Dueling Hits - Jimmy Reed - 1960 | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's note: I have initiated this new segment on BCN, where I determine the Best Music Ever ... and, 'with a little help from my friends'. I do this from my opinion, for what that is worth, where I will measure the best music that I am familiar with.

    I do this for two reasons: 1) I want to expose the best music that I know to the rest of us. 2) Popular Music today may be the very worst it has ever been, and that is saying much, since I lived through Disco.

    For a list of all of the contributions to this series, please click here.

    As previously mentioned, there will be others who share their favorites with our BCN readers, in particular here, Bobby Tony.

    No hit parade of music would be complete without the Blues.

    One of the fortunate things about being a city boy in the Southern 1950's is the ability to listen to multiple radio stations that covered the whole waterfront of music. The range of AM radio is limited so living in Atlanta provided ample opportunity for this white boy to listen to a radio station WAOK.

    In March 1954 Zenas "Daddy" Sears left WGST and, working with a group of investors, in 1956 purchased WATL (located at 1380 on the AM radio dial) from James Woodruff for $500,000. He changed the call letters to WAOK and instituted an all-R&B format, the first of its kind. Sears's program "Diggin' the Discs" became enormously popular and was eventually syndicated around the country, including markets in Newark, New Jersey; Chicago, Illinois; and Norfolk, Virginia.

    There are too many blues songs that have influenced music over the decades but one of my favorite is the Jimmy Reed version of Big Boss Man. It was not released until 1960 but it represents the blues as well as any song I ever heard. .