Thursday, March 25, 2010
WHER: 1000 Beautiful Watts
In 1955, Sun Records founder Sam Phillips, with financial help from Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson, started American's first all-female radio station, WHER.
It should be significantly noted that Phillips sold his rights to Elvis's music to fund the station. He also refused to play Sun recordings or any other rock and roll on air.
The Kitchen Sisters produced this piece for the Lost & Found Sound program, but I just heard it for the first time on Hearing Voices. The archival clips are somewhat discomforting. But they really illustrate how women were perceived/ how they presented themselves back then.
Despite that, the WHER "girls" were waaaay ahead of their time, doing things in quietly radical ways.
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