that day in 2 hours at 3pm. He asked me if I had a license and I said, “Oh yeah, I’ve had one since I was 13.” I thought he was talking about a driver’s license. I didn’t even know you had to have a broadcast license. Tommy Stanley was on the air. The boss introduced me to him and left to go out of town. It’s a good thing because I stunk up the airways. Tommy just showed me how to run the board and left me alone. I was awful. I had never even heard my voice on tape before. When I got back home after dark, I ran in the house and asked mother if she had heard me and she said, “No, I hate that station.”
I worked six months at WDAR and learned everything I could about the radio business. I had to. I did it all. I would sell advertising, write the copy for the commercial, do the spot on the air, and then go and collect the money. Walter Pierce told me not to report the job to the unemployment people and to continue to collect unemployment until it ran out. That’s exactly what I did, but when it ran out, he gave me bad checks. So I decided to look for another job.
I had been bowling in a league in Sumter at Gamecock Lanes and one night I noticed that the guy I was bowling against had a deep powerful voice. It turns out he was a sportscaster for WFIG, John Quackenbush. I asked him to help me get a job in Sumter radio. He told me to go see T. Doug Youngblood. I went the next day and got a job and was working that night doing a show called “Melody Masters”, every night from 7 to midnight. I lied to Mr. Youngblood when he asked me if I had a license. He told me to be sure to post it on the studio wall. He never checked. I don’t think he ever liked me because my first night on the air I referred to the station as “The Big Fig”. The next morning I got chewed out big time. He asked me to come in one Sunday morning and sign on the station. I was 15 minutes late and when I walked in he was running the board. When he saw me come in, he hollered out, “Get out and don’t ever come back!” I never saw him again. and I’ve never been late again. I went back to WDAR in Darlington and this time I got paid 60 dollars a week. I did the morning show, all country, and the afternoon show, all top forty.
One evening I was late signing off the radio station. I knew we were supposed to sign off at sundown but I never knew why. I didn’t have a broadcast license and it never came up. All I knew was I hated putting on the “Star Spangled Banner” so early. It was September, 1960. I was still on the air after 7PM. I was getting into it and the phone rang. The man on the line said,” This is George H. Buck Jr. Is this Woody Windham?” I told him it was and asked if he had a request. He said, “Yes, I do. You need to sign off this radio station immediately. You are broadcasting on a Mexican frequency and you are way past sundown!” I asked, “Who is this again?” He said,” I am the owner of WCOS in Columbia, and you are violating the rules and regulations of the FCC. Don’t you have a license?” I had to lie again, “Yes sir! I will sign off right away.” Then he really surprised me, “By the way, I like the way you sound. Would you be interested in moving to a larger market?” I said, “If you mean WCOS, I could be there tomorrow. I love that station.” He said,” No, no. I want you to send me a tape and I’ll get back with you”.
He offered me 75 dollars per week and I started on WCOS-AM on the morning of October 14th, 1960. I remember it was opening day at The South Carolina State Fair . Mr. Buck had just stolen Bob Fulton away from WNOK-AM. He was a nationally known sportscaster from The Mutual Radio Network and he was the voice of The Gamecocks. It was a big coup because WNOK-AM was the number one Top Forty station in town and Mr. Buck wanted to make a disc jockey out of Bob Fulton in the morning, but Bob didn’t know how to run a board. He wasn’t even that good at working a telephone. I was hired to be his engineer and then work my own show mid-day.
Bob Fulton and I hit it off. I learned so much from him. He was so professional and he did live commercial endorsements for all of his sponsors like Taylor Street Pharmacy, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, and The Copeland Company, a men’s clothing store. He never had a script and he talked about the people like they were members of his family. Whenever he had to travel with the Gamecocks, and it was quite often, I would have to do his show by myself. It was great to be on in morning drive. But Bob got his talent fees even when he wasn’t there because he would leave me with a big reel to reel tape full of his sponsors and I would run them all as if he were there. I knew that I wanted some of that action and that’s why I learned to do the same thing and that is why I am still on the air 50 years later. Thanks Bob. He’s also the one who gave me the name, Woody With The Goodies. And thanks to Bob Fulton I got a lot of exposure in Columbia, because whenever someone would call Bob to emcee something and he was too busy, I would volunteer to do it. I emceed every school beauty pageant in the area and I judged every talent show for free. Once I got a pen and pencil set. But I did get a lot of exposure by going to all the schools and having lunch with the kids and then going back to their classrooms and talking about radio and careers. Not a day goes by now, when I don’t meet someone who says, “I met you when I was in the third grade.” Thanks Bob for being best man in my wedding to Jean. It was 48 years ago and it is still going strong. The wedding was in Lamar, SC and to have someone like Bob Fulton make the trip and stand up for me was a big deal.
When I started at WCOS the afternoon drive time show was done by Pete Noce, your musical host. And he was the music director/program director. Mike Rast was the Doctor of Jive at night in the glass booth at Doug Broome’s Drive-In. I wanted that job. So when Mike decided to give it up, I volunteered to work with Bob in the morning and also work at night at the drive-in. I don’t know how but I did that for 3 years. Now when I meet people they say, “I used to see you in the glass booth at Doug Broome’s”.

When Pete Noce left at the end of 1963, Mr. Buck offered me that job for 100 dollars per week. We were moving up. Jean and I bought a house in Irmo. I finally got a broadcast license when our chief engineer, Bobby Lambert noticed that I didn’t have one on the studio wall. I admitted to him that I never had one and he explained that all you do is write to the FCC and ask for one and they send it to you. But he said that they were about to start requiring that you have a broadcast endorsement, which means that you must go to Atlanta and pass a test. I did and I got it and put it on the wall. I was so relieved.
After I became program director I really started working hard. Bob Fulton had talked me into putting on several shows at The Township Auditorium, like The Twist-a-rama and The Good Guy Goofy Ball. I did all the promotion and handled all the emceeing, and they sold out, 3200 kids at 1 dollar each. The Manager of The Township at the time was Mr. Hobbs and his wife. He only had one arm. I referred to him as, ” The one arm bandit.”. He kept most of the money but I was able to take a large sum of cash into Mr. Bucks office the next morning and watch him light up. He said he never realized that you could make money in radio without selling commercials. That’s how I became a local promoter and I formed a company called Funky Mama Productions in 1965.

It was also Bob’s idea to do The Twist-a-thon. I did it at The Starlight Drive-in Movie theater concession stand and it lasted 52 hours. I played all the music on the air from the concession stand while 40 couples did the Twist until they dropped. It wasn’t a money maker but I’ll never forget the couple who won, Steve Rucker and Judy Moore. Bob Fulton was a fantastic idea man. When Taylor Street Pharmacy started staying open 24 hours a day, Bob told John Terry, the owner, he should throw away the front door key and have a treasure hunt to see if anybody could find it. Bob and I wrote all the clues and posted them every day at the store as well as announcing them on the air. We gave away 500 dollars and it was a huge success. I put together two more treasure hunts after that with Mr. Bucks money and they went well. The third and last one was for 1,000 dollars and it only lasted one day. That was the end of that.
As program director I was the one to produce the printed “Top Sixty In Dixie List” each week. I ran them off on a mimeograph machine every Saturday and then with purple fingers, delivered them to all the record outlets. I developed a relationship with all the owners of the record stores. I used them to help me compile the list of the best selling 45’s. And then I would go on the air and count them down. Actually I counted them down every day Monday through Saturday from 3 to 7PM with a new list every Saturday. I had to play fifteen records per hour with 18 commercial minutes per hour. And we had headlines at the bottom of the hour with details at 55. All of that was what we called “Rip and read”. Believe me it really was rip and read. We had about 30 seconds to run out to another room and rip the news off the AP wire and read it over while we walking back to the control room.

So I developed a fast talking style as did all the top forty jocks in the sixties. Mine was really too fast. I used to say,” I’m not talking too fast. You’re just listening too slow.” It was too fast. I’m embarrassed when I hear an old tape. It was a little bit insane because at the time, the only way we had for playing back commercials was by reel to reel tape. Each of the commercials was on a three inch reel. We had six Magnacorder tape machines. Three on each side of the turntables. During a two minute song you had to queue up all six machines because 18 commercial minutes back than was 36 30’s and six was how many we ran between each record. It was nutty. I remember Mr. Buck one day sticking his head in the studio to see how I was doing and I told him, “If you could give me a broom, I could stick it up my ass and sweep the floors for you”!

That Top Sixty in Dixie show on Saturday afternoon was just the finish to a regular Saturday. Bob Fulton was never there on Saturday so I would come in and do his show and then at 9AM it was the Belk’s Young Columbia Council Show which I produced with Lynn Simms and 5 young models. It was hard to make all of them sound good. And then at 10 AM I produced The Teenage Disc Jockey Show. Kids would write in why they would like to have their own show and I would pick a winner each week. He or she would show up and I would put them in the other studio where Bob usually did his show. Dave Aiken was a teenage DJ from AC Flora High School when he was fourteen. He said that all I asked him was, “Can you tell time? If you can, I’ll make you sound good.”

