[Description by contributor Sam Hale] I regret terribly not having a decent air check from WKDA. They were lost somewhere along the way and I was only able to recover snippets from the only tape I have found from that era. WKDA was such a classic example of Top 40 and remained number one in the market for several years. Jack Stapp was the hands-on general manager and everyone who passed through there learned enormously from him. As a young man he went from Atlanta to CBS in NYC. But WSM soon recruited him to come to Nashville. There he produced and directed numerous feeds to the NBC network, including, of course, The Grand Ole Opry. He “discovered” many great talents, including Dinah Shore, Kitty Kallen and Snooky Lanson, as well as many of the famous names of country music. Younger people might never know that WSM was a power house in big band music but hundreds of hours of programming with the likes of The Owen Bradley Orchestra originated there. As a young farm boy I listened studiously to the great announcers, David Cobb, Ott Devine and Jud Collins. Leaning to pronounce the vowels and no confusing the short “E” and “I”, I overcame my “southern accent”. Jack also got involved with music publishing along the way. Music publishing became such an important part of his life that WSM gave him an ultimatum to divest those interests or leave. He befriended many performers and out of gratitude one gave him “The Chattanooga Shoe Shine Boy”, a song that became one of the all time classics of country music. If you see a copy, you will see it was written by Jack Stapp. Now you know! Jack left WSM and took the helm of WKDA and turned it into a phenomenal success. He also expanded his publishing interests and hired Buddy Killen, a staff bull-fiddle player on the Opry to manage his catalog . With the hits of Roger Miller, and scores of others, Tree Publishing became the publisher of the year, time after time, after time. Tree Publishing, became Sony-Tree, when Buddy, long after Jack’s death, sold it to Sony. Jack was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame by Chet Atkins. John Kluge (yes, THE John Kluge — Metromedia) bought WKDA while I was there and called a staff meeting. While I was impressed with him and his extremely likeable manner, I had no idea I was sitting at the feet of a man who would become one of the richest in the world. Hairl Hensley and Sam Hale backstage at The Grand Ole Opry. Hairl is dean of WSM and Opry announcers. Hairl is heard on the WKDA snippets with Terrell Metheny (“Wheel For A Day”) and doing the Amoco spots in the news. Aside from me, the voice that is heard most often on this tape is Hairl Hensley. He was doing the all night show at the time. He later switched to country and has become the dean of announcers at WSM and The Grand Ole Opry – still going strong. The two-voice promotion is Hairl and Terrell L. Metheny, Jr. At the time his air name was Ronn Terrell. He later used the name Mitch Michael and recently retired after programming and, then, managing radio stations for several years. His son Kevin has also developed an outstanding career in broadcasting. At the end of a jock’s air shift, the jock would be responsible for the newscast preceding the next jock’s record show. In this case, I’m completing my shift by doing the news preceding Ronn’s show. Ronn had been responsible for the newscast during my show. We worked back then!