Chicago Radio: WVON Celebrates 50th Anniversary

No Chicago radio station had more of a ripple effect than WVON-AM, writes David Hoekstra at the Sun-Times.

The voices of the on-air “Good Guys” — Moses “Lucky” Cordell, Herb “The Cool Gent” Kent, Pervis “The Blues Man” Spann and others — spoke with empowering warmth. If they sounded like they were in a narrow gold mine, there was light at the end of that tunnel.

The bass on the 1960s hits of Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and Sly and the Family Stone reverberated across Chicago. The 1450 frequency of WVON was a fancy number if it had been a North State Street address. But WVON-AM was the voice of an emerging black community.

WVON stood for “Voice of the Negro.”  It is a cultural giant.

WVON’s 50th anniversary will be celebrated this weekend in no small fashion:

The “IMPACT 50” gala features six-time Grammy winner Toni Braxton at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Chicago Theater, 175 N. State ($100-$500, www.ticketmaster.com, 800-745-3000).

WVON is now found at 1690 AM, and the call letters of the independently owned talk station stand for “Voice of the Nation.” Melody Spann-Cooper is president and chairman.

The 1450 frequency once was WHFC, spinning hits from Germany and Lithuania. In 1963, Chess Records owners Leonard and Phil Chess acquired the station as a way to promote the black artists they were recording. (An FM station was thrown in for free. That turned out to be WSDM, which during the 1970s was Chicago’s first all-female smooth jazz station, now WLUP.)

Like a shrewd baseball general manager, Leonard Chess drafted the best on-air talent he could find, ranging from the late “Mad Lad” program director E. Rodney Jones to talk show host Wesley South, whose “Hotline” is regarded as the first African-American radio talk show.

WVON was powered by only 1,000 watts a day and 250 watts at night, but its high ratings caught the attention of rock ’n’ roll giants.

“WLS [then ‘the Big 89’] was saying, ‘Who are these guys?’ ” recalled the 84-year-old Cordell, who assumed the late morning shift when he came to WVON in 1965. “We were first in certain time periods. Ridiculous. Young white people were becoming more aware of black music. And other stations didn’t play Muddy Waters.” Berry Gordy debuted most of his Motown tunes at WVON, because the station was about the echo of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.”

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