Then I would go and deliver the list and get back just in time to count them down. Counting the list down every day seemed like a bad idea to me, hearing the same records at the same time every day for a week. It was Mr. Buck’s idea. And you know, the last year I did it, the Pulse Ratings Survey showed us with a 60 share of the audience during that time period. At the time, there were only six radio stations in Columbia, but that was amazing.
In my early days as program director my stiffest competition came from WNOK-AM. They had Handy Andy {Jack Cook} in the morning and Sugar Daddy {Mike Hiott} at night. They were Top Forty also with a drive-in show at night. They did their show from Gene’s Pig and Chick. Gene Broome was Doug Broomes’s brother. It was an intense battle. WOIC-AM, the soul station, had Big Foot Saul and Charlie Derrick. WIS-AM, the MOR station had John Wrisley. They were all very good radio stations and it made my job tough. I was making 125 dollars per week and supplementing my income by putting on shows at the Township Auditorium.

In 1963 The South Carolina Heart Association ask me to put on some kind of fund raiser because they needed money. I asked Bob Fulton for some help and he came up with a contest to see which personality on WCOS had the biggest heart. We would try to collect a penny a vote from our listeners. I knew Bob had the edge but I thought I could beat him. I was working in the afternoon and he was on in the morning. It was close but at the last minute Bob came in with some big sponsor money and he won with 550 dollars, while I had 430 dollars.

The next year, when the Heart Association wanted to do something again I decided to do it by myself and that’s how my radio marathons began. I did my first one at Star Lanes Bowling Center on Assembly Street. They were the only business in town that was open 24 hours a day. I stayed on the air for 52 hours and raised 5000 dollars. Then the next year, Taylor Street Pharmacy started staying open 24 hours and we moved The Heart Fund Marathon there, where we did it for years. I usually lost my voice after 50 hours, but every year we raised more money. The kids would collect money in big jars and bring it to the pharmacy and give it to me on the air. I still meet people who say, “I brought you money for The Heart Fund when you were at Taylor Street Pharmacy.”
By 1967 I was starting to get a little restless. I figured I needed to make a step up to a bigger market. I was working closely with all the record distributors in Charlotte and Atlanta and they were always telling me about good radio jobs in those markets. I started itching to see if I could make it to the big time. I kept turning them down until I got a call from Tommy Charles in Birmingham, Alabama. I had heard so much about his show and his radio station. He did a show with Doug Layton on WSGN. Every body in the business was talking about them and The Layton and Charles Show. He told me he really liked my fast style and he wanted to know if I would like to be the program director of his new radio station, WAQY-AM, Wackie in Birmingham and do afternoon drive. He offered me 150 dollars a week. Jean and I sold our house in Irmo and headed off to Alabama.

WAQY was a brand new radio station in the penthouse of the 2121 building. It was an exciting gig. My first day in the new studios and Walter Cronkite walks in to do an interview with Tommy Charles for the CBS evening news about them burning all the Beatle records because John Lennon had said that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. I thought to myself, “Now, this is the big time.” I came in early every morning to watch them do their two man show. It was hilarious. They did dozens of characters each. I learned so much about a two man morning show I couldn’t wait to try it my self. I was only in Birmingham for 6 months because Mr. Buck called me and asked me to come back to WCOS. He offered me 175 dollars a week and he said he needed me. That meant so much to me and besides I wasn’t crazy about being on the air in 1967 and not being able to play Beatle records.
On my way back to Columbia I was driving through Atlanta and I heard Hugh Jarrett on the radio. He was the same Hugh Jarrett who sang with the Jordinaires, backing up Elvis. He was the same guy I had thought was black when I was a teenager listening to WLAC in Nashville. He was promoting “The Big Hugh Baby Hoparoonie”. A dance with a local band and without alcohol for teenagers. I stole the idea and, from 1968 to 1970, I put on a total of 68 “Woody with the Goodies Hoparoonies” all over Columbia and made a lot of money which I split with Mr. Buck. Bob Fulton had left the station and so I started doing the morning show by myself. On the Hoparoonies I was using one local band and a recording artist. It turned out years later to be the Who’s Who of beach music, The Drifters, The Tams, The Coasters, The Platters. the Embers, The Showmen, Clarence Carter, Percy Sledge, Dennis Yost and the Classics Four, Billy Joe Royal, Joe South, The Sweet Inspirations, The Dells, Willie Tee, Archie Bell and the Drells, Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs, and Clifford Curry just to name a few. Some time during 1969 I became a hippy. I let my hair grow long and got “Turned on” to a little heavier music. I started doing a show on Sunday night called, “Sunday Underground” featuring progressive rock artists. My last few Hoparoonies featured the Bob Seager System, Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, and The Almond Joys. They later became know as The Almond Brothers.

In 1970 I began doing outdoor concerts way back up in the woods at a place called Barkoots Lake Lodge. They were a big hit with all the hippies. They were called Love Sunday and I advertised them on my Sunday Underground Show. They were in Lexington County and the sheriff at the time, Sheriff Day, didn’t like the idea of a bunch of hippies getting together and sitting on blankets and listening to rock music. He came and busted a bunch of people and then unplugged Vanilla Fudge while they were playing. He said it was too loud. We were five miles from the nearest house. George Buck and I were partners in all my ventures and he thought I should quit doing the outdoor shows because the newspaper was starting to call them, “Dope Fests”. I told him I would but that I was tired of all the commercials on AM radio and I wanted to move over to FM, where I could play “Ina Gadda Da Vida” by Iron Butterfly, the whole 17 minutes, and not worry about the commercials.
At the time, he was struggling with the FM station. Nobody had an FM radio. That’s what I liked about it. That would really be underground. He had been programming classical music from a turntable in the back of the AM studio. The only listeners the station had were the people who worked at Belk’s Department Store. They would call us and tell us when the stack of classical discs ran out and the AM disc jockey would reach back and turn the records over. I wanted to move over to FM because there were no commercials and it was in stereo. Bob Fulton had left the station a few years earlier and I was doing the morning show and my brother Leo had started his radio career working in the evening. I asked Mr. Buck if he would let me move over to FM and let Leo take over on AM. He said I could do whatever I wanted to with FM but that I must continue to do the morning show on AM.
I had a ball changing the format on FM to progressive rock. Led Zeppelin, Cream, and Iron Butterfly sounded so good in stereo. We had just 2 turntables and a control board with one microphone. I was the only sales person. I put together a package of 50 spots for 50 dollars. It was like the early days back at WDAR. It was a dollar a holler. The only advertisers I had on the air were friends. All the disc jockeys worked for next to nothing. But they were able to bring in all the records they wanted to play and program their own shows. I thought it was great radio and we were starting to sell FM radios all over town. I was putting on shows at The Township Auditorium like Pink Floyd, Uriah Heep, Johnny Winter, and Yes. The Richland County Narcs were busting everything I did and Mr. Buck wanted me to get out of that business. I told him that maybe a year of progressive rock was enough and that I would like to go country on FM. He was shocked. He said, “Now, Woody, you know there are no FM radios on tractors.” I told him that all the car dealers were listening to Friendly Ben on WCAY and that advertisers always buy what they like. And that we could be the first country FM station in South Carolina. He agreed and the very next morning, while I was doing the show on AM, I slipped next door to the FM studio and it happened this way. I told the FM jock to get up and leave the building and that I would take over. Led Zeppelin was playing and when they finished, I opened the mic and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, this radio station is changing formats.” Then I put on Conway Twitty and he sang, “Hello Darling, nice to See you, it’s been a long time.” And that was the end of progressive rock in Columbia. The next morning the streets were full of hippy protesters in front of the Cornell Arms Building. They all hated me, but it made the State newspaper and that was a good way to promote my new country format on FM. It was The Great 98.
I talked Mr. Buck into letting Leo do the morning show on AM while I did the morning show on FM. The whole time I was planning to get Leo over to FM and do The Windham Brother’s Show. It took about 4 months because during that time a battle broke out between the AM and the FM staff. It was a battle for advertisers because the country format was working and we had all the car dealers. George Buck had moved the station from the Cornell Arms Building to his own building on Millwood Ave.
And at the same time, he had made me the manager of WCOS-FM and he was giving me 20 per cent of everything. It wasn’t much at first but it became a good amount of money after we started getting more sponsors. Then Mr. Buck decided to do what he had always wanted to do. He moved to New Orleans to be close to his beloved jazz music. He left his son-in-law Jake Bogen in charge of the whole operation, AM and FM. A lot of jealously developed between the two of us and the more successful I became, the more money I made. He made life tough for me, but I was having the time of my life doing the Windham Brother’s show in the morning.

