On this West Virginia Morning, Randy Yohe talks with ABCA Commissioner Fred Wooton about the marketing, tourism and product enhancement initiatives that are key aspects of a forward-thinking mission statement.
On this West Virginia Morning, distributing beer, wine and spirits, along with enforcing and controlling the sales and consumption of alcoholic beverages are not the only priorities of West Virginia’s Alcohol Beverage Control Administration (ABCA).
Randy Yohe talks with ABCA Commissioner Fred Wooton about the marketing, tourism and product enhancement initiatives that are key aspects of a forward-thinking mission statement.
Also, in this show, the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame this Saturday will induct its class of 2023. Ranging from pine fiddles to P-funk – this is an eclectic group of Mountain State musicians. Randy Yohe also has this story.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Concord University and Shepherd University.
Caroline MacGregor is our assistant news director and produced this episode.
Zander Aloi hosted this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
Ranging from pine fiddles to P-funk, this is an eclectic group of Mountain State musicians.
This Saturday, the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame will induct its class of 2023. Ranging from pine fiddles to P-funk, this is an eclectic group of Mountain State musicians.
West Virginia Music Hall of Fame Director Michael Lipton said this year’s class showcases the breadth of West Virginia musicians spanning the genre spectrum.
“This is not necessarily by design,” Lipton said. “It just happens because everybody who votes has different tastes and there’s so many different types and styles of artists that have come from West Virginia.”
Classical pianist Barbara Nissman has lived in Lewisburg the past 30 years. Lipton said this “West Virginian by choice” has performed with Don Henley, Billy Joel, along with the world’s major philharmonic orchestras.
“She’s one of the greatest classical pianists in the world,” Lipton said. “She’s a very powerful, persuasive performer. She’s worked with Leonard Slatkin, and Horowitz and Eugene Ormandy, and she’s also become good friends with Chick Corea and Keith Emerson.”
The other end of the spectrum includes the late Fuzzy Haskins of McDowell County and the late Calvin Simons from Beckley, founding members of the seminal funk band Parliament-Funkadelic. Lipton said the pair met as teenagers after both migrated from southern West Virginia to Plainfield, New Jersey.
“They met in the late 1950s,” Lipton said. “They started hanging around George Clinton’s barbershop, the Pink Palace. There were singers and players hanging out there. Clinton, Haskins and Simons formed this ‘doowop’ group called The Parliaments.”
The Parliaments evolved into an outrageously dressed, horn-laden band with 15 or so members at a time – redefined as Parliament-Funkadelic. Their definitive album, “Mothership Connection” has a Black man in a high-heeled space suit flying through the galaxy on the cover. The album introduced the world to “P-funk, the uncut funk, the bomb!” and cemented Parliament-Funkadelic as one of the key funk bands of the late 20th century.
“They got into this kind of outer space thing with the mothership and all of that,” Lipton said. “Someone asked George Clinton, how did that come about? He goes, ‘Well, I was thinking, where’s the last place you’d expect to find a Black person – outer space? So that’s how.”
Haskins’ son, musician and Bible study teacher Nowell Scott, will accept the Hall of Fame award for his father. Scott grew up with the P-funk. He said his father and music went together from the beginning.
“His musical background has just always been probably 90 percent fun and 10 percent gift and talent.” Scott said. “To just enjoy life and the rest will come. That’s always been his formula, and that’s what he’s always shared with me.”
Scott said a person’s interplanetary funksmanship (how one carries themself) can consolidate Black culture, P-funk and the gospel.
“With ‘Mothership Connection,’ they gave their opinion of the time,” Scott said. “They were culturally relevant and pushed the boundary of thought. But there’s one source for A-funk, B-funk, C-funk all the way to P-funk, there’s one source, and that is G-O-D.”
Other 2023 West Virginia Music Hall of Fame inductees include Mingo and Mercer county bluegrass pioneers the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers.
“They were one of the very early bluegrass groups before it was really even called bluegrass,” Lipton said. “The band became kind of a proving ground for a lot of artists that went on to have their own careers like Bobby Osborne and Paul Williams, and the Goins Brothers.”
