WSM Radio

WSM RADIO
 
 
WSM  (branded The Legend) is a 50,000 watt AM radio station located in Nashville, Tennessee.  It broadcasts a full-time country music format at 650 kHz and is known primarily as the home of The Grand Ole Opry, the world's longest running radio program.  The station's clear channel signal can reach much of North America and various countries, especially late at night.  It is one of two clear-channel stations in North America, along with CFZM/Toronto, that still broadcast music.  Nicknamed "The Air Castle of the South," it shares its callsign with WSM-FM, also in Nashville, and formerly with television Channel 4, now WSMV.   (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
If nothing else had sprung from there, northern Louisiana would still be renowned as the home of the Louisiana Hayride radio show, the direct antecedent of the even more legendary show from WSM Radio in NashvilleThe Grand Ole Opry.   However, this fertile musical landscape was also the home of artists as varied as the avant-garde (and anonymous) band the Residents, musical entrepreneur Dale Hawkins (whose song "Susie Q" was one of the first in the genre called "swamp rock" and was also the first hit song by Creedence Clearwater Revival), and a wealth of country stars like Trace Adkins (no relation to Hasil Adkinsas far as I know), Tim McGraw and Hank Williams, Jr. (father Hank Sr. was from Alabama).  The man born Thomas Johnson in Bastrop, LA – who became known as The Lonesome Drifter – was inspired by the founders of country and western like Jimmie RodgersHank Williams and Bill Monroe; and his dream was to appear on the Louisiana Hayride.  
 
(May 2011)

Last edited: March 22, 2021