On Saturdays Leo and I would do a remote at a different Car dealership and we would personally install an FM radio in your car for free. All the listener had to do was just come on by. We had them lined up for blocks for hours . The radios were simple little converters that plugged into your 8 track tape player. They cost 25 dollars and the car dealer was glad to pay that because the cars that still had an 8 track tape player in the early 70’s were about to be traded anyway. We picked up a lot of FM listeners and they sold a lot of new cars. Ratings were beginning to happen for WCOS-FM. By 1975 we were beating WCOS-AM in the ratings and in billing. I no longer had access to George Buck, but because of the 20 %, I was making too much money. Jake Bogen had to do something about it so he demoted me to disc jockey status and took away my 20% and cut me back to regular 10% commission for what I sold. Still it wasn’t too bad because I was the only salesman.
Then in early 1976 Jake brought in my new boss, Buster White. He made him Manager of WCOS-FM. He was cross-eyed. My father used to say that it was bad luck to see a cross-eyed man before noon and I saw this one every morning at 8:30. He started right away stealing my biggest accounts and I ended up making about half the money. The Windham Brothers Morning Show was a lot of laughs. Leo and I had developed a lot of characters and when we got off the air at 10 each morning our cheeks would hurt from laughing. That’s when the final straw happened for me. It was April, 1976. They put up a memo in the FM studio: NO MORE LAUGHING IN THIS STUDIO. I told Leo that was it for me and that I was going to quit. But I wanted to wait and see what the ratings looked like in May. We were going to have the number one morning show for the first time on FM. Sure enough when we got the ratings the morning of May 2nd, we were number one. I did the most unprofessional thing I had ever done in radio. I quit on the air. I told the audience that I had not been treated fairly and that I was resigning. Leo didn’t even know that I was going to do it and for that matter neither did I. When I signed off, Leo said, “I really don’t want to work here without you, I’m going with you!” When we left the building a few minutes later, Milton Holiday, the chief engineer said, ” Good riddance.” That was the end of my relationship with WCOS and George H, Buck Jr. I’m sure he knew what had happened but we never talked again. A few years later he sold The Great 98 for 23 million dollars. I take credit for taking him from a Gerrard Record Changer in the back of the AM studio to the most expensive radio station in Columbia.
I didn’t think about radio for a few weeks. I went water skiing and broke my leg, and then the Sheriff of Lexington County, Jim Metz found marijuana growing in my back yard. I didn’t plant it. My brother-in-law Curtis Stewart did. He was living with us while he was going to USC and studying to be a lawyer and a CPA. He just wanted to se what it would look like. I decided not to plead guilty and so they would not bring my trial up for 6 months. I was going broke because I couldn’t go back to radio while the indictment was hanging over my head. I figured I may never get another chance at radio. Marijuana was a serious offence in 1976.
I had always wanted to open a discotheque. I had tried in 1964 but the City of Columbia said no. I had rented the top floor of the Dairy Bar on South Main Street and was about to get my license when they said we didn’t have enough exits. Then in 1965, I was the first disc jockey to work at D’Scene on Taylor Street. It was the first discotheque in Columbia. Then in 1976 I had been hearing about a new idea in Atlanta. It was called Disco. I visited the all the discos around. They were mostly gay. But I really liked the way the DJ would control the crowd and run the whole show. I hocked my house and went into business with Jimmy Davis at The Skyline Club. I knew him well because he had a country music night club and it wasn’t doing too well, but it was a very large building. He agreed, in writing, to make me a full partner in the Skyline Disco if I would build the light show. I borrowed 25 thousand dollars and opened the club while I was still under indictment. I did the show every night from the stage and it was a huge success. Greed got the best of Jimmy Davis and he started leaving me out of the split. He didn’t think the piece of paper we had signed was important. but it was. I sued him and won 75 thousand dollars and used that to open The Diamond Disco. I made Leo a partner and we rocked all the way through the 70’s .
At the same time I had kept my radio career going by working in the after noon at WCAY with Leo and once again we were having a ball with The Windham Brother’s Show. We did the afternoon show on WCAY, an AM day time country station. It was right by the airport and very convenient for us to get to the Diamond Disco on Dunbar Road in Cayce. The owner of the station, Olin Tice, lived upstairs over the studio and would come through the studio in his underwear while we were on the air. It was different. Tom Turnipseed was a South Carolina Senator at the time and was doing a morning show on the same station. Leo and I began a relationship with the Wild Seed that led to some of the most bizarre things ever in my career.

Tom wanted us to write a song about the gas prices. It was 1978 and they were about to go to 1 dollar per gallon. We wrote, “Dollar Gas. Kiss , My Trash.”. Tom liked it a lot so we went into a recording studio and put it down and released it on a 45. Then we started touring with Tom as the Turnipseed Trio. Tom took us down to the South Carolina Statehouse and into Rembert C. Dennis’s office and asked him if we could sing a little song that we had written in front of the legislature during a session. Mr. Dennis said, “What kind of song is it?” Tom told him it was a little country song and that he would like it. He said, “Yes, I like country music, Let’s do it!” Rembert Dennis was the big man in the Senate. He was the one with the gavel. He ran the whole show. He introduced us and Tom Turnipseed, my brother Leo, and I got up there with my guitar and began singing, ” Dollar gas kiss my trash. I just ain’t gonna pay. Dollar Gas kiss my trash. Ain’t no way. Well it was bad enough when it was 30 cents. I liked to puked when it hit 62. And now they’re talking about dollar gas. No thank you.” Everything was fine through that first verse, but then it got a little heavier, “Old Ahab the Arab must think I’m some kind of jerk. Trying to tell me what to pay for my gas? The man wears his sheet to work.” By the time we got to the third and fourth verse in which we blamed everybody from the power company to the oil companies and the military industrial complex, the flash bulbs were going off everywhere. The AP and UPI photographers were taking our picture and they wanted copies of the lyrics to send out all over the country.

The Legislature went into immediate executive session and voted to never allow anyone to sing in the Statehouse again for any reason. The next morning, our picture and copies of the lyrics appeared on the front page of the State Newspaper, The Atlanta Constitution, and The Washington Post. Those were just the ones that we knew about. The next week, the wild Senator Tom Turnipseed loaded us up on a State airplane and we flew to Washington, DC for a South Carolina Delegation Reception for Ted Kennedy. Tom said, “We’re going to sing the song for Teddy.” He liked it very much. At least that’s what he said.

I never could get anybody to play it on the radio except one. Jonathon Rush who, at the time was working as the morning man at a small town radio station in Batesburg-Leesville. I walked into the station unannounced and ask him to play it and he did. He said he had been following my career and he was very nice. Later he took over mornings at WNOK-FM in Columbia.
Speaking of WNOK-FM in Columbia, that was my next career move. The Diamond Disco was winding down and we had opened the teenage version and getting a little tired of staying up all night and I was really missing radio. I liked 104.7. It was called Stereo 105 and it was a hot adult contemporary format and the manager was Bill McElveen. I knew of his father, H. Moody McElveen. He was our heaviest competition all the way through my early career at WCOS. I asked Bill if he could put me back on the air. He wanted to know what had happened with my marijuana arrest and I told him I had pled guilty to a misdemeanor and paid a 1000 dollar fine and there was nothing hanging over me.

He took a big chance with me and put me on the Sunday night all request show. I don’t even remember how much he paid me but it wasn’t much. I just wanted to get back on the air. The show was a big success. I started taking phone calls and putting them all on the air and it turned into a Shag Show. They were requesting songs I had never heard of, but I went and found all of them. Barry Brown, a salesman for the station, was a big help. He was a shag collector and he would come by the studio on Sunday night and bring a whole box of rare shag songs. That’s when I found out that if the shaggers wanted to hear it you couldn’t buy it. I was going broke trying to keep up with all the beach music. I’m glad I did. I started playing in all the shag clubs and I made a living. Plus I was still playing parties with all my disco music. It was a great blend with all the beach music. I carried a big box of records everywhere I went.

When the ratings came out for the show it was very good. And I had heard that the morning man, Tracy Mitchell was leaving, so I asked Bill if I could have that job and he agreed. I was back in morning radio and loving it. Right away I started asking Bill to let me put The Windham Brothers Show back together. He said no because he didn’t want two people on the air and we didn’t need it. I thought we needed it. I was taking all request and the show started leaning a little more Top 40. I had my box of records, They were requesting them. I was playing them. It was a blend of Top 40, beach music, and disco. The phone calls were intense. I asked Bill if he could at least hire someone to help me answer the phones. Someone at minimum wage. He said yes and I tricked him. It was Leo Windham. He started coming in to answer the phones and while he was there anyway, he started doing some of our old characters on the air. Before you knew it, we were doing the Windham Brothers Show again. I gave Leo half my salary and half of all the talent fees for doing live endorsement commercials. We were swinging. The business was good, and the ratings were good. We did that from 1980 to 1985.

