Interview: Rusty Curry, Radio DJ

As he sits back with his Ray Bans and cool persona, Rusty Curry takes us to a time of be boppin’ and hip shaking that has moved or society through the music land, accompanied by many such as Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

As a boy Curry always wanted to be involved in Show Biz and now has been in radio for 50 years, out of 63. Radio is what he “loves to do”.

He is guided by the philosophies of Marshalll McLuhan and inspired by his listeners who allow, what he calls, a one-on-one medium.

He knows the business, he understands the ins and outs, and he knows to stay away from the sharks that will eat you alive.

Rusty Curry agreed to answer questions for Planet Blacksburg. These are the edited questions and answers of the interview.

Q: How did your career begin?
Curry: My radio career began when I was at age 13 really hanging on at the radio station for no other reason than to be there. I loved the medium as it was in those days, of course I had no idea the power of radio, all I knew is I wanted to be involved. Consequently hung around until someone got ill and left the control room and left me in charge and from that moment on it was always radio and here I am 50 years later. Although I walked away from this career a couple different times I always came back to it.

Q: What did you want to be when you were a child?
Curry: Well I certainly wanted to be involved in show business and had a singing career going on during my teen years, I still came back to radio and worked while I waited on that big phone call. It finally did come but then I still, after a short career as a recording artist, I ended up back on the radio and never looked back. It was always where I wanted to be, in fact, and I always enjoyed the audio side of the business more than being seen. I enjoyed being heard more than being seen in front of a group of people certainly television. I stepped into television at one point and stepped right back into radio, television was a medium where you were visible and had to look good as well as be good. I was better off staying in radio and of course here i am all these years later, still a believer in the medium, in that medium.

Q: Tell me about your singing career?
Curry: My singing career started years ago in high school on a trip to Nashville, tn. I was fortunate enough to be in a situation where I met the Jordinaires, they were of course, at that time one of the big gospel groups in the country as well as a back up group for recording artist Elvis Presley, so I sort of stayed with Jordinaires and hung out with them and they eventually got me in a studio where I recorded four songs two of which were released back in the early ‘60s on Holiday Inn records which was a subsidiary of holiday inn motels and restaurants. My record came out for national release and was not a hit but it was a rich experience for me and I spent a lot of time in those years performing at schools, colleges, high schools, of course there was some club work and live performance work, but like I said when push came to shove I came right back to radio. I think that was a nice resting place for me and it became very important to me especially in the late ‘60s when the medium of radio started to change and I started to realize the power of radio. Up to that point we were told in some early training that radio was the only one-to-one medium and that was strictly an inside philosophy, it gave us the power to be one-on-one on the air but that certainly wasn't the case at all because we were talking to hundreds of people, in some cases thousands at the same moment. So I became aware of this power of medium in the late 60's and that’s when I started to get more involved in the aspect of broadcasting beyond what went over the air. I sort of came alive at that point philosophically as far as the medium goes I just wasn’t aware at that point of the power. In the back of my mind I still sort of hoped for that opportunity to be a singing star and expose myself to a radio audience (haha) but it didn’t happen, those days had already ended. It certainly was a time when I played my song on the radio 'hey this is me!' I don’t know how far that got me, not very far here I am still in a small town but I am doing what I love to do and radio as a whole, even though I worked for stations that had hundreds of thousands of listeners, I am much happier in a smaller community where I know I can reach out and touch the audience. I see most of the people that I talk to every day; I see them at the post office every morning, best of both worlds.

