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Meridian Memorabilia

Collage Attribution: Kim Fortenberry

MHS Class of '58, 40th Reunion

From there — to — here was quite a trip.

If you really want an in depth examination of Meridian and her notables, go here! I use this well - researched blog frequently, looking to find out about interesting cities and towns throughout the South. It's long, but excellent.
I will still maintain the blog, Past, Present, Future, but I've returned it to its wider net. More of a magazine — as some international viewers have termed it. I invite you to look there too, of course.
Past, Present, Future

If you don't continue to read this blog...

I'm going to kill both of these puppies!

Meridian, Queen City

Meridian's Queen City Story

From the wayback machine

I Worked Here on Saturdays

A Favorite Station for Many.

We read back then, too.

1954

Our town

The King checked out on August 16, 1977.

Elvis was caring and generous.

Red Hot Truck Stop

This article appeared in the Oxford American - March/April 2001

Truck Stop Heaven

Time never leaves anything alone - take it from a natural-born road dog.

By Meridian area (Philadelphia-born) Country singer, Marty Stuart



It is with whole-heart-conviction that I tell you that the best cup of black coffee ever served in the Southern states was at the Red Hot Truck Stop in Meridian, Mississippi. This wasn't your ordinary cup of interstate steam. It reminded me of what Brother Howard Finster had said about dipping snuff. He said, "After I take a dip, it gets real quiet and then things come to me that normally wouldn't." A cup of coffee from the Red Hot had that same kind of power; it caused you to drive differently. If I were headed up North, words and melodies began to dance around in my head as though leaked from God's pen and onto me in a twangy kind of way. If I were headed South, the coffee revealed things to me about Hattiesburg and New Orleans that even the natural light of day tends to overshadow.

The Red Hot itself was one of the last great truck stops in America. It didn't take a backseat to anything Route 66 had to offer. It was the Southern edge personified; a gathering place for all sorts of ramblers. A café society of good ol' boys in affordable cowboy shirts and the kind of good ol' girls who'd fetch you out of jail even though they had called the law six hours earlier to come lock you up. At the Red Hot, I met people like Trigger Thrash, Wirehead, Fats Domino, Percy Sledge's valet, Hank Jr.'s crew, Mama Rabbit, and Elly the Pinball Queen. It was an atmosphere where the lines on Merle Haggard's face didn't have to be explained, Hank Williams' words could be taken to heart, and the waitresses had a way of knowing your life story the minute you opened the door.

Red Hot Truck Stop Stories

For School Lunches

More of classmate, Martha Markline Hopkins's Art

"Red Arrow"

Per Martha Ann:

"The Women's Caucus for Art announces a national call for Equilibrium: Art for a Changing World, 'Equilibrium' seeks to explore the tensions, demands and challenges inherent in living in a rapidly changing world. We are looking for art in all genres and media to express the multiple expressions of balance or its absence, which can range from abstract to representational, psychological to social, whimsical and poetic to political commentary. Artists are encouraged to interpret this theme broadly. 

My painting was one of 40 chosen from 581 for this national exhibition at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago from January 17 to February 17, 2014. Packing it for shipping next week. My work does more travelling than I do!"

WTF is this? Anybody know?

Stuckey's Bridge

Over the Chunky River in Lauderdale County, Mississippi
(Click on it for greater detail)


This is Stuckey's Bridge in Lauderdale County, MS. There are many stories about this bridge, and I don't really know what is truth and what is legend. It's been listed as being built as early as 1847 and as late as 1901. So that would mean at the very least, it's 108 years old!

There are many stories that this bridge is haunted. As the story goes, Old Man Stuckey had a hotel near the bridge site in the mid 1800s. The old man would murder his hotel guests, steal their valuables, and bury the bodies along the riverbank. He was eventually found out, caught, and was hung from the bridge. Now people claim to see an old man walking the banks of the river with a lantern at night and hearing splashes in the water under the bridge when the river is otherwise perfectly quiet.

Photo credit: Natalie Maynor

Photo Credit: Kim Hunt

Meridian's Own – Jimmie Rodgers

Royal Drive-In – R.I.P.

WLAC Radio - Nashville

Back in the 1950s, when white teenagers were just beginning to discover that Pat Boone's version of "Ain't That A Shame" was not the original, a radio station in Nashville, Tennessee, was beaming rhythm and blues and gospel music to millions of young listeners, each discretely tuning his dial to 1510 on the AM dial late into the evening hours.

It was 10:00 pm in the East, bed time for many a schoolkid. But, if the weather was cooperative and the tuner sensitive enough, wonderful sounds soon began to issue forth. Not Perry Como, not the Chordettes, certainly not Pat Boone. No, here streaming directly into our bedrooms were the strange, new, and wonderful tones of Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed, Fats Domino, Lightning Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Little Junior Parker, The Spaniels, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howling Wolf, and Etta James.
Jimmy Reed-"Baby What You Want Me To Do?"