My first year at WNOK-FM, I did my last Heart Fund Marathon. It was at Commercial Office Furniture, only a block away from the radio station. I lasted 56 hours. Leo came and added an extra feature, an auction with a live crowd. It was great and we raised 38 thousand dollars and decided I would not do any more marathons. It took too much out of me. It took too long to recover. I started something new the next year, Woody’s War On Cancer for the American Cancer Society. Every morning for a month, I would do the show from a different McDonalds while Leo stayed at the station. I collected money by stopping all the cars in the drive through. People were very generous. The South Carolina National Guard would bring a crew with a tank or other pieces of heavy equipment every day. They would help me collect the money. They were great. It was like a real war. It was very tiring and I had to breathe in a lot of gas fumes and the catalytic converter smell but it was still better than doing a marathon. The American Cancer society provided volunteers to come every morning and help count the money . Georgene Tapp never missed a show, she was a cancer volunteer. We did the War every year.
The Windham Brothers Show on WNOK-FM was a real highlight of my career. At one time in the mid 80’s we had a 36 share of the audience in Columbia. Those were history making ratings on FM. We had so much fun with all of our characters like, Beach Billy, R.D. Neck, The Old Timer, Fatman, The Winer, Mr. Pitiful, Tonto, the physic Larry Greene, the traffic guy Charlie Rogers, and the clean-up lady Bessie Mae Mucho. We laughed all morning and never worried about radio formatics. We played whatever people called for. I still had my box of records. Bill let us know that he hated some of the music, but we remained true to the requests.
Then, in 1984, our ratings slipped a little bit. I thought it was because we had too many commercials. The program director, Tom Anderson thought it was because we didn’t give the call letters enough. Bill McElveen hired a focus group company to come to town and find out why. I never heard the results or the recommendations from the focus group company but I knew they weren’t good for me. Bill asked me to meet him in the conference room every day for a week and listen to all the tapes. It was just me. He told me not to bring my ego into the room because it would be destroyed. He was wrong. It was the other way around. My head began to swell as I listened to every body on the tapes talk about me and The Windham Brothers. A lot of them said that we talked too much, but they knew every word we had said. The thing that struck me was that all the soft-spoken people liked us and the boisterous one’s didn’t. The family type people who liked us a lot were all shouted down by the others. I thought it was great and I asked Bill what he thought of it all. He just said that he had wanted me to hear all of the tapes.

A few weeks later Bill hired a new program director, a real “Hot Shot” named Tom Kent. Tom called us in and said he didn’t like our show at all. He ordered us to drop all the funny stuff and in every break we were to give the time, temperature, call letters and nothing else. I told Leo the next morning that I thought I was about to be fired because they didn’t need two people to do that. After a couple weeks of total boredom, Tom Kent stuck his head in our studio door and said, “Hey Windham Brothers, go back to doing your show the old way, and have fun with it!”

I told Leo, “Today’s the day. I’m getting the ax today.” It was a Friday morning and sure enough at 10 o’clock, when we got off the air, he called us onto his office and left us sitting there for about 15 minutes. When he came back he had all the plaques that had been given to the us over the years. He laid them all in my lap and said, “We won’t be needing these anymore and we won’t be needing you guys anymore either. You’re both fired.”
When we got out to the street in front of the station, I asked Leo what he planned to do and he said he was going to play golf. I said, “Not me, I’ll be back on the air before the sun goes down. Do you want to go with me?” He said no. So, I loaded all the plaques in my car and drove straight to WZLD-FM. Frank Baker, the manager, could not believe we got fired because we had the number one ratings. At the same time he was very glad because he and Chuck Finlay were doing the morning show on Z-96 from their new studio in the old WCAY building, close to the airport, and he figured without our show on the air his ratings would climb.

He hired me to do 6 to 10 PM and he said it was just temporary. He said he wanted to do the morning show another six months just to see what the ratings would be like and if they weren’t great he would move me into the morning slot. he also let me sell advertising and charge a talent fee for live spots. Within a few weeks I was doing quite well. And I really enjoyed playing Led Zepplin again. Benji Norton was a part of the staff and so was Cat Daddy, Harold Miller. I thought Harold was great. He did the overnight show and sometimes he would go for hours and not say a word but you knew it was him by the way he put the music together.

WNOK had hired Leo back and he was working on WNOK-AM. Then they fired Tom Kent and put Leo back on WNOK-FM in the morning and Frank’s ratings never came up. In fact they went down. They went down because Leo was doing a great job at WNOK-FM.

Leo and I didn’t spend much time together in those days and we had very few conversation except one. We just happened to run into each other and of course we talked about radio and how much we missed the Windham Brothers Show. Leo let it slip to me that Bill McElveen was planning to start a new morning show the next week called the Morning Zoo starring Leo Windham, Pandora Reynolds, and Mark Plemmons.

I went back to Z-96 and told Frank Baker about it. He thought it would be funny if he and Chuck Finlay started calling their show the Z-96 Morning Zoo. He did it the next morning and that was two days before WNOK. Bill McElveen threatened a law suit and he quit after a few days. Frank thought it was hilarious. Leo didn’t. He told me later that he almost got fired over it and that he was in his car and coming to see me with the intention of whipping my ass. I’m glad he changed his mind. Leo’s show on WNOK was a big factor in the ratings and The Baker/ Finlay show on WZLD wasn’t cutting it. When I reminded Frank about our deal, he said he wanted to stay on the morning show another six months. After another ratings book came out Franks ratings were tanking. I told him that a deal was a deal and I was going to look for another morning show somewhere. He suggested we do the morning show together. I said, “I’m going to look around.”
Back when I was still working for WNOK-FM, our biggest competition was coming from WCOS-FM. Country music was really happening and so were they. They were the ones who had made the ratings on the Windham Brothers Show slip. I had heard that there was a new country station going on the air out of Orangeburg and that they would have a city grade signal in Columbia. So, that morning, I promoted them on our show. I told everybody to check the new country station, Wiggle at 106.7 and then come right back. I thought it would create a lot of talk about them and not hurt us too much, but I thought it would hurt WCOS-FM. I thought I would get in trouble with the WNOK program director or maybe the manager, Bill McElveen, but It never happened. Probably because it was real early in the morning and they were not up.
The people at WIGL-FM heard it. When I called the manager, Tom Love, to ask if he had an opening, he said he had heard it and that the owners of the station, Paul Rothfuss and Kirby Confer had heard all about it. He arrange a meeting with me and the owners immediately. I liked both of them instantly. They had begun their careers by doing a two man show in Baltimore. We had a lot in common. They thanked me for promoting their radio station, one year earlier, and then they both said in unison, “But don’t you ever do that again!” I promised them I would not.
They told me they wanted me to go to work for them on their new adult contemporary radio station but that I would have to drive to Orangeburg for three months and do country music on Wiggle while they move every thing up to Columbia. They said I would start in three days. So I went to see Janice Waldrop. She was selling for them out of an office in Columbia. I had worked with her father, Dennis Waldrop, all the way through the 60’s at WCOS-AM. He was one of our leading salesmen and he did the Open Mike Show. I remembered her when she came home from the hospital as a baby. I had made the announcement on the air about it, and I remembered her when she was one of the beautiful girls who used to come and dance at the Diamond Disco. I asked her if she thought she could get some of my regular sponsors on the air the first day I was on. She said, “Give me a list and the contact names and I’ll have it done today.” She did, too. When I started my first show on Wiggle106, the log was full of my sponsors like The Litehouse, Sandy’s Hotdogs, Jewelry Wharehouse, Love Chevrolet, and about five others from Columbia. She was amazing and still is. Now she is Janice Shull.
I started my first day making good talent fees and it was well worth the drive to Orangeburg. Except, It wasn’t 3 months. It was more like 10 months. I enjoyed the country music but the station was in a wobbly box mobile home way back up in the woods. And the 50.000 watt transmitter was right there, one room away from the studio, and you could feel it in your hair while you were on the air. Since I was doing the morning show. I was always in the building by myself. One morning I was doing a live spot for Sandy’s Hotdogs and I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye. I looked and it was a rat the size of a football. He was up on his hind legs and waving at me. I don’t know how, but I finished the commercial and put on the next song. But when I went to shoo him out of the studio he came right at me and attacked my leg. I told Tom Love that I wasn’t doing the show anymore until they got rid of the rats. He brought in an exterminator who put poison out and one of the rats died inside the control board where I was doing my show. When I came back to work the next week the smell would knock you down. The exterminator came back and sprayed some perfume everywhere and that was even worse.

