Kingsport Times-News from Kingsport, Tennessee • 16

THE COVER STORY The wild man of the airwaves The time: Around 1:30 am The place: 1015 on the FM radio band better known as WQUT-FM A record by the Who ends and a mellow professional-sounding voice says: Well its about time you got here Whats that youve got? He is answered by another voice this one sounding like a cross between Andy Devine and a grizzly bear Lord you is one of the dumbest human beings Ive ever seen This heres a rock Ive been a-rollin all the way back from Grundy Va A noise follows and the listener hears a rather one-sided scuffle After a time the grizzly voice says: Now lie there and be quiet The Tennessee Midnight Rambler show is on the air If one person can be called the wild man of local radio it has to be the Tennessee Midnight Rambler Each Sunday morning during the early pre-dawn hours WQUT-FM a progressive rock radio station in Gray Station broadcasts the wit and wisdom of the Tennessee Midnight Rambler It doesnt take long to realize why the Rambler is called a wild man There seems to be little that the unconventional rough-voiced radio announcer will not do or say on his program In between the wit and wisdom the Tennessee Midnight rambler also plays records by the loudest and wildest of heavy metal rock groups: The driving force behind the Tennessee Midnight Rambler is the mellow-voiced announcer whom the Rambler roughed up at the start of the program Mike James James 26 first came to WQUT in 1974 to announce one of the stations newly-created all-night shifts The Midnight Rambler did not make an appearance on the show until late 1975 The details concerning James ability to persuade the Rambler to do the show are shrouded in mystery All that James will