Also going into the Hall of Fame, Charleston’s Winston Walls, known as “King of the Hammond B-3 Organ.”
“He was one of the greatest Hammond players in the world,” Lipton said. “He would go on the road doing battle of the organs with Groove Holmes, Jack MacDuff and Jimmy Smith, and those are about as good as it gets. He was the first guy to have George Benson in his band.”
The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame will also welcome Richwood’s “bluegrass doctor,” multi-instrumentalist Buddy Griffin.
“Buddy still lives in West Virginia and is a much loved musician who has played on over 200 records and made over 200 appearances on the Grand Ole Opry,” Lipton said.
The annual ceremony comes in the form of a concert on June 3 at the Charleston Culture Center Theater. The show will be streamed live on West Virginia Public Broadcasting TV and YouTube at 7:30 p.m.
The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame will induct five new members in a ceremony next May.
The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame will induct five new members in a ceremony next May.
Bluegrass musician Buddy Griffin will be among those joining in 2023.
Griffin played the fiddle on Wednesday at the announcement of his inclusion in the next class at Charleston Town Center. But he didn’t want the credit just for himself.
“Nothing I’ve ever done’s been great,” Griffin said. “But I’ve been able to stand on stage and rub elbows with a lot of great people.”
Also joining the Hall of Fame next year: Barbara Nissman, a concert pianist from Philadelphia who made West Virginia her home for the past three decades.
“The older I get, the more blessed I feel to be a musician, to be a piano player,” she said. “I’ve loved the piano since I was a child, even though my first teacher told my mother I didn’t have much talent. But you can persevere.”
Nissman will play at the induction ceremony next year at the Culture Center in Charleston.
Other inductees will include Fuzzy Haskins and Calvin Simon, founding members of Parliament Funkadelic.
The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame began inducting members in 2007. Director Michael Lipton said there’s no shortage of talent to add to the group.
“People said to me over the years, ‘Well, when are you going to run out of people?’” Lipton said. “And we’re not going to run out of people, because music is that important in West Virginia.”
Deceased members to be inducted include first-generation bluegrass group the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers and Hammond B-3 organ player Winston Wells.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting will air the induction ceremony live in May 2023.
Fifty years ago, a band of Black musicians stood up to racism and now they’ve been honored for that action.
Bass player John Smith is the surviving member of “The In Crowd,” a Charleston, West Virginia band that played popular tunes in the 1960s. One night at the Charleston Athletic Club, a multi-racial couple was refused service and the band took a stand.
Smith says, “If they couldn’t dance, we wouldn’t play.”
There were consequences for that action, but now, finally, Smith and his deceased colleagues have been honored for the role they played to push back against racial discrimination.
For this episode, host Trey Kay talks with John Smith at the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. They sat in on a practice session of the Charleston-based band The Carpenter Ants. Practice gave way to conversation as musicians from different generations talked about their experiences past and present. They reflect on a golden era of the local music scene and the unity AND division they’ve all experienced.
This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council and the CRC Foundation.
Subscribe to Us & Them on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, RadioPublic, Spotify, Stitcher and beyond. You also can listen to Us & Them on WVPB Radio — tune in on the fourth Thursday of every month at 8 p.m., with an encore presentation on the following Saturday at 3 p.m.
Trey Kay
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John Smith on his front porch swing at his home in Rand, WV.
John Smith
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Young John Smith playing guitar while serving in the Army in Germany in 1959.
Trey Kay
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Michael Pushkin, President of Local 136 of the American Federation of musicians, at the Levi Baptist Church in Rand, WV, apologizing to John Smith and the late members of “The In Crowd” for the actions the union took fifty years ago.
Trey Kay
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The Carpenter Ants practicing at the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in Charleston, WV. Charlie Tee (vocals), Michael Lipton (guitar), Ted Harrison (bass) and Jupie Little (drums).
Trey Kay
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WVPB
Barbara and John Smith grooving to the Carpenter Ants at the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.
Trey Kay
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WVPB
Carpenter Ants bassist Ted Harrison showing John Smith his five-string bass at the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.
Brian Smith
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Trey Kay with Barbara and John Smith at the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame
One night in 1970, Bill Danoff and his then-girlfriend Taffy Nivert were hanging out with John Denver, and they played a few verses from a song they’d been working on. Denver immediately said he wanted to record it.