Then, one day I was attacked by a mad dog. The trailer had no air conditioning so I usually had the window open right next to me while I was on the air. I was talking live on the air when I felt his breath coming through the screen right next to my left shoulder. I looked around and saw him. It was a big German Shepard. When he saw me turn around he stated snarling and I could see him foaming at the mouth. I didn’t finish that commercial. He tried to break through the screen. I quickly closed the window and called animal control. They didn’t come for 5 hours. That dog kept me in the building and he kept the next disc jockey, David T. Lazarr, from getting out of his car and relieving me. I was on the air for 9 hours that day. Finally they got the transmitter moved to Sandy Run, just outside of Columbia, and the studios moved to Cayce and I was back on Columbia radio at B-106.7.
The new format was a lot of fun but I had to butt heads with my brother Leo at WNOK-FM. I hated that. And since there were two Windhams on the radio at the same time, the ratings were never as good as I thought they should be. I was doing the morning show Monday through Friday and then on Sunday evening I was doing “The Woody With The Goodies Shag Show.” That show was a very big success with lots of sponsors and good ratings. In fact I made as much in talent fees that one night as I did all week in the morning. I had the show copyrighted and I got my brother-in law, Curtis Stewart, who had become a lawyer, to write a contract between me and the station for Kirby Confer and Paul Rothfuss to sign. The contract named me as the sole owner of “The Shag Show”.
It was 1987 and everything was going fine for me and the brand new B-106.7. I was working in the morning with a really good newsman, Doug Spets. He liked to play golf a lot and so did I. We tried to play every golf course in South Carolina and we almost made it. When he got married I was the best man in his wedding and we were very close. He was very helpful on my show and I pushed the management to make him the program director. We had had a few losers in that department. They made him music director at first. He was very good with a computer. Then Tom Love vacated his position as general manager and Kirby and Paul hired Mike Steinhelper to replace him. He had worked with them in Pennsylvania.
Here’s how he arrived in town. I was doing my shag show one Sunday evening and taking a lot of calls for requests, as I always did. The phone was hot. When I answered one of the calls with, “Good Evening, B-106″, the voice on the other end said, “This is Mike Steinhelper, your new boss. I was just driving into town for the first time and I was listening to your show.” I said, “Well good. Welcome to South Carolina. I heard you were coming.” He said, “Would you mind telling me what it is that pulls all this music together?” “Yes sir. It’s the shag.” He raised his voice a little, “And what exactly is that?” “It’s the South Carolina state dance.” His voice got even louder, ” When you sign off the show, sign off for good. This show will never again see the light of day! And see me in my office first thing in the morning.” I did exactly what he had ordered. I told everybody that they had heard the last of The Woody With The Goodies Shag Show and I thanked them for listening.
The next morning I did the morning show and went into his office at 10 o’clock. He was just starting to settle in. He started telling me how horrible the show was and I told him that maybe he should look at the ratings before he made any decisions. He said he didn’t care about the Sunday night ratings and the show was history. Just when he said that I noticed through his window that there was a crowd forming in the parking lot and they had protest signs. He said, “Now What the hell is this all about?” I said, “They look like shaggers and they look like they are protesting.” He barked out, “Go out there and tell them that it won’t do any good! That’s the end of that show on this radio station!” When I went outside I told them what he had said and they shouted, “We’ll be back every day until he changes his mind.” They were, too. And the amazing part was they were all middle aged working people and they had to come in shifts. It made the newspaper and he changed his mind. The show was back on after two weeks.
After that, Mike and I became pretty good friends. In fact he let me expand my shag show to other nights. Pam Blaylock was one of our sales people and she asked me to come to The Radisson Hotel on Assembly Street downtown Columbia and do my shag show live at their lounge called Beau’s. We advertised it for a Thursday night and it was packed. We did a remote broadcast in which I played all the music from the hotel. We had about 600 people that first night. The hotel wanted us to do two nights the neat week. Mike Steinhelper said that as long as they wanted to pay for a remote they could do it every night. And that’s what happened. We set up a studio with radio cart machines and Doug Spets helped me put all my shag music on the carts. He and I came up with a color coded system for programming all the music and I did the show Monday through Friday each night from 7 to 9. I could only do two hours because I had to get up early for the morning show. I trained some one to take over and work until midnight. That part wasn’t on the air but they used my carts. It was one of the most successful things I have ever been associated with. The Hotel was paying me for doing the show and I was getting paid by the station also. It was the most money I had ever made in radio. I did that for three years.
During that time I dreamed about putting The Windham Brothers Show back together and I talked to Mike Steinhelper about it many times. He thought it was a good idea and wanted to do it at B-106 he called Leo and asked him if he would be interested. Leo came to Steinhelper’s office in The Granby Building and Mike made him a firm offer. Leo accepted and we were all excited. The next day Leo called and said that Bill McElveen had upped his salary and he was going to stay at WNOK.

But he didn’t stay at WNOK. Frank Baker had left WZLD for a Job in Kentucky and the owner changed the station from rock to a dance format and he offered Leo a piece of the radio station if he would come over. He did make the move but he didn’t have the percentage of ownership in writing.

After about a year Leo left WZLD and started his own advertising agency and went to work for WOMG, Oldies 103 on Sunday mornings. And like me he was doing real well with talent fees from live commercials. Barry Brown who had worked with us at WNOK was Leo’s manager and Brent Johnson was the program director. Then Bill McElveen left WNOK and joined Frank Baker in Kentucky. Hold on to your hats. You’re going to need a scorecard to follow the rest of this.

Then in 1989 Kirby Confer and Paul Rothfuss decided to sell B-106. Corporate America was beginning to buy up all the radio stations in town and they were paying more for them than they were worth. Kirby and Paul came to town and told me that they had a chance to double their money and for me not to worry because the new people were going to buy my no-compete contract and they wanted to make sure I stayed on the morning show.

While Kirby was in town he asked me to stop calling people “Man” on the air. He said it made me sound like a hippy. I told him I didn’t know if I could do it because I had been saying that for so many years. He wrote me a personal check for 106 dollars and told me to offer it to anybody on the air if they ever hear me call someone “Man”. It worked like a charm. I still have the check. He was a great radio guy but I bet the check is no longer good.
B-106 became the property of Bloomington Broadcasting, a corporation out of Indiana and the new owners had to find us a new manager because Paul Rothfuss took Mike Steinhelper to Augusta Georgia to run his new radio station. The Bloomington people decided to change the format of B-106 slightly to a softer Adult Contemporary sound. They liked what I was doing in the morning but the rest of the day became, “Ten Soft Favorites In A Row”. They wanted to establish the station as an “At Work” radio station. I preferred a “Hot AC” format. I never liked the term, “Soft Favorites” but it was alright with me as long as they left the morning show alone and let me do my shag show from Beaus in the Radisson Hotel.

I was having a ball on the morning show because I was using The American Comedy Network show prep. Every week they delivered some of the funniest bits I had ever heard. They were interactive bits with a place for me to inject my own personality. They had lots of regular characters with open ended bits for me to do with them. It was a lot of work off the air every week in production but the station had hired Billy Mack as the production director and he made it easy. Having all those characters on the air with me was almost like doing The Windham Brothers Show again, except without Leo.
Bloomington found a new manager and when I heard about it I shuddered. It was Bill McElveen. I felt so paranoid because when Tom Kent had fired me at WNOK , Bill had stood by and let it happen. I was sure my days were numbered. That’s about the time that Rick Dames came to Columbia and bought WVOC-AM, the news talk station, and WXRY 93.5. He changed 93.5 FM to a hot adult contemporary format to go right up against B-106. Rick Dames was from New York and he like to attack the competition. He had a husband and wife team on the morning show and he gave them full reign to attack me all they wanted. They were very mean spirited. In fact, it got so bad that Rick Dames had to call me and offer his apologies. We started a relationship that day. He said he like my show and if I ever needed a job to let him know.
It wasn’t long after that, 1990, the Radisson Hotel was sold to a group of Arabs. They didn’t even speak English and it appeared to me that they were trying to break the hotel and put it out of business. They were taking all the equipment and furniture out the back door. Why? I don’t know. But they were. I figured it was time for me to make a move with my shag show. I went down Assembly Street just one block to the Holiday Inn right across from the Coliseum. They said they would love to have my show and that they would let me completely redesign and rename the lounge. Jim Boineau got wind of it and he called me. Jim was the manager of Bert Pooser’s hotel in St Andrews, The Sheraton, where I had done by shag show for many years. He wanted me to move the show to his hotel. I wanted to stay downtown. I told him no. He got upset with me and called Bill McElveen. When Bill insisted that I consider it, I told him no because I had already committed to the Holiday Inn. Bill got upset.
Then I found out that Bill had hired the same focus group company that he had used at WNOK-FM to do the same thing at B-106. I was sure I would lose my job. A few days later, Doug Spets called a meeting of all the disc jockeys on B-106. Doug had become program director and the meeting was in the evening. He started the meeting by saying that from now on the morning show at B-106 was gong to have to follow the regular format of “Ten Soft Favorites In A Row.” I told him no. I told him it would not be fair to my advertisers to cram all their spots into the last few minutes of each hour just so I could play ten songs in a row without talking. I told him it would ruin my morning show. He said, “That’s the way Bill wants it.” I got up and walked out and told him to stick it and to tell Bill McElveen that I wasn’t coming back to work unless I could do the show the way I wanted.
I got in my car and drove straight to Lamar, South Carolina. I wanted to talk to my father at Windham’s Crossroads. It was something I had done anytime I had a career change. I told him I had quit my job. He wanted to know why and I told him and he said, “I’ve been telling you for years to get out of that business. Good! Now, spend a few days here and play golf with me and just relax.” As soon as he said that the phone rang and my mother said it was for me. Nobody knew I was there, not even my family. It was Bill. He said he wanted to drive down to Windham’s Crossroads and play golf with me and my father the next day. I said, “Why don’t you pick up Leo and ride together and we’ll have a golf match.” He did and the next day we had the strangest golf match I had ever seen. Just before he got there, my father said, “Now here’s the way it’s going to go. Leon and I will play you and McElveen and you will lay down. We are going to take all his money.” It was starting to rain when Bill and Leo got there and we thought about calling off the match. My father said, “A little bit of rain never hurt anybody!” So we did it. We drove just a half mile to Lamar Country Club and played golf in a driving rain.

