When most people think about the storied past of race relations in America, radio stations and their owners don’t usually come to mind. But WZZA in Tuscumbia, Alabama, and its owner, Bob Carl Bailey, had many stories to tell–both on and off the air.

In 1972, Bailey was general manager of the radio station, known then as WRCK. A true visionary, Bailey persuaded station owner Warren Kicker to start playing Black soul music instead of country western. The station soon changed its call sign to WZZA.

Bailey was born in 1935 on the outskirts of the Shoals in Leighton, Alabama. “His lifelong fascination with radio was kindled when, at age 16, he visited a local station.” While stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army, he tinkered with and learned how to operate radio technology.

After the military, Bailey worked as a disc jockey at three radio stations in north Alabama. Around 1970, music legend James Brown encouraged him to buy his own station. Two years later, he and his wife, Odessa Bailey, founded WZZA. In 1977, Bailey co-founded Muscle Shoals Broadcasting, Inc. and assumed sole proprietorship of WZZA in 1979.

Like other Black station owners in the South, Bailey experienced racist backlash after acquiring the station. His daughter and successor as the station’s owner, Tori Bailey, recalls how “someone threw a watermelon through [the original] picture window” and “shot at the radio tower.” “To this day,” she adds, “‘there are still bullet holes at the radio station where the doors were shot out.’” The Ku Klux Klan also burned a cross on the lawn.

In 1980, the Knights of the KKK moved their national headquarters to Tuscumbia in advance of a local campaign appearance by President Jimmy Carter. So, Bailey decided to have a KKK spokesperson on his radio talk show—a move that angered many listeners. But he “believed in hearing opposing points of view, and engaging in open and honest dialogue.”

Despite these challenges, Bailey’s “association with the world-famous music heritage of Muscle Shoals” expanded. As a concert promoter, a venture he started in the mid-1960s, Bailey organized area shows for “influential Black performers” like James Brown and Florence native Jerry Weaver. In 1972, he helped organize the first of several “Salt and Pepper” concerts, in which Black and white performers shared a single bill.

WZZA “was the first locally owned and federally licensed African-American radio station in northwest Alabama, and remains the only such station in operation today.” It still broadcasts from a one-story building in Tuscumbia. Inside, “the station is a living monument to its founder, its walls covered with gold records, awards, and other framed mementos of Bob Carl Bailey’s [storied] life.”

For more stories of northwest Alabama’s Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area, visit msnha.una.edu.