“It was sort of like an old movie,” Danoff recalled in a 2010 interview with the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. “You know, ‘why don’t we all do it together?’ And I said, ‘okay, well, we got to finish it.’ He said, ‘well, let’s finish it.’”
The three of them — Danoff, Nivert and Denver — stayed up all night finishing the song. Knowing little about the state, Nivert pulled out an encyclopedia and looked up West Virginia.
“We kept just throwing out lines,” Danoff said. “And then we’d write down the ones that seemed to fit.”
They played “Country Roads” the next night, at The Cellar Door, an iconic intimate venue in Washington D.C.
Stories From 'Country Roads' – First Public Performance
“The people clapped for about five minutes straight,” Danoff said. “First time they’d ever heard the song. And you knew you had something because that doesn’t, that just doesn’t happen, you know?”
One of those in the audience was Andy Ridenour, who at the time was a student at Concord College (now Concord University), in southern West Virginia.
“I was on holiday break between Christmas and New Year’s, along with some friends from West Virginia. We all went nuts, with our West Virginia connection. Quite frankly everybody went nuts.”
This wasn’t the first time Ridenour had seen Denver play. A couple months prior to the show at The Cellar Door, Denver played at Concord College. Ridenour believes Denver’s trip to the small town of Athens, West Virginia may have helped spark the hit single.
Credit courtesy Concord University
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Newspaper article previewing John Denver’s visit to Concord College (now Concord University) in fall 1970.
“He and his band flew into Roanoke, Virginia, and they had to drive over on old US 460,” Ridenour said. “A lot of it was two-lane roads, running parallel to the New River. And when John and his band got out of the car, they commented on the roads. They were happy to have safely arrived.”
When “Country Roads” was released the following year, Ridenour said Denver sent an autographed copy of the album to the Concord radio station. “He said, ‘thanks for the inspiration.’”
Credit Courtesy Bill Danoff
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John Denver performing at the Cellar Door in D.C. in 1970.
The song has been a worldwide anthem since its release in April 1971, and it’s one of the things people across the globe connect with West Virginia. But there’s a debate about whether the song was really even written about the state. The opening verse mentions the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Shenandoah River, two geographical features that are mostly associated with Western Maryland and Virginia. While the river and mountains do touch a small portion of West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle, Danoff said he wrote most of the song during a drive through rural Maryland.
“I was just driving out in Western Maryland, and it was kind of countryside that reminded me of my home upbringing in Western New England.”
But Danoff said he does have a connection to West Virginia. Growing up, he spent many evenings listening to the Wheeling Jamboree from WWVA.
“In the bridge of that song. there’s a there’s a line: ‘I hear her voice in the morning hour she calls me/ the radio reminds me of my home far away/ and riding down the road I get a feeling I should have been home yesterday.’”
“I’m thinking of that radio,” Danoff explained. “I’m thinking of WWVA and heading toward that that radio signal. So there really was a kind of an early and subconscious connection.”
And as for the geographical issue, when somebody pointed that out, Danoff came up with this answer, on the fly. “So I thought about it and I said, ‘well, the guy’s going home to West Virginia. He’s going through Virginia, and he’s passing the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Shenandoah River.’”
These details don’t seem to bother most West Virginians.
“I think that we excuse it,” said Sarah Morris, an English professor at West Virginia University who is writing a book about “Country Roads.” She’s scoured the internet and read dozens of threads. People all over the world debate what this song is really about, and which state really gets to claim it.
“And lots of places across the world want to own it, which is why we see bands and musicians taking it up and changing the lyrics to match their homes,” Morris said.
The song “Country Roads” has been recorded in at least 19 different languages, and in countless different arrangements, including the Toots and the Maytails’ version “West Jamaica.” That bands’ lead singer recently died of COVID-19.
But nobody owns the anthem more than West Virginians. The state bought the rights to the song so they could use it to promote tourism. West Virginia University plays it whenever they win a football or basketball game.
