Johnny Gray's Radio Days
Deborah Evans Price
May 23, 2007
Johnny Gray didn't grow up dreaming of life as a broadcaster, but like any true calling he found it just the same. What began as a college job evolved into one of the most successful careers in Country radio. Along the way, he helped build the careers of numerous artists from Alabama to Kenny Chesney to Sugarland. Now retired from Atlanta's WKHX and WYAY, Gray is virtually on a permanent weekend.
"Five days before my actual final day, we woke up and [my wife] Susan said, 'Just think Johnny, five days from now everyday is going to be Saturday,'" Gray said.
He has earned the right to relax. For more than 40 years, he's worked at radio stations in the South, interspersing air shifts with occasional record company promotion gigs during the times away from radio.
"Johnny is a guy who sees it from both sides of the fence, and I think that's the reason he's been so successful and stable in a radio business which is notoriously transient," said Wade Jessen, Country Editor/Director of Country Charts for Billboard and R&R. "He's such a good guy and he's somebody that everybody likes, but that's the easy part. The tough part is to be so consistent in his work and to really know what it means to be one of the tastemakers in radio, and he's definitely that. He has a background in record promotion and in radio and he sees the business from a pretty unique perspective."
Gray admitted he sort of stumbled into a radio career. After high school, he prepared to enter the University of Alabama, but had no idea what his major was going to be.
"I was looking through a manual and I didn't really know what I wanted to do," he recalled. "They had a program in there for radio and television and I thought that would be interesting."
He began working at the campus television station and later landed a job as an announcer for Alabama Public Television. A friend was working the 7 PM to midnight shift at the local Top 40 station and invited him to visit.
"So one evening I went there and it just blew my mind that he was playing all these cool records and great sounding chicks were calling him," Gray remembered with a laugh. "So I thought 'Man I'm going to leave television and get into radio.'"
He left college after his second year and took a job at an FM station in Huntsville, Ala.
"This was 1963, so there was nobody in the world listening to FM. They all listened to AM Top 40," Gray said. "But I took the job anyway because it paid money. I think it was $60 a week, and the only people who listened to the FM station were building the Saturn rocket at the Huntsville Space Center. The only radio they could get out there was FM and they listened to us."
Gray joined the National Guard and when he was sent to Birmingham after basic training, he began working at WYDE. After four months, the station was bought out and the new owners let everyone go except him.
When the new manager called him into his office, he thought he was being fired.
"He sat me down and said, 'I want you to listen to something and tell me what you think,'" Gray recalled. "I'll never forget it. He put a Marty Robbins record on. I can't really remember the song, but it wasn't traditional Country, it was what we called 'Countrypolitan.' He said 'What do you think of that?' I said, 'It's certainly not as bad as I thought; it's actually pretty good.' He said, 'That's what you are going to be playing starting at 4:45 Monday morning.' So, that was in 1967 and that was when the station changed from an AOR rock station to Country. We called it called it 'Countrypolitan WYDE.'"
Thus began Gray's love affair with Country Music. It was also at that station that Larry Paul Smith became "Johnny Gray."
"When they hired me, they had some old tapes and they were so stretched for cash they said, 'Well this guy used to be here four years ago, but you are going to become Johnny Gray and here's the jingle package.'
That's how I got to be Johnny Gray," he said, noting that his father was the only person who always called him by his given name, Larry Paul. Gray stayed at WYDE for 14 years before he made a change.
"I decided there had to be more to life than radio in Birmingham, Ala.," he said. "I had some friends in the record business in Nashville that had always told me, 'You ought to become a promotions guy for a record label. You'd be great because you get it. You understand that music is important and you have a lot of friends in the business.'"
So he went to work for Mercury Records, moving to Nashville in early 1979. At the time, he also had to promote R&B, Top 40 and other records as well as Country. He wasn't really happy working multiple formats, so when label executive Joe Galante recruited him to work a new RCA imprint, Free Flight, he jumped at the chance and relocated to Atlanta to work for the fledgling label. The label didn't last, but Gray developed roots in Atlanta, and he found himself working for WPLO from 1980-84 as a DJ and Program and Music Director.
Next came another short stint in promotion when he spent a year working for Warner Bros., but he couldn't escape his love for radio. After a tenure again at WPLO, he became Music Director for WKHX where he remained until his retirement on Sept. 22, 2006. Over the years, he also took on MD responsibilities for WYAY, eventually becoming Assistant Program Director as well, for both stations, which are owned by ABC Radio.
When Citadel announced plans to buy the ABC Radio stations, Gray decided it was time to retire. He admitted he's seen a lot of changes during his career, and said the most unsettling has been consolidation.
"They stretch people so thin that they're not able to do one job real well," Gray said of the way some companies handle their stations. "They do a lot of jobs not so well and I think that's very unfortunate."
He said he was lucky to be able to be an off-air Music Director, which allowed him to focus on the music instead of an air shift. At many stations MDs do double or triple duty.
"The music director probably does an air shift and then he does remotes, so there's really no time for him to really concentrate on what I think is the real heart of the radio station and that's the music," Gray said. "I just would like to see radio take more of a deep interest in what their product is and their product is music."
Gray and his wife plan to divide their time between homes in Georgia and Florida. Still he doesn't rule out radio in his future. "I learned a long time ago, never say never."