On the third hole, a par three, everybody hit the green in regulation but Bill was only about 10 feet from the hole. He knocked it in for birdie. We were partners so I gave him a fist pump and a high five. My father walked over to me and with clenched teeth said, “What are you? A cheerleader? Cheer for him one more time and I’ll wrap this putter around your neck!” Bill and I lost the match. Leo played good. I couldn’t believe we finished. I couldn’t believe we even played. Not a word was spoken on the golf course about my job. When we got back to the house Bill said that I was stupid for quitting because I was fully vested in Bloomington Broadcasting. He said he needed me and wanted me to come back and I could do the show any way I wanted. It was one of the most memorable moments in my career. Bill McElveen, who’s father, Moody McElveen, was a radio icon in Columbia. He had been part owner of WNOK AM, FM, and TV. He needed me. I told him I would be back on the air Monday morning.
Since I had the chance to do the show any way I wanted, I decided to do something I had always wanted to do. I decided to make my show mean something to the community, rather that just play the music. My idea was to make something good happen every day.

My first project was to get Cayce out of the headlines in the State Newspaper. I really got into it on the air. Cayce was where the B-106 studios were located. The Cayce cops had beaten somebody up and the newspaper had been wearing the story out for about four months. I let the audience help me. I asked if anybody had any suggestions about how we could get Cayce out of the headlines. They suggested that I call the editor of the paper and ask what it would take. I made all the calls cold and live on the air. The editor said I should call the Cayce police chief and ask for some kind of assurance that it wouldn’t happen again. I did and the chief said the two cops had been fired and they were going to clean up the police department. I ended up talking to the mayor and several town councilmen and then I called the editor back and he said they would try to keep Cayce out of the headlines.

I got it done. I made something good happen, but it took me all week and I didn’t play much music, maybe four songs an hour. I thought it was compelling radio.
Bill didn’t say a word to me all week about it. Doug Spets was program director but he was still doing the news on my show in the morning. I got him a lot more involved in the show. I was looking forward to a rewarding career of “Making something good happen every morning.” Friday morning, Bill called me into his office and closed the door.
I thought for sure Bill was going to congratulate me on a radio program that really means something. Instead he told me how disappointed he was because of the amount of talk I was doing on a music radio station. He said, “If this is what you call doing it your way, we don’t want it. I’m going to have to let you go.” I was shocked, “You mean you went to all the trouble to drive down to Windham’s Crossroads and talk me into coming back and now you don’t want me here.” He got up and shook my hand and said, “I’m afraid so.” I thanked him for trying and I left the building with a very heavy heart. It was probably the lowest point of my radio career.
I wasted no time. I called Rick Dames. He was shocked that I had been fired. He wanted to keep the husband and wife team, the Crosons, on the morning show at Star-93.5 but he offered me a job doing afternoon drive time 4 to 7 and a chance to sell advertising for both Star-93.5 and WVOC. And he allowed me to charge a talent fee for live commercials.

I put on a coat and tie and went to work during the day selling advertising and I did the show in the afternoon and I was still doing my shag show at Beaus in the Radisson in the evening even though B-106 had discontinued the broadcast, of course. I was burning the candle at both ends. I had always done that, but for some reason, this time it was starting to take it’s toll.
My sales were great. I was able to get most of my regular advertisers on the air with me doing live spots. They were people like Moe Levy’s, Sandy’s Hotdogs, Jewelry Warehouse, and Love Chevrolet. I wasn’t able to get The Litehouse. I stopped by to see JJ Mackie about it but I ran into a buzz saw, his sister Jan Mackie. She and I had always been friends, but at this time she was dating Bill McElveen. She was sitting right by the front door reading the morning paper when I walked into the Litehouse. There was an article in the paper about me being fired at B-106. She gave me the stink eye and jumped all over me, “I don’t like you anymore. You have been lying about my boyfriend in the newspaper. You said he fired you but you quit and you know it.” I tried to tell her what happened but she wouldn’t listen. I gave up on trying to sell that account.
In the middle of all this, I was trying to redesign the lounge in the Holiday Inn so I would have a place to do my show because the Radisson was going downhill fast. I saw them loading up the baby grand piano from the lounge and sneaking it out the back door. The whole time I had been doing the show at the Radisson, more than three years, I had been supplying all the music for the hotel. I had purchased a triple deck cart machine from B-106 and about 400 carts, the kind we were using in radio at the time. And Doug Spets and I had devised a color coded system for playing the music at the lounge that anybody could do. It was very unique for a hotel lounge. I had been spending about 300 dollars a month on bootleg music. and putting all of it on those carts. The collection was priceless. I was buying the music from shag collectors in Charlotte because the rule was, “If the shaggers wanted to hear it, you could not buy it in a record store.” Nobody else had the music.
The Arabs got wind that I was going to move the show to the Holiday Inn and they locked up all my music and my cart machines. I had to get The Richland County Sheriff’s Department to go in and get them for me. It took a couple of weeks but they got all my music back for me. I moved it all into the new lounge in the Holiday Inn and started the advertising for The Shag Club. I tried to get Rick Dames to let me do the show on Star-93.5 live from the new club and he said, “I really like the fact that you are doing the show there and I like the advertising revenue but I don’t want any of that shag crap on my radio station.” He was from New York and just didn’t understand.

We opened the brand new Shag Club in the Holiday Inn and it was a big success. An old friend Eddie Zomerfeld was working at the hotel so I taught him to take over for me at 9PM each night and he really got into being a shag disc jockey. Eddie was the lead singer for Soul Incorporated back in the 60’s and had performed at a lot of my Hoparoonies. Then in the 70’s he had done a lot of the art work for me at the Diamond Disco and worked as a disc jockey. He was a very talented guy.
These were tumultuous times. I was on the air one evening at Star-93.5 and a process server and a sheriff’s deputy came into the building and served me with papers. I was being sued by Bill McElveen for violating my no-compete contract with B-106 and for stealing their sponsors. The deputy was there to remove me from the radio. I told him that I would have to call Rick Dames at home and let him get a replacement for me on the air. When I called Rick he said, “This is fantastic! Before you leave, go in the studio and cut a promo telling everyone what is going on and use Bill’s name.”

I ad-libbed, “Ladies and gentleman, this is Woody Windham. When I was 13 I dreamed of being a disc jockey. I collected records and hid in my bedroom playing them and talking into a pencil. My father would throw open the door and ask me if I expected to play records for the rest of my life. I said yes. And that’s all I have ever wanted to do for a living. I’ve been in Columbia radio for 30 years and now, Bill McElveen at B-106 is suing me and trying to keep me from earning a living so I can feed my family. If the judge says it’s alright. I’ll be back on the air soon. Keep listening to Star-93.5.” It ran on the air around the clock for two weeks until we went to court.

Later that year, 1991, I won a Silver Addy Award for self promotion based on that promo. Rick Dames must have submitted it. He was having a ball. He paid me while I was off the air and he paid for my lawyer, Camden Lewis.
I asked all the lawyers I knew if they could find me an attorney to defend me who looked like a bulldog. Tom Turnipseed said I should call Cammy Lewis. He said that he not only looked like a bulldog but he played football for The Citadel. I called him the very next morning and left a message for him to call me back right away. He didn’t.

I was feeling very anxious and could not sleep. So, I decided to make an appointment with Dr Robert Schnackenberg. He was a psychiatrist who had treated my daughter Wendy for bipolar disorder. After spending a few hours with him he said I was manicky and I needed to spend all my free time doing something that I had always wanted to do but never had the time. I told him I had always wanted to write a book about my radio career. He said, “That’s perfect. I’m going to put you on lithium and you should go home right now and get started on your book.”
I had just purchased my first personal computer. It had a printer that had all the pages connected with the holes in the sides. I started banging it out with two fingers and got completely wrapped up in the thing for three days straight around the clock. And by the middle of the week I had written thirty pages. I sent the first thirty pages to Sandlapper Press in Orangeburg. They were the biggest publishing company in South Carolina. They wrote me back almost immediately with a contract.