WVU Football: Country Roads
When West Virginia Public Broadcasting out a call out on social media, asking people to share stories about this song, and what it means to them, we were flooded with emails from people like Stephanie Ostrowski, of Martinsburg, W.Va., who played “Country Roads” as the last song at her wedding. “Actually it’s become a tradition with a lot of our friends. Everyone gets arm at arm together and sings ‘Country Roads.’ It’s a great way to end the night.”
And Michael Rubin, who lives in Harpers Ferry W.Va., who recalled begging his father to buy the 8 track so they could play it in the car.
Frank Saporito of Wheeling said the song inspired him as a teenager to save all the money he earned so he could afford the same guitar that John Denver played.
Sarah Morris said this song is emblematic of a nostalgia for the past, and a desire for something just out of reach. These themes resonate strongly with many folks from West Virginia.
“There was this huge outmigration of West Virginians to work in industries in the 60s. West Virginia, per capita, lost more people in the Vietnam War than any other state. All of that was happening right around the time the song was released. So there was this overall mood of homesickness, not just for West Virginians, but also for our country. So the song was born into that.”
Homesickness is universal. Maybe that’s why it resonates with people all over the world. Morris compares it to a concept in Welch culture known as “Hiraeth.”
“It’s this deep, internal, fundamental longing for a place we can never go. And I think there’s an element of that in country roads, too.”
Morris said “Country Roads” is maybe about a longing for a place that never really existed in the first place. A place that our memories changed over the years.
And during the pandemic, that nostalgia has grown even stronger for some people, like Sonya Shafer. She left West Virginia right after high school. She’s traveled the world for work. Lately though, that work has all been remote. So she felt the urge to come back.
“I could feel the magnetic pull taking me taking me back, asking me why I left asking me why I’m not home, asking me why I’m not in West Virginia.”
Shafer hired movers to bring her stuff across the country from L.A. and bought a one-way ticket to Lewisburg, West Virginia, where she grew up. At the airport she recorded an audio memo, in between flights that were taking her home, in which
“Today’s the day I’m on layover here in O’Hare [airport in Chicago] with my cat. Really it’s ‘Country Roads,’ take me home. I’m going home. It’s been a long time coming, and I slept in an empty apartment last night and actually played the song a few times.”
Two weeks after the move, Shafer said returning to West Virginia has been everything she’d hoped. She takes a walk to a nearby creek every day– and she’s enjoying being called “honey” and “darlin.” And when she called the DMV to get her new license plate, she said her heart flooded with emotion when she heard the hold music, “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
Best known for “Some Kind of Wonderful,” the feel-good hit he penned more than 50 years ago that put Grand Funk Railroad on track for a chart-topping hit, John Ellison is creating a new stir from a different direction with “Wake Up Call (Black Like Me).”
The 78-year-old West Virginia native’s new song and accompanying video were released last month in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police.
The work “delivers a searing, powerful, shockingly honest and unforgettable lesson for anyone who wonders what it’s like to be African American in America,” according to a review by Forbes music writer Steve Baltin. “Ellison’s vocals simmer with a righteous rage,” according to Rolling Stone writer Jon Blistein.
While the headline on the Rolling Stone review described “Wake Up Call” as a “BLM-inspired song,” Ellison said the lyrics come from a poem he wrote in 2003.
“I wrote it after a school asked me to speak at a Black History Month program,” he said during a phone interview from his Florida home. “I wanted to open the eyes of the students and their teachers to what it’s like walking in the shoes of a Black man in America. And I’m not one who bites his tongue.”
The words remain fresh and relevant, since “nothing has changed since they were written. What’s going on now was going on in 2003” and earlier, he said.
The extended version of “Wake Up Call” begins with a fiery, spoken-word autobiographic segment starting with Ellison’s grandfather, born a slave in 1854, who lived long enough to see his first-born son hanged in Georgia in 1936 for refusing to work overtime.
In 1955, Ellison’s brother, then working in a West Virginia hospital, had his throat slit by a white patient who was never charged for the assault. In 1969, Ellison lost his vision for more than a year after being struck by a bottle when accosted by a white mob in Dayton, Ohio.
In 1998, Ellison’s 18-year-old nephew was paralyzed from the neck down in an incident involving Bluefield City Police, who were never charged.
