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by Lex Gillespie
Ever since it hit the airwaves one lunchtime fifty-six years ago this November, "King
Biscuit Time" has profoundly influenced the development and popularity of
the blues. As the oldest and longest-running blues program on the radio, it helped
promote the
careers of bluesmen who pioneered this musical style and later brought it from
street corners and juke joints in the South to an international audience. And
today, KFFA and Helena are even "must see" stops for Japanese and European
tourists who want to learn about the cultural roots of the blues.
"First things first," recalls Sonny "Sunshine" Payne, the
program's host for over eleven thousand broadcasts; King Biscuit Time started
when guitarist Robert Junior Lockwood and harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson
were told they would have to get a sponsor to get on the air." That was
1941, when Payne was a teenager cleaning 78 rpm's and running errands at KFFA. "They
came to the station one day and I showed them in to station manager Sam Anderson...
he sent them over to the Interstate Grocery Company and its owner Max Moore who
had a flour called "King Biscuit Flour..."
Lockwood and Williamson became the show's original King Biscuit Entertainers
who advertised flour and corn meal in Helena and the surrounding Delta region;
and after a lucky break, Sonny Payne took over as program host when the announcer
lost his script while on the air. The program was a smash hit, thanks mostly
to the playing and on-air presence of harp player Williamson. He became so popular
that the sponsor named its product "Sonny Boy Corn Meal" and he was,
and still is, pictured, smiling and with his harmonica, on a burlap sack of his
own brand of meal.
Williamson was a musical pioneer in his own right. He was one of
the first to make the harmonica the centerpiece in a blues band.
His unique phrasings, compared by many to the human voice, influenced
countless harp players.
His partner, Robert Junior Lockwood, stepson of the legendary Robert
Johnson, also influenced the blues style. A fan of big band jazz,
he incorporated jazzier elements into the blues, often playing the
guitar with his fingers.
As years passed, the duo expanded into a full band, including piano
player "Pine Top" Perkins, Houston Stackhouse and "Peck" Curtis,
and musicians who played on the show also advertised local appearances
that gave them more work.
With the success of "King Biscuit Time," Helena soon
became a center for the blues. It was a key stopping off point for
black musicians on the trip north to the barrooms and clubs of Chicago's
South and West sides. Already, in the thirties, the town had seen
the likes of pianist Memphis Slim and Helena native Roosevelt Sykes,
as well as guitarists Howlin' Wolf, Honeyboy Edwards, and Elmore
James. And when the program went on the air, it helped shape the
early careers of many an aspiring musician. "Little Walter" Jacobs
and Jimmy Rogers, who later played with Muddy Waters, came to live
and learn in Helena in the mid-1940's. Muddy Waters also brought
his band to Helena to play on KFFA and in bars in the area. Teenager
Ike Turner first heard the blues on KFFA around that time, and King
Biscuit pianist "Pine Top" Perkins gave him lessons in
his trademark boogie woogie style.
The program also influenced other stations to put the blues on
the radio. Its initial popularity convinced advertisers that the
blues had commercial potential. "It was a major breakthrough," explains
folklorist Bill Ferris, director of the Center for the Study of
Southern Culture at Ole Miss; "King Biscuit Time was a discovery
of an audience and a market... that hitherto radio had not really
understood." Across the Mississippi River from Helena, radio
station WROX put the South's first black deejay, Early Wright, on
the air spinning blues and gospel records in 1947. Upriver in Memphis,
station WDIA the next year became the first southern station with
an all-black staff, including a young musician named Riley "B.
B." King, who got an early break as a deejay. And, in Nashville
in the late forties, station WLAC reached nearly half the country
with its late-night blues and R&B shows. All of these programs
and stations owe an enormous debt to "King Biscuit Time."
And today, the legacy of the show continues, with blues programs
heard on radio stations across the U. S., the recordings of the
many "King Biscuit Entertainers," and the yearly King
Biscuit festival in Helena celebrating the city's cultural heritage
and significant role in developing and promoting the blues.
Lex Gillespie is a freelance journalist who has produced shows
for National Public Radio on the blues and blues radio.
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