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JIM HERRINGTON
photographer
nyc
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About
WSM Radio Tower - Nashville, TN
Known as “The Air Castle of the South”, radio station WSM, AM 650, is inseparable from the history of country music and from the history of radio itself. The station’s call letters come from “We Shield Millions”, the slogan of National Life and Accident Insurance Co., founders of the station. From the lofty pinnacle of this tower, located eight miles south of Nashville, WSM has broadcast the Grand Ole Opry live every weekend since 1932 using 50,000 watts of clear channel power to reach most of the eastern half of the US and up into Canada. At 878 feet, this tower was the tallest antenna in North America at the time of it’s construction. The Opry broadcasts were a must listen for scores of young, fledgling musicians… Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Ray Charles, to name a few, were all influenced and inspired by the Opry transmissions and to perform on the Opry stage itself in downtown Nashville was proof positive that you had arrived. Every day from 1933 to 1945 the sound of a live train whistle could be heard on WSM at around 5pm. The Pan American passenger train, speeding from Cincinatti to New Orleans, passed by the tower daily and an engineer at the transmitter would turn on a microphone that hung from the tower just in time to broadcast the sound over the radio. Pan American passengers who happened to be sitting in the observation car at that moment could hear their own train whistle emanating from a wood cabinet radio tuned to the station.
The whistle theme inspired many songs including “Pan American” by Hank Williams.
“She leaves Cincinatti
heading down that Dixie line,
When she passes that Nashville tower
you can hear that whistle whine…”
——-
In the late ’90s I drove out to the WSM antenna and I made three exposures of it on 4x5 film. Years later I constructed this piece comprised of three 16 x 20 prints which I toned in coffee then mounted on a stretched canvas which was primed and also toned. I chanced upon a box of decades-old typing paper and tapped out the above story on my 1940’s Remington Noiseless typewriter. Once everything was collaged and applied to the canvas I sealed and encased it all under a rich, warm, translucent layer of encaustic - heated pharmaceutical bees wax, a somewhat precarious endeavor best undertaken while under mild sedation. Finished with a dark wood trim and sold immediately this was the only photo I got of it before it went out the door.
Carl Perkins - musician - Jackson, Tennessee
I had originally met Carl when I went to his home in Jackson, TN to photograph him for the cover of his biography. I was living in Nashville at the time and often drove back and forth to Memphis for work and fun, usually stopping for gas halfway in Jackson.
The next time I was driving through town I stopped at a service station, left the gas hose in the car, walked over to the pay phone and gave Carl a ring.
“Carl, it’s Jim… just gassing up in Jackson, on my way to Memphis, thought I’d say hello.”
“Heeeey, cat daddy! You don’t drive through Jackson without coming by the house and seeing me.”
“Carl, I’m just driving through, I don’t want to bother you.”
“Boy, it’s lunchtime, let’s go get some catfish.”
“Be there in 10 minutes.”
I left the gas station and arrived at his house where he immediately played a song on guitar that he’d just written. He told me that he wrote a song every day, good or bad. It was a good one that day. On the wall behind me was the framed piece of a torn brown paper bag upon which he wrote the original lyrics to “Blue Suede Shoes”.
After a while we went out a side door off of the kitchen and down some steps into the dark garage where his giant yellow Cadillac was parked. When he shut the kitchen door behind us I couldn’t see a thing. Feeling my way around the hood of the car I found the passenger door, opened it, and got inside. Carl slid inside the drivers side and shut his door. It was pitch black inside and so quiet I could hear my pulse.
Carl tapped his index finger on my top breast pocket, where I kept my cigs. “Don’t you want to smoke one of those?”
I told him I did, in fact, and I started to roll the window down. He said it was OK, just go ahead and light up.
“You don’t mind, Carl?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
The flame from my lighter briefly illuminated the interior of the Cadillac and I noticed Carl was sitting closer to me than I had imagined.
As it went dark again I inhaled the first puff and I heard Carl’s seat crackle as he shifted his body and leaned in very close to my face and spoke in a low, commanding monotone, “Now blow it into my face.”
I felt the pulse in my ear start beating faster.
As instructed, I turned my head towards his and let loose a long, slow pillar of smoke straight into Carl Perkin’s face, now no more than two inches from mine. In the inky black silence he inhaled deeply, right up to my mouth. Then, while turning the keys in the ignition said, “GOD, I miss those things… now let’s go get some catfish!”
Thus began a friendship that lasted a few short years until he finally succumbed to the throat cancer that was in remission when I’d met him.