What did he enjoy most about working in radio? "I liked the ability to reach people through music," he said. "Music has such an impact on people. It's an amazing thing."
2007 CMA Close Up News Service / Country Music Association, Inc.
"Five days before my actual final day, we woke up and [my wife] Susan said, 'Just think Johnny, five days from now everyday is going to be Saturday,'" Gray said.
He has earned the right to relax. For more than 40 years, he's worked at radio stations in the South, interspersing air shifts with occasional record company promotion gigs during the times away from radio.
"Johnny is a guy who sees it from both sides of the fence, and I think that's the reason he's been so successful and stable in a radio business which is notoriously transient," said Wade Jessen, Country Editor/Director of Country Charts for Billboard and R&R. "He's such a good guy and he's somebody that everybody likes, but that's the easy part. The tough part is to be so consistent in his work and to really know what it means to be one of the tastemakers in radio, and he's definitely that. He has a background in record promotion and in radio and he sees the business from a pretty unique perspective."
Gray admitted he sort of stumbled into a radio career. After high school, he prepared to enter the University of Alabama, but had no idea what his major was going to be.
"I was looking through a manual and I didn't really know what I wanted to do," he recalled. "They had a program in there for radio and television and I thought that would be interesting."
He began working at the campus television station and later landed a job as an announcer for Alabama Public Television. A friend was working the 7 PM to midnight shift at the local Top 40 station and invited him to visit.
"So one evening I went there and it just blew my mind that he was playing all these cool records and great sounding chicks were calling him," Gray remembered with a laugh. "So I thought 'Man I'm going to leave television and get into radio.'"
He left college after his second year and took a job at an FM station in Huntsville, Ala.
"This was 1963, so there was nobody in the world listening to FM. They all listened to AM Top 40," Gray said. "But I took the job anyway because it paid money. I think it was $60 a week, and the only people who listened to the FM station were building the Saturn rocket at the Huntsville Space Center. The only radio they could get out there was FM and they listened to us."
Gray joined the National Guard and when he was sent to Birmingham after basic training, he began working at WYDE. After four months, the station was bought out and the new owners let everyone go except him.
When the new manager called him into his office, he thought he was being fired.
"He sat me down and said, 'I want you to listen to something and tell me what you think,'" Gray recalled. "I'll never forget it. He put a Marty Robbins record on. I can't really remember the song, but it wasn't traditional Country, it was what we called 'Countrypolitan.' He said 'What do you think of that?' I said, 'It's certainly not as bad as I thought; it's actually pretty good.' He said, 'That's what you are going to be playing starting at 4:45 Monday morning.' So, that was in 1967 and that was when the station changed from an AOR rock station to Country. We called it called it 'Countrypolitan WYDE.'"
Thus began Gray's love affair with Country Music. It was also at that station that Larry Paul Smith became "Johnny Gray."
"When they hired me, they had some old tapes and they were so stretched for cash they said, 'Well this guy used to be here four years ago, but you are going to become Johnny Gray and here's the jingle package.'
That's how I got to be Johnny Gray," he said, noting that his father was the only person who always called him by his given name, Larry Paul. Gray stayed at WYDE for 14 years before he made a change.
"I decided there had to be more to life than radio in Birmingham, Ala.," he said. "I had some friends in the record business in Nashville that had always told me, 'You ought to become a promotions guy for a record label. You'd be great because you get it. You understand that music is important and you have a lot of friends in the business.'"
So he went to work for Mercury Records, moving to Nashville in early 1979. At the time, he also had to promote R&B, Top 40 and other records as well as Country. He wasn't really happy working multiple formats, so when label executive Joe Galante recruited him to work a new RCA imprint, Free Flight, he jumped at the chance and relocated to Atlanta to work for the fledgling label. The label didn't last, but Gray developed roots in Atlanta, and he found himself working for WPLO from 1980-84 as a DJ and Program and Music Director.
Next came another short stint in promotion when he spent a year working for Warner Bros., but he couldn't escape his love for radio. After a tenure again at WPLO, he became Music Director for WKHX where he remained until his retirement on Sept. 22, 2006. Over the years, he also took on MD responsibilities for WYAY, eventually becoming Assistant Program Director as well, for both stations, which are owned by ABC Radio.
When Citadel announced plans to buy the ABC Radio stations, Gray decided it was time to retire. He admitted he's seen a lot of changes during his career, and said the most unsettling has been consolidation.
"They stretch people so thin that they're not able to do one job real well," Gray said of the way some companies handle their stations. "They do a lot of jobs not so well and I think that's very unfortunate."
He said he was lucky to be able to be an off-air Music Director, which allowed him to focus on the music instead of an air shift. At many stations MDs do double or triple duty.
"The music director probably does an air shift and then he does remotes, so there's really no time for him to really concentrate on what I think is the real heart of the radio station and that's the music," Gray said. "I just would like to see radio take more of a deep interest in what their product is and their product is music."
Gray and his wife plan to divide their time between homes in Georgia and Florida. Still he doesn't rule out radio in his future. "I learned a long time ago, never say never."
What did he enjoy most about working in radio? "I liked the ability to reach people through music," he said. "Music has such an impact on people. It's an amazing thing."
2007 CMA Close Up News Service / Country Music Association, Inc.
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