Photo by Charles Champagne
It’s two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, with one hour left in his weekly radio show, and a 45-rpm record single of John Sebastian’s “Welcome Back”—recognizable to many as the theme song for the 1970s sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter—has just ended as Noel Jackson switches from the turntable to a CD player. Another TV theme begins, “Making Our Dreams Come True” by Cyndi Grecco, familiar from the opening of Laverne and Shirley, but Jackson dials down the volume and leans into the microphone.
“Tell everybody that radio is happening again, Saturdays on WHYR,” he says, his voice rising. “It’s me and you, making our dreams come true, here on Noel Jackson’s Music Satisfaction, where Southern soul and rhythm and blues continues.”
Every Saturday from noon to 3 pm Jackson hosts his show live on WHYR 96.9 FM, a community radio station run out of a building on Main Street in Baton Rouge, just east of downtown. Broadcasting since June 2011, WHYR is a nonprofit station funded by donations from listeners and staffed by volunteers like Jackson, who devote themselves to a diverse range of programming that includes music, talk shows, syndicated programs, and other voices absent from mainstream commercial radio.
“The DJs here are unrestrained, and you can be yourself,” Jackson says about WHYR. “You can tell that the people on the air love what they do and that they’re not getting paid to do it. People can play music that they grew up with, music that they like. They can share it with the community.”
Jackson describes his program as primarily a classics and oldies show with an emphasis on soul music and R&B, but the main organizing feature behind his selections is that he enjoys them, feels a personal connection to them, and believes that the songs match well when played alongside each other.
This particular Saturday broadcast included tracks by Angelo Bond, Petula Clark, Commander Cody, Willie Hutch (played by request for Kerry Beary, owner of the Atomic Pop Shop, which underwrites Jackson’s show), Ann Peebles, Jerry Reed, Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, and Johnnie Taylor—among others—alongside contemporary Southern soul from Carl Marshall, Jamie Williams, Karen Wolfe, and a local artist from Baker, Laouisiana, Sweet T & the Total Control Band.
As the show progresses, Jackson pulls from multiple troves of recordings, designing his setlist as he goes. He sorts through a stack of 45s in front of the turntables, occasionally opting for one of the LPs he’s brought from home, like Disco Baby by Van McCoy. (“I bought this when it came out in 1975,” he notes. “It’s still got the price sticker on it, 2 for $5.”) A collapsible plastic table behind him holds boxes of CDs separated into pop, Southern soul, R&B, and New Orleans blues.
“After the first song starts, it kicks off a fuse,” he says. “While the song is on, I’m looking through the CDs and listening to that record. I know the CD, I know the label on the records, and I already know what the person is saying in that song. I can use that to make a show, you know, to have the records connect with one another.”
At one point, while playing a 45 of Carl Sims singing “All These Things,” Jackson begins thumbing through the box designated for pop music. He pulls out a CD by the Uniques and holds it up. “Same song, same record label,” he says on the air, as he queues up the track. “They made the song before Carl Sims.”
Now 59, Jackson has hosted his Music Satisfaction show on WHYR for almost four years. Previously, he had shows on KCLF 1500 AM in New Roads for two years and on KBRH 1260 AM in Baton Rouge for twelve years. Beyond his radio ventures, he and his twin brother Joel owned and operated a record store in Baton Rouge, the Music Treasure Chest, for twenty-five years before declining sales forced them to close in September 2014.
Growing up, Jackson explains, he always listened to the radio, as well as the records his father would bring home from the nightclub he ran. “I would play one record behind another,” he says, “Chuck Berry, ‘Broken Arrow;’ I still play it every now and then on the radio. James Brown, ‘Just You and Me, Darling;’ you don’t ever hear that anymore. Etta James, ‘Two Sides (To Every Story).’”
He and his brother even devised a way to make their own radio show. “Joel and I had little kid walkie-talkies,” he continues. “I would use a rubber band to hold the button down and put the walkie-talkie by the record player. Then my brother would take the other one and go down the street, with the volume turned up on it while I played records. I even had 45s with real radio spots, which I would use between records to make it sound like I was really on the radio. I didn’t realize it, but I was testing the waters even then for being a DJ.”
Jackson compares the experience of hosting his show to listening to records at home with friends. “You’re enjoying it and knowing that other people are listening to what you’re doing, having fun along with you,” he says. “It makes you feel like you have an audience, sort of like sitting in a movie theatre, you enjoy the movie more if you know that other people are in there looking at it like you are, and it’s not just you by yourself.”
On this Saturday, as the song by the Uniques plays, Jackson leans back in his chair, clasping his hands on his chest. The song ends, and he springs forward, laughing. “I got so caught up in the song, I forgot to pick the next one. I felt like I was at home and you were there with me,” he tells his listeners. “I’m looking through 45s now,” he adds, before he settles on a worn seven-inch of an Al Wilson recording, “I’ve Got a Feeling,” the opening line of which continues, “we’ll be seeing each other again.” As Wilson sings, Noel Jackson smiles and listens.
Noel Jackson’s Music Satisfaction airs Saturdays from noon to 3 pm on 96.9 FM WHYR in Baton Rouge. You can also listen online at whyr.org.