Q: What is your least favorite aspect of the radio?
Curry: I think if anything the change in the technology, which is just a re-adjustment. The industry has always been like that and we've always gone through these changes that were hard to come by, hard to except and you know Marshall Mcluhan, the great philosopher certainly an idol for me, in the early days of radio, I didn't even know who he was , but by the late ‘60s he had come out and talked about the medium as it was, not only radio but the medium being the message, and oh boy did this hit home. His philosophy worked around the idea that as soon as it works its obsolete, and this was so true the industry, radio, television and print as far as the equipment change, so we all had to change with it. Radio now is so automated that most of it can run without people. So in the early days we had records and we did all of our commercials live and there was no tape and there was no delay it was live radio. now its all planned and executed in a format that fits the clock and al those things. I can remember striving and straining to get to the top of the hour and try to do the news cast, and not (ha) they do it for us. That’s probably the only negative I can point out but it becomes a positive it’s just leaning the workings of this technology it’s a whole new world. Like Marshall McLuhan who did not first speak those words 'Global Village’ but certainly that was when I first became aware of the term and the fact that from this small frequency we were reaching thousands of people from this little tiny space. Same thing with television and now look, look at computers. So McLuhan was way ahead of his time, and his book and record are still out there for students of the medium of broadcast don't miss something called 'the Medium is the message', and its a beautiful story because actually when the album came out in the sixties it was McLuhan reading some of his entry from this book that he had written about the medium but it was also the effects and he talked about repetition in radio and broadcast. When they sent the book out it was misprinted and they wrote massage instead of message and when he saw it he said 'don’t touch it its great' and its right on target and it was medium is the massage, and look at today these people are traced in television. There is your massage, it worked in four different ways for him; the medium is the message, the medium is the mess-age, the medium is the massage and the medium is the mass-age. So yes technology has changed and those of us who have survived have had to change with it and the rest are selling insurance.

Q: Have you interviewed any celebrities?
Curry: Quite a few in my time and I have been so fortunate. Of course at the top of my list was Elvis who I finally got to interview and met him a couple times, one time when I was working on an FM station years ago I got a call from him and we were on the air together for about ten minutes. There were so few DJ's who had this opportunity, and in proof I have tapes! I went to Atlanta, g.a. in 1966 to the Beatles concert and actually got into the press conference and sat on the floor in front of a table where four Beatles sat down, I was close enough to touch and had a picture taken with the Beatles and still have those tapes. There were hundreds of press people but I was an early bird and me and my co-worker were first going through the gate into the Atlanta stadium into the press conference and I saw the table and went straight for the floor.

Q: Is it a scandalous business like everyone thinks, is it really a dog-eat-dog world?
Curry: Absolutely and I think it is even more so especially in the mega cities where a lot of entertainment is going on...get in line stand in line and wait for the big phone call. My advice to anyone is you must start at the bottom you must start in a small town and work your way up. If your into the print medium and want to be a writer there is no better place to start than your hometown newspaper.....these are people that speak like you speak, a lot of them were raised in the part of the country you were raised in. But you are going to fit in and learn more with these people than packing up after graduating and heading to Hollywood and just stand in line. You are a dog and you will be eaten, there is no doubt about it and that’s just a fact of life, its trial and error, its over and over, its persistence but the more knowledge you have of this broad brush stroke of the medium, whatever it may be, the better you are going to do...There is a place for the new person in this business but it has to start on the ground.

Q: So, is that the advice you would give a college student ready to graduate perusing a career in media?
Curry: Start from the ground up. In this day in age you must be able to specialize. The quicker you are ready the better you are going to do. To specialize you first must have the whole experience to realize where it will be best suited. Some people who went into being DJ's ended up as copy writers, because they had a nack for being able to take a product and put it into to words and make it have feeling and make it sell...most copy writers now, that I knew years ago, are in Atlanta and New York with Ad agencies writing copies and getting $12,000-$15,000 writing copies.

Q: Tell me about WABN and your involvement with the station and the affects it has on the community?
Curry: WABN is a 1000 watt AM station that has over the past few years has gone under changes that a lot of AM stations have undergone. Basically what has happened to AM is it has taken a second seat to FM. So AM suddenly went dark or off air....WABN now serves a definite purpose and a goal in Washington County and the community. The biggest goal of an AM station in small towns has been high school sports, and that has been what our radio station has been about. We carry everything that Abingdon High School does and through this we are rewarded from community businesses who enjoy supporting the team as well as the radio station...It is what I have really sought after for the last ten or twelve years in this business to find a radio station where I could really dedicate my efforts to where it was really going to be the working situation...The people who are with the radio station are wonderful sources of feedback from the community, they are recognized in the grocery store, and the Wal-mart and the K-mart, they are local stars.