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WTAW Radio
“Long Black Veil” song playing reported through emails of Howard Hatfield
Tom Turbiville | WTAW Radio Host
Laura Quezada | Transcriber
00:00:00 Dick Bolin (DB)
College Station, Texas, April 24, 1947, Dick Bolin talking. Here's the latest news from the
Associated Press…
00:00:07 Associated Press (3AP)
He got a touchdown! Oh, doctor!
00:00:10 Speaker 3
…News and Talk, WTAW.
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00:00:12 Tom Turbiville (TT)
This is WTAW, the First 100 Years, I'm Tom Turbiville. This series has generated emails, and one
came from Howard Hatfield, raised in Bryan, graduated from Stephen F. Austin High, Aggie
Class of 1969. Howard wrote about the time in the 1960s that some [slow country music begins
to play in background] WTAW morning DJ started the day's country music programming with
Lefty Frizzell's hit Long Black Veil. Howard wrote an essay called, Ear Witness to History, about
this, and here's some excerpts. The song eventually ended, and the DJ started up some
commercial or something, I don't recall, and then he started in announcing the next tune set up to
play. That's when Long Black Veil started to play again. “What?!”, I declared. That's the song I
just heard [Long Black Veil continues playing]. When the song finished for the second time in a
row, the DJ said nothing about the previous mistake. He just started reading the scripts for
whatever commercial he was supposed to talk about. I had my head buried in the closet, but soon
I realized something was totally odd. The same song, Long Black Veil, was back on the radio
again and again [Long Black Veil played more prominently]. The whole afternoon continued this
way. DJ talk, commercials were aired, public address announcements were made, and the song
Long Black Veil played on and on. Nothing changed, not nothing. All the way up to WTAW's
sign-off at seven o'clock. But the last song played was the Sabre Dance. [Sabre Dance begins
playing] Well, thank you, Howard Hatfield, for your long story of your long day of the long
black veil on WTAW, the First 100 Years.