Ralph Emery became the dominant disc jockey in country music in the late
twentieth century, featured on major syndicated radio programs and
national cable television networks.
Born in McEwen, Tennessee, in 1933, Emery spent the first seven years of
his life with his grandparents in Humphreys County but subsequently
moved to Nashville to live with his mother. After graduating high
school, he held various jobs in the Nashville area before enrolling in
the Tennessee School of Broadcasting, where he took classes with
legendary WLAC radio star John Richbourg. Acting on a recommendation
from Richbourg, WTPR in Paris, Tennessee, hired Emery in 1951, an
assignment that would last three months. After stops at WNAH in
Nashville and WAGG in Franklin, Emery landed his first job at a major
network-affiliated radio station in 1953, WSIX in Nashville, where he
had a successful country music radio show. An ABC affiliate, WSIX
offered Emery the first opportunity for national exposure when he was
selected to be the opening and closing announcer of a radio special
called “America’s Town Meeting of the Air.”
His increased stature as a radio host brought him to the attention of a
Baton Rouge radio station, which lured him away from WSIX. Emery left
Tennessee for this job in 1956 but, unsatisfied with life in Louisiana,
returned a month later for a new position at Nashville’s WMAK radio. In
1957 WMAK fired Emery, who then applied for the late-night Opry Star
Spotlight show at WSM radio. This show would prove to be Emery’s true
career break. He was the third host of the Opry-Star Spotlight. His open
invitation to all stars to drop in whenever they felt like it--a policy
Emery kept for the rest of his career--made the show popular with the
country stars and the public alike. Within months, Emery’s successful
program became an important vehicle for aspiring artists who wanted to
get recognition and airplay in the Nashville market, even at 3:00 A.M.
WSM would be the base of Emery’s career and reputation for the next
twenty-plus years.
During his time at the Opry-Star Spotlight, Ralph Emery met country
singer Skeeter Davis, whom he married in 1960. The marriage lasted for
four years. In his autobiography Memories, Emery says of the union, “I
am confident that Skeeter was in love with Ralph Emery the disc jockey,
not the person.” After his divorce from Davis in 1964, Emery began to
descend into alcohol and drug addiction, leading him to resign from his
radio show. However, after a brief hiatus, he rejoined the Opry-Star
Spotlight, with his replacement, western movie star Tex Ritter,
continuing on as co-host. He remained with the all-night radio show
until 1972.
Emery’s career in television began in 1963 with a successful morning
television program entitled Opry Almanac, which aired on on sister
station WSM-TV (later WSMV). Three years later, Emery moved to the
afternoon for the show Sixteenth Avenue North, which he quit in 1969. In
1972 Emery returned to WSM television and launched his most successful
program, the early morning Ralph Emery Show, which dominated local
airwaves until 1991. From 1974 to 1980, Emery hosted Pop Goes the
Country, an influential syndicated program that explored the more
pop-oriented elements of country music. He also hosted a live interview
show called Nashville Alive for two years on the TBS network.
In 1982 WSM established The Nashville Network (TNN), a national cable
channel devoted to country music. The fledgling network offered Emery a
nightly interview and performance program called Nashville Now, which
made him famous across the nation. He hosted the show from 1983 to 1993.
In an effort to increase the number of viewers, Emery added Steve
Hall’s puppet Shotgun Red to the program. Shotgun Red became a regular
feature on the program and a minor celebrity, going so far as to record
two records and be featured as a guest at Fan Fair. Nashville Now became
one of the most popular shows on TNN and featured a wide variety of
guests.
Since Nashville Now ended in 1993, Emery has hosted several other
specials and television programs but has never been able to match that
same success. Emery was named Country Disc Jockey of the Year six times
and was inducted as a member of the Country Music Disc Jockeys Hall of
Fame in 1989. In 2007 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of
Fame.
Ralph Emery provided a face and voice for country music for more than
forty years. ASCAP president Connie Bradley summed up his contributions
to country music in the October 15, 2000, issue of the Nashville
Tennessean: “Ralph Emery probably did as much for Nashville as anybody I
know, because when [the] TNN cable network hit and Emery had his show
on every night, that opened up country music to millions of people. . . .
If we ever had a Moses, it was Ralph Emery.”
Ryan Darrow and Carroll Van West, Middle Tennessee State University
Suggested Reading(s): Ralph Emery and Tom Carter, Memories: The Autobiography of Ralph Emery (1991) and More Memories (1993).
Carroll Van West, Middle Tennessee State University
Source : HERE
Sujet: Ralph Emery to be inducted into National Radio Hall of Fame 