The letter that accompanied the contract went as follows: Paragraph 1, Mr. Windham, we would like to sign you as one of our authors. We are very impressed with your manuscript. Paragraph 2, We are not at all pleased with the title of your book, “How To Wake Up With A Woody”. We would like that changed to, “Woody Windham; 32 Years In Broadcasting”. And the last paragraph, We would also like to retain the right to changed many of the words that you have used, especially when quoting your father. I never answered the letter. And when I had written 273 pages, I left in sitting on my desk. It’s still there. Maybe one of my children will publish it when I’m gone.
It was 1992 and two weeks had gone by and no call from Camden Lewis. The court date was coming up fast. I had almost decided to call someone else when the phone rang, “Woody, this is Camden Lewis. You were looking for an attorney?” I said, “That was two weeks ago. Why didn’t you call me back?” He said, “You wouldn’t want a call from an attorney that wasn’t busy. Now would you?” I’ve used that line many times since then when someone calls for a disc jockey for a party.

He did a great job of defending me. I showed him my no-compete contract and my Shag Show contract signed by Kirby Confer, Paul Rothfuss, and Mike Steinhelper . I don’t think that Bill McElveen knew about my Shag Show contract because B106 was still doing the show on Sunday evening even though I had been long gone. The trial only lasted a few hours. The Bloomington Broadcasting lawyers presented my no-compete contract and some audio tapes of me on Star 93.5 doing some live commercials for Moe Levys, The Jewelry Warehouse and Love Chevrolet. Then Camden presented the judge with my Shag Show contract. The judge had a contract in each hand and said, “It appears to me that if one of these contracts is valid then they both are. I see no reason to continue. This case is dismissed.”
I was back on the air the next day at Star 93.5 and Rick Dames had made room for me on the morning show, but it only lasted a few months. Rick had conducted some focus group surveys and found that the “Hole” in the market was Alternative Rock. He dumped Star 93.5 it became Rock 93.5. He took me off the air and put me in sales on his AM station WVOC. He also put me through his personal school of radio sales. I learned a lot and was doing quite well but I longed to be back on the air. I didn’t like selling commercials for someone else to do. I missed the interplay with the sponsors. I asked him to let me do a show on Saturday called, “The Flea Market Of The Air.” I had a ball doing my live commercials and taking all the calls. I had a contest every week in which I gave away an oil change if you said the secret color while describing your sale item. It was very funny and I had some of the coolest bumper music ever used in talk radio.
My brother Leo had opened his own advertising agency and he was doing Sunday mornings at Magic 103.1, the oldies station. His manager was Mike Steinhelper. I don’t know what happened to Barry Brown. I know that Brent Johnson replaced me on B106. I told you were going need a score card. Then Gary Stevens pulled up in front of the Oldies station, WOMG, in a brand new fire engine red Maserati. Gary was a radio legend that we all had heard a lot about. He was one of the original “Good Guys” on WMCA in New York. He had just become the owner of Magic 103.1. He put Leo on the Morning show because he had so many sponsors.

It was 1993 and one of Leo’s largest accounts at his agency was Gibbes Volkswagen. Leo did a series of commercials for them featuring Beach Billy. I stopped by the oldies station every week and helped him do the commercials and they were running on four radio stations. We had a touch of The Windham Brothers Show going again. Then my old friend Frank Baker showed up as manager of WOMG, Oldies 103. I started talking to him right away about putting the Windham Brothers back together again on the air. He did just that and we were swinging again with talent fees and lots of sponsors. We played all oldies but we took all request and they were mostly beach music songs.
That was perfect for me because I had just been fired at The Shag Club in the Holiday Inn. I had done too good a job of training Eddie Zomerfeld and they figured they could do it a lot cheaper. They were paying me a thousand dollars a week and Eddie was already on the Holiday Inn payroll and would be a lot cheaper. Eddie didn’t want to do it without all my music. So, I sold The Holiday Inn my triple deck cart machine and all my carts for ten thousand dollars. I needed the money and Eddie needed the work. He didn’t last long. After six months, the hotel got new management and they didn’t understand the shag thing at all. They closed the lounge and let Eddie go.
It was early 1994 and I was enjoying The Windham Brothers Show once again. And I had always enjoyed working for Frank Baker. He was bipolar and manic depressive but, as long as he was taking his medications, he was charming and a lot of fun, and a good manager. I got wind through the grapevine that he was planning to buy a station in Charleston. I was pretty sure it was true because his lifelong ambition was to be a radio station owner.

I went into his office and asked him about it. He said it wasn’t true and that he was staying at the Oldies station. I said, “What if the Windham Brothers went with you?” He said, “You would do that?” I told him, “I can’t speak for Leo but I think I could get him to go if you let us do a beach, blues, and boogie format. I have been dreaming about it for a long time.” Frank said, “That’s ridiculous! There’s only thirty beach music songs.” I told him how wrong he was and I guaranteed him a format that would appeal to affluent adults especially on the coast of South Carolina. I asked him what format he was planning and he said, “Jazz.” I said, “Frank, jazz won’t work. It sounds great but the audience is so discerning they hate commercials and you can’t sell them anything. It’s mainly a background music station.” I told him I would sell my house and invest some of the equity in the radio station. He said, “Let’s do it! But I would rather call it beach, boogie, and blues.”
We were on the way in a few weeks. Frank borrowed the money from his brothers to buy WBRZ, 98.9 in McLellanville, just north of Mount Pleasant in the Frances Marion Forest. It didn’t even have a studio. It was just a transmitter site way back up in the woods. Frank Named it “The Breeze 98.9, Beach, Boogie, And Blues.” I told him I could get all my music back by buying all my carts and the triple deck cart machine back from the Holiday Inn. he said, “Great because we don’t have any equipment to play music on.” I called the new manager of the Holiday Inn and offered to buy back the cart machine and all the carts. He said that they didn’t even know what all that crap was when they closed the lounge and that they had sent it all up to the home office in Memphis, Tennessee to be stored. He didn’t know what they were worth so, I offered him a thousand dollars and he took it but he said I would have to go to Memphis and find them. I did and it was like finding a lost child. I was so glad to get them. A triple deck cart machine and four racks of music carts and they were already radio station equipment. And the carts were all still color coded just the way Doug Spets and I had set them up eight years before. The reason I keep mentioning the color coded carts is because they were the key to the beach, boogie, and blues format.
Leo and I moved to Mount Pleasant and started sharing an apartment two weeks before we took over the new radio station. Eddie Zomerfeld had made friends with all the shaggers while he was at the Holiday Inn and had started his own collection of music. And he had started calling himself EZ. I talked Frank into hiring him as a disc jockey and he showed up at Leo’s apartment with a whole bunch of new shag songs. The three of us worked around the clock for three days dubbing off all the new music and color coding all the carts and putting the format together.

Yellow was all the beach music songs that people had been dancing to for years. They were songs like “Ms Grace”, “I Love Beach Music”, and “Carolina Girls”. Green was all the big national hits that people had been shagging to for years, like “My Girl”, “I Can’t Help Myself”, and “Under The Boardwalk”. Red was all hot new shuffle blues tunes that people were shagging to like BB King and Muddy Waters. Orange was all the new blues tunes that we thought they would shag to. And blue was a slow song that was a national hit. Leo drew up some programming clocks with all the colors so that every other song had to be a recognizable hit.

After we had been working on it for a marathon seventy hours we all started doubting the concept. I wasn’t even sure anymore. I suggested that we just grab any fifteen songs at random and do an hour of the format and tape it and see how it sounds. It was magic. I don’t remember ever being that excited about a radio show before. All three of us felt the magic. We couldn’t wait to get started.
Leo and I loaded up the music carts and the triple deck cart machine and one microphone and a telephone and headed for McLellanville. We wired everything right into the transmitter and started doing the Windham Brothers Morning Show on the Breeze. We announced the phone number for request and the phone lit up. We got calls from some of the nicest people. They were all very appreciative of the format. I knew right away that we had a winner. We even brought some of our sponsors with us from Columbia. Dick Dyer who didn’t even have a dealership on the coast never missed a day of advertising on The Breeze.

After a few months Frank found enough money to buy an old driving range with a brand new building on highway 17 just north of Mount Pleasant in Awendaw. We moved into new studios with all new computers and state of the art programming from Scotts Studios, but we still used the color coding to program the music. We retired the triple deck cart machine and all the carts. EZ worked in the evenings but I never could get him to follow the format.

