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HomeMy WebLinkAboutWatkins Talks Charlie Pride Transcript, WTAW First 100 YearsProject HOLD WTAW Interview Bill Watkins | Former WTAW Owner/Manager Tom Turbiville | WTAW Radio Host Daniel Hayes | Transcriber Transcript 00:00:00 Dick Bolin (DB) Here's the latest news from the Associated Press. Anytime now, the big - 00:00:03 Speaker 2 WTAW will join new businesses from across the Brazos Valley. 00:00:07 Speaker 3 Aggies win 74-72. Here's your ride. 00:00:12 Speaker 4 16.20 WTAW. 00:00:15 Tom Turbiville (TT) This is WTAW The First 100 Years. I'm Tom Turbiville. Back in the day as a country music radio station, WTAW was a must-stop for just about every country music star of the time. Bill Watkins was a general manager and later an owner in those days and had some star power on the staff like AJ Wynn, who was a mentor of a kid from Tupelo. 00:00:40 Bill Watkins (BW) And we brought in Elvis Presley. Yeah, AJ Wynn was a top DJ in the country at one time in Nashville. Country Music Awards or whatever it was back then, he was a uh, top country announcer. 00:00:52 TT Watkins says his favorite star to come by the station, another fella from Mississippi. 00:00:58 BW As we brought Charlie Pride in, and uh, we had him uh, on the station. He uh- This was like at 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning doing an interview, and he'd been up all night. He's got to be one of my most favorite uh, country stars because he sat there on a porch. He- Like I say, he was going to perform that night, and he hadn't been, he'd come in from some place and hadn't even been to bed. And uh, he’s signing those autographs lining up way down past the bowling alley down there. And so I said, uh, we've got to break this up right now because uh, Mr. Pride has got to go get some rest for his performance tonight. We'll want to see you there. And he hit me and he said, as long as I've got a fan out there, I will sign their autograph because I appreciate them. 00:01:43 TT Yeah, stars that came to the radio station included Conway, Twitty, Jim, Ed Brown, and the list goes on and on. Even Red Skelton came over, but that's a story for another edition of WTAW, The First 100 Years.