The list goes on, until Ellison concludes, “We are tired of injustice. We want justice, now!”
That’s when the music starts, described by Rolling Stone as “a rumbling funk cut that pairs thick bass, steady drums, swampy guitar and horn fanfare with the occasional blare of sirens,” and Ellison’s 2003 poem begins, in song form.
“To understand the Black man’s fight you must first understand the Black man’s plight,” he begins. “To understand his state of mind, turn the pages of history and go back in time/ To the land of the free and the home of the brave/ It’s where they brought the Black man and made him a slave/ And freedom was just a dream he carried to his grave.”
The song ends with “You have no clue what it’s like having the color of my skin/ Because a journey into my world is a place you’ve never been/ If you were born white, you are born free/ You’ll never know what it’s like to be Black like me.”
In May, as the Black Lives Matter protest began to gain traction, Ellison thought the 2003 poem could have new life as a song. He contacted a musical collaborator, Roger Heijster, in the Netherlands, and read him a few verses — all that was needed to get him on board with the project. Heijster produced, wrote the music and created the arrangements for the piece.
Since “Wake Up Call” was released, “I’ve been interviewed by radio stations in Germany, Holland and Switzerland and writers from California to Philadelphia,” Ellison said.
Born in Montgomery, Ellison grew up in Landgraff, McDowell County, where his father was a coal miner. At 16, when his father was laid off from the mines, Ellison began working the night maintenance shift at the Carter Hotel in Welch.
“I tried going to school during the day while working at night, but it just took too much out of me, so I dropped out of school when I was 17 and kept working at the hotel,” he said. “I had to do what was best to help the family.”
Ellison said watching Chuck Berry perform “School Day” on American Bandstand was his inspiration for pursuing a career in music. He learned to play guitar, began writing songs and discovered he was good at it. As a teenager, he entered a talent contest that was broadcast over the radio from the Carter Hotel lobby.
“The winner was supposed to get a trip to New York and $500,” Ellison recalled. “When it was my turn, I started singing and about 20 seconds into the song, one of the judges stopped me and said, ‘We have a winner!’ I was the only Black person in the room. I walked back to the other contestants with my head held high, but the other two judges started arguing. Someone forgot to turn off the microphone, so everyone heard one of the judges say, ‘I don’t care how good he is, he’s a n—-r’ before revoking the win.
“It was as if someone put a knife through me,” Ellison said. “I had tears in my eyes and the other contestants couldn’t look at me. But it motivated me. It made me more determined than ever to succeed.”
Not long after that incident, Ellison bought a one-way bus ticket to Rochester, New York (where a cousin was living), got a day job and began playing with bands at night. Not long after playing with a band called the Soul Brothers Five, he was invited to join the group, soon renamed the Soul Brothers Six, and eventually became its frontman.
In 1967, Ellison wrote the words and music for “Some Kind of Wonderful,” a tribute to a woman for whom he had strong feelings but had just left behind in order to follow his musical path. The song was written in 30 minutes on the paper bag in which the woman had packed a send-off meal. It was the group’s first release for their new label, Atlantic Records.
“I had high hopes of that song helping my group stay together and continue to excel, and maybe become world-famous,” he said. “But back then, our airplay was limited to Black stations, which were few and far between.”
The song did crack the Top 100 Billboard chart in 1967, stalling at 91, but a 1975 cover of the song by Grand Funk Railroad made it to No. 3. Since then, it has been covered by more than 60 musicians and played on the radio more than 6 million times, making it the world’s third most frequently played song. He continues to collect annual royalty checks for his creation.
Ellison was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2015.
Ellison said he doesn’t view “Wake Up Call” as a protest song.
“I’m not protesting — I’m speaking the truth,” he said. “If you want to call it something, call it a reality song. I have lived my life trying to do the right thing and not break the law, but I have been pushed aside many times because of the color of my skin. This country we call the United States of America has never been united. Black people have been treated like we are animals. That’s the reality of this country.”
Despite the nation’s failure “to rectify the denial of equality for all,” Ellison said, when it comes to Americans, “the good by far outweigh the bad. There are far more beautiful people here than people who are evil, and I have nothing but love in my heart for them.”
