THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 26, 1996 TAG: 9610260470
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 52 lines
My column lamenting the waning of old-style country music, as exemplified by Waylon Jennings, drew a reproach from Joe Hoppel of WCMS radio, 100.5 FM or 1050 AM. He has been playing country music on radio since 1953, and I can't, offhand, think of anybody I'd rather have chide me.
Back then, years before Jennings, he writes, many listeners were complaining about the new crop of performers like Hank Williams Sr., Ernest Tubb and Eddy Arnold.
He recalls critics saying, ``Hank Williams isn't hillbilly, he has a steel guitar in his band. Ernest Tubb has drums.'' When Waylon and his generation arrived, they replaced artists like Webb Pierce, Eddy Arnold and Kitty Wells. ``Nothing stays the same; everything changes.''
``It's all too easy for artists like Waylon to blame radio for their demise. The fact is radio spends many hours and big bucks to determine what the majority of the public wants to hear.''
To be successful, he writes, a radio station must reflect public taste, not shape it. ``Two weeks ago,'' Hoppel reminds me, ``we hosted the Brooks and Dunn concert at the Virginia Beach Amphitheater to a crowd of 15,000 fans.''
The following evening the Virginia Country Association put on a show featuring a '60s artist, Bill Anderson. Attendance was about 200, he reports.
``WCMS was the very first radio station to play Country Music exclusively,'' he notes.
``The industry `experts' felt there wasn't a large enough audience to support a Country Radio Station. The early days were lean, but we held on. There are now more Country Music stations than any other format, and all of the successful ones play the current artists.''
He's sorry, he says, to lose me as a listener, ``but you have been replaced by multi-thousands of others. Latest figures estimate the Country Music listeners in Hampton Roads total in excess of 190,000. So we must be doing something right.''
Just as there's a place for old cars, black-and-white TVs, black-and-white newspaper photos and other memorabilia, it will never again be mainstream, ``and that's what mass media has to be to survive,'' he says.
``When Waylon Jennings was in his heyday there were many who would have disagreed he was pure country.''
Yes, yes, Joe, I know; but I don't remember saying, anyway, I had quit listening to country music - only that the dial no longer sat on a station - a kind of involuntary inattention, not a formal resignation.
I'm glad multi-thousands enjoy new or young country. One day I'll come back with the return, now and then, of artists like Eddy Arnold and Patsy Cline, to whom I could listen forever. ILLUSTRATION: Patsy Cline by CNB