I talked Frank into hiring a producer for our morning show. It was Rob Duren. He was a stand up comic and did great impersonations and voices and he was a very good writer. That was the best radio show I had ever done. That was the best radio station I had ever heard.
The Breeze, Beach, Boogie, and Blues at 98.9 hummed right along from 1994 to 2000. We had a lot of fun in the morning and with Leo as program director and me as music director, it was never a problem, except for Frank. As soon as the money started coming in he wanted to buy other radio stations. The first one was WLXC 98.5 in Columbia. It was a sports station in Lexington and it wasn’t doing well. I was in favor of buying that one because it would put the Windham Brothers back on the air in Columbia. We already had numerous sponsors and I was sure we would do well. And we did. That first year I had not missed a single week of being back in Columbia to play a party or to work at Manhattans in the Vista. I loaded up the carts and the cart machine and for a while we did the Windham Brothers Show from two different towns. I was in Lexington and Leo and Rob produced the show from Awendaw. We did three days a week like that while I was going to be in Columbia anyway to work during the week. We did the radio show together but Frank wanted to run separate commercials. It was an amazing feat and both stations did well.
By 1996 my wife Jean had sold our house in Columbia and we had moved into a new home in Charleston National Country Club in Mount Pleasant. Frank reminded me that I have promised to invest in the radio station. I gave him 50, 000 dollars from the equity and he said he needed 85,000. I told him that’s all I had and the next day he went to a bank in Charleston and made a loan in my name for 35,000 dollars and said, “Just sign here and then endorse the check over to me. The payments are only 500 a month. It’s just like buying a new car.” I went along with him because he seemed to be a little desperate and I knew he had quit taking his medications. My wife wasn’t pleased but I always thought it was a good investment. He said he would get the same amount from Leo but he couldn’t get him approved.

He issued me some stock in The Breeze Radio Network. Then he started talking about buying another station in Hilton Head, WHBZ 99.7. I thought he should slow down but there was no talking to him. As soon as he acquired the Hilton Head station he sent me down there with the music carts and the cart machine and we did The Windham Brothers Show from two different towns again for a while. As soon as I got back to the show in Charleston he started looking at a station in Wilmington, North Carolina. I told him that I was leaving the carts and the cart machine in Hilton Head. As far as I know they are still there, but they came in handy so many times.
For me the highlight of my days on the Breeze was in 1999. Leo and I both stayed on the air for 72 hours and collected 72,000 dollars for the American Cancer Society. We did the Windham Brothers War On Cancer on all four radio stations at the same time. But for some unknown reason, we never even got a thank you note from any of the Cancer Society’s in any of the four towns.
Frank Baker buying the Wilmington station was the straw that broke the camels back. His brothers were tapped out and were starting to put the pressure on him to get some of their money back. He was having trouble making payroll but still I thought he could pull it off. But he couldn’t, mainly because he was courting a new wife and having a new baby and buying a new beach house on the ocean all at the same time. He was spinning out of control.

He told us that he was going to sell the stations and he let everybody go. He locked up the building in Awendaw and left the computers playing the Beach, Boogie, and Blues around the clock non-stop. It was sad to listen to but Leo and I moved on. I asked Frank if there was any way for me to get some of my 85,000 dollars back when he sold the stations and he said, “Boy, your money’s gone!”
Steve Jason was the manager of COOL 105 in Charleston and he had always like our show. He talked the owner Linn Martin into putting us on the air. I was right in the middle of doing a year of chemotherapy for a bout with colon cancer. I had chemo every Friday in Columbia but it was always after the show and I could get to Columbia by noon. Then after a year, Linn Martin decided to change the format at COOL 105 and get rid of Steve Jason and The Windham Brothers.

I decided to collect unemployment for 6 months because I had been fired. And because it was a far cry from the last time I had collected in 1959. It had gone from 26 dollars a week to 800 dollars every two weeks and I didn’t have to hitchhike into town to pick it up. I simply made a phone call to an automated system every Friday. Leo went into real estate and so did Frank Baker.
It was 2002 and I was over my chemo and starting to feel better, but I noticed that the calls from Columbia from people wanting to book me for a party were drying up. I had been gone for 8 years and The State Newspaper had run a front page story about my colon cancer and then didn’t do a follow up. Plus The Breeze had been off the air for a full year. People in Columbia thought that I was dead. I was fine after colorectal surgery to remove 16 inches of my colon along with a lemon sized tumor. The reason for the chemo was because the tumor had affected the lymph nodes. But I was getting plenty of lymph out of my nodes.
My daughter, Wendy came to visit us from Columbia with her 10 year old daughter Sharon. Wendy said, “Hey Dad, I’m working in radio now at night on Oldies 103 in Columbia.” I said, “Fantastic! How did that happen?” She said, “Tim Miller is the program director and he gave me a try and he likes me.” I said, “I cant believe you are working for Citadel Broadcasting. Isn’t Bill McElveen the manager of all four stations?” She said, “Yes, and he likes me too and you know what? Every night when I’m on the air, somebody will call and tell me I should get my father to come back to Columbia.” I told her, ” I do miss Columbia, but Bill would never hire me back. The last time I saw him we were suing each other.” Wendy said, “Call him right now and find out.”
I think I was mainly just showing off for Wendy. I grabbed my telephone and dialed the number in Columbia and Bill came on the line instantly, “Woody! It’ so good to hear from you. Are you coming back to Columbia?” I told him I would love to and he said that the morning show on Oldies 103 was being done by Tim Miller but that Tim might want to make room for me because he would still be the program director. I told him that my unemployment had just run out and that I could be there tomorrow. He said, “Let me check with him and I’ll call you right back. I won’t be able to pay you enough. It’s just not in the budget.” I said, ” As long as you let me do live commercials and charge a talent fee, I can make a living.”
Three days later I was on my way to Columbia to do the morning show on Oldies 103. On my way into town I called Bill McElveen and asked him if I could have someone to work with me and produce the morning show. He said, ” I think we have a very young guy who is just getting started, named Ray Allen. He would be perfect.” Bill was right. He was calling himself Rocking Ray Allen. He was just out of broadcasting school and we hit it off immediately. He was so naive. He made me seem so smart and I taught him a lot.
I got him to change to Sugar Ray Allen and I told him, “Remember Ray, you’ll never make a name for yourself if you follow the rules.” That has caused him a little bit of trouble with management. But at least he has made a name for himself with them. Ray and I are lucky to have each other. It’s been 8 years together and I have changed the name of the show to “The Woody And Ray Show”. I have also taught him how to form a relationship with all the sponsors, of which there are many. We have been through three program directors. All three have wanted to fire me but Bill McElveen has saved the day each time. Thank goodness, because 8 years at the same radio station is a new record for me.
I’ve only been in trouble with Bill one time. I got a little too exuberant on the air one day. I was trying to save the Irmo ice skating rink and went for almost three hour without playing any music. He had to call me down and he was right, it is a music radio station. The rink is still there. I am still at the same station. Although It’s no longer Oldies 103. We changed frequency with 98.5 and now we are still oldies but we are Magic 98.5. Right now, I’m trying to get Bill to let me do my shag show again on Sunday. And I want to do it from home. The technology is available. But Bill keeps telling me, “If I have to come in here to work, then so do you!”
I was on the air one day in 2004 and I was trying to round up a new wheel chair for one of my listeners, Robin Craig. She was born with spina bifida and had outgrown her wheel chair. I had taught her how to shag in the chair and she had been a big fan for years. But she didn’t have much money. I was taking a lot of calls from interested listeners who were trying to help. When I answered one of the calls on the air, the man said, “Woody, this is John King. I’m the corporate man in charge of all programming on all the Citadel radio stations. Are you taking all these calls on the air live?” I said, “Yes sir, I am.” He said, “Well take me off the air so I can speak with you privately.”

He told me that I wasn’t supposed to be taking live calls because it was corporate policy. I told him that all we had for recording calls was an old reel to reel machine and it wasn’t suitable for taking a lot of calls and Bill McElveen had told me there was no money in the budget for new equipment. He said, “I understand that you and Bill have a history. You’re like the Bickersons of Columbia Radio.” I said, “Yes it has been up and down.” He said, “Well, promise me you won’t take anymore live calls and I will have you a digital Shortcut in the studio immediately and by the way, I love what you are doing with the wheelchair for your friend.”

Robin got her new wheelchair the next day and I had the new phone equipment in the studio the next week. Robin Craig was never supposed to live to be a teenager but she made it into her forties and died a couple of years ago. I was blessed to have her as a fan.
My whole radio career has been blessed. Starting with Bob Fulton, George Buck Jr, Leo Windham, Bill McElveen, Frank Baker, Janice Waldrop Shull , Mike Steinhelper Jr, and Sugar Ray Allen.

These are the people I will be thanking in my acceptance speech Friday night, January 15th, 2010. I will be accepting the Master’s Award from the South Carolina Broadcasters Association. That’s the reason I have written all of this. So they can get some bullet points for the presentation. But, you know what? Writing all of this has made me more excited about my career than ever. I’m going to do it until I die at the microphone! And guess who nominated me for the Masters Award? Bill McElveen who is a member of the South Carolina Broadcasters Association’s Hall of Fame. And so is his father, Moody McElveen. They are two of the states greatest broadcasters.