For more than 5 decades, radio host has sent out a message
By William E. Ketchum III
The Flint Journal
FLINT, Mich. (AP) — Gospel radio host Sam Williams used to end his shows with the phrase, “What on Earth are you doing for Heaven’s sake?” Flint radio listeners have been able to answer that question for him for more than 50 years as he hosted his Sam Williams Sunday Morning Gospel Show for more than five decades.
“I like to be able to send out a message, and that’s what I do. I put my music together so it sends a message. I’m not just playing songs,” Williams tells The Flint Journal, reclining in a chair behind the microphone while a sermon plays during his show. He recalls a listener praising his show because he doesn’t know the song that will come on next.
“Some spiritual shows ... play the top 10 or top 20 records, and call that a show. But that’s not a show to me,” he insists. “... I guess that’s why it’s lasted so long, because it is sending out a message. All you have to do is listen.”
Williams’ high standard likely stems from his long history with music. He moved to Flint at 16 months old, and sang as a child in his church choir and as part of a quartet with three of his nieces. While serving in the Navy, he sang as a member of a group called the Nautical Notes and performed with the likes of jazz legend Lionel Hampton.
Dick Carter, who was the leader of a band he sang with and the manager of the radio station WBBC, called upon Williams in 1955 when another host couldn’t make his shifts after getting in trouble.
“He asked, ‘Would you like to get into radio?’ I said, ‘I don’t know anything about it,’” Williams remembers. “He said, “Can you read? ... That’s all you need to know how to do.”
Williams began to work at the station over the weekends, and Carter brought him along when he started his own AM station, WAMM, in 1956. He asked Carter if he could start a gospel show that would air on Sundays, since stations weren’t playing the genre at the time. Carter agreed, under the condition that Williams could find sponsors to help pay for the airtime.
After hitting the pavement, Williams found four sponsors, including a church and a funeral home, to buy 15 minutes each. From there, the city’s first gospel show, one hour long, was born. He would end his shows with the phrase, “What on Earth are you doing for Heaven’s sake?”
“I saw an opportunity on Sunday morning. All we were playing was regular music, and we only played one or two black people’s music on Sunday,” Williams said. “I thought it was a good idea if we could get it started. ... It was evidently what people wanted to hear.”
The gospel program took off, expanding to nine hours before cutting back to eight. Williams would travel to Detroit to get records to play on the air days before the show, and have an engineer queue the records for the show. Throughout the week, he would work at the post office during the day, and go back to hosting the other station’s R&B segments at night.
Along with playing music, he used his time on the air to team with Martin Luther King Jr. during a visit he made with the NAACP to fight for an open housing ordinance. Years later, when King was assassinated in 1968, he and WAMM — a daytime-only station at the time — got permission from the FCC to stay on the air to calm down city residents with hopes of avoiding riots like the ones happening in Detroit and Los Angeles.
He continued at WAMM through 1975, when an engineer named Vernon Merritt brought Williams and a group of others with him to Washington, D.C., to appear before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make a case for Flint’s first FM radio license and first black-owned station. Six years later, he said, the FCC granted the license, and WDZZ went on the air.
“I didn’t know if I wanted to leave for this new station. I asked (the owner), ‘Can I get a raise? He said, ‘Nah, I can’t give you no raise,’” Williams remembers. “I went and told the program director, ‘Have someone else here on Sunday, because I’m not going to be here.’”
He took his gospel show to WDZZ, and helped it become Flint’s top-rated station. When Merritt sold the station five years later, he gave Williams part of the ownership as a nod of respect for helping people in Flint and helping the station’s success.
Don Wiggins worked with Williams at WDZZ from 1979 to 1988, working as sales manager while Williams was a host and general manager at the station. He is now a manager for Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, and a director of urban sales in Philadelphia.
He cites Williams as “one of the role models in urban radio” for many Michigan broadcasters.
“Flint is a very religious, spiritual city. Sam had great knowledge of music. He helped a lot of gospel artists,” Wiggins said on a phone call while on vacation in Miami. “He was so entrenched in the community. They would ask him to do things, and I know he wasn’t feeling well, and was sick in his body, but they never knew it. He would do it anyway.”
“People in Flint and Genesee County should give a man flowers while he’s alive,” Wiggins said.
Williams doesn’t have to travel to Detroit to sift through vinyl anymore — CDs and .mp3s do fine — but he still drives to Flint early every Sunday morning to continue the Sam Williams Gospel Morning Show. From 6 a.m. until 1 p.m., he plays gospel from around the country. Carmen “August” Wallace, the station’s program director, cites figures from the Arbitron Scan system that report Wallace’s weekly audience of about 25,000 with the show.
Flint acts like the Flint Cavaliers, Rhythm of Gospel nominee Lynne Calloway, and veteran Regional Garland find time on his show, but he makes a point to not make any charity cases.
Flint gospel artist Jay McGee had already gotten some airplay with his song, “If It Doesn’t Have God,” but he said that Williams made it clear that it didn’t guarantee support for his latest CD “No Walls” when he returned to Flint 11 years ago after living out of town for a while.
“His response was, ‘Sure, I’ll listen to it, but it has to be up to standard,’” McGee remembers. “I brought it to him, and he’s been playing my music ever since. He has been, and still is, quite a blessing to me and other local artists.”
Williams ends every show with the phrase, “Thanks for letting me be a part of your Sunday.” Saturday, June 15, he was scheduled to say “You’re welcome” at The Whiting during Saturday’s “Gospel Music Celebration Honoring Sam Williams.”
The event also was set to feature the inaugural Sam Williams Gospel Music Hall of Fame Award, giving annual tribute to a notable community leader, pastor, musical director or choir who has contributed to the gospel music industry.
“I just hope he realizes how much we really appreciate him,” McGee said at the end of his email to MLive-Flint Journal. “...In the local gospel arena, he is our hero.”