Here was something special, something to be shared only with your very best friends, not with those jerks at school who didn't know about it and couldn't understand it if they did. Here was something that made you wish you could soundproof the door to your room or, perhaps, buy a pair of headphones, all to insure that listening bliss might continue into the wee hours when your mother assumed that you had long been asleep.

Gene Nobles was on WLAC for Randy's Record Shop. Nothing characterized the WLAC listening experience more than the nightly program sponsored by "The World's Largest Mail Order Phonograph Record Shop" -- Randy's Record Shop in Gallatin, Tennessee. They must have done a heck of a business. No street address, no post office box ... just "Gallatin, Tennessee."

During the mid-'50s, Randy's sponsored what may have been the most listened to disc jockey show in the country. Introduced by the nostalgic tones of "Suwannee River Boogie" by Albert Ammons, "Randy's Record Hi-Lights" was broadcast on clear-channel WLAC at 10:15 pm Central Time, six nights a week--and at 11:00 pm on Sunday. And 50,000 watts of power insured that it could be heard all over the East, South, and Mid-West, probably in Canada and Mexico as well.

Gene Nobles has as much claim as anyone to being the first to play rhythm and blues records for a racially mixed audience and developing a distinctive deejay "patter." Gene called it "Slanguage" and it included such phrases as "from the heart of my bottom." Mr. Nobles passed away in 1989.

Commercials by regular sponsors: Click on to listen.

Live Baby Chicks
Royal Crown Hair Dressing
Ernie's Record Mart
Randy's Record Shop
"Randy" was Randy Wood, a successful entrepreneur whose catalog boasted that his shop was "The Home of the World's Largest Stock of Recorded Music. Randy was patriotic too, offering a "10% discount to all men and women now serving in the Armed Forces." Lest we forget, these records were "also available in 45 r.p.m."

Giving Randy's show a run for the money was the program sponsored by the venerable Ernie's Record Mart, at 179 3rd Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee. "Ernie's Record Parade" could also be heard every night. It was a one-hour show broadcast Monday through Friday at 9:00 pm Central Time and on Saturday from 8:00 until 9:45 pm. On Sunday night the "all spiritual" show began at 8:30.

The host on Ernie's show was the steadfast "John R." His full name was John Richbourg and he began working at WLAC in 1942. His distinct, deep, and sometimes gravelly voice, together with his "hep-cat" patter combined to confuse many listeners into believing that he was a black man. Actually, he was a white man who had come to WLAC following stints at other stations and a youthful attempt to pursue a career on the musical stage. John R. signed off for the last time on June 28, 1973. As late as the 1980s, Mr. Richbourg was answering letters from his fans, sending out autographed photos, and selling tapes of his programs.


Herman Grizzard

Youthful insomniacs and dedicated listener's could stay up past midnight in the East and listen to the third in the nightly series of record-shop-sponsored shows, this one brought to us courtesy of Buckley's Record Shop. Buckley's show, entitled "After Hours," was introduced by the theme song "After Hours" by Erskine Hawkins. The host disc jockey was a gentleman who seemed to be older than Gene Nobles or John R (and was). That gentleman was Herman Grizzard, who had been with the station since the '30s. Each of these record shops offered "special" packages of records available by mail order at a group price. As I recall, each 5-record special from Ernie's was offered for a period of a couple months and was called something like Ernie's "Bullseye" Special or some similar name that would distinguish it from, say, Ernie's "Blue Ribbon" Special. Five records for three dollars or so was a great deal too, as long as you didn't mind having a ringer or two in the group--some title that you probably wouldn't have otherwise purchased. I mean ... did someone really want a copy of "Gumbo Mombo" by Guitar Gable?


Bill "Hoss" Allen was yet another popular dee-jay at WLAC. After graduating from Vanderbilt in 1948, Allen began his radio career at WHIN in his hometown of Gallatin, Tennessee, hosting "Harlem Hop." Allen soon moved to WLAC, initially filling in where needed, ultimately taking over the 10:15 to midnight spot, when Gene Nobles retired.

The "Hossman" also hosted many gospel programs. Indeed, in 1981, Savoy Records released an LP (SL 14627) entitled: Bill "Hoss" Allen Presents "Let's Go To The Program." Subtitled "Twelve of America's Greatest Gospel Groups," the record includes recordings by such groups as The Swan Silvertones, The Soul Stirrers, and The Original Blind Boys of Alabama, introduced by Allen and altered to include applause, as though the performances were actually live, in concert.

Atttribution: Jim Lowe's recollections (edited for length)

I have awfully fond memories of lying in bed late at night with that faint, tiny red light glow on my radio, turned down low... just listening away to WLAC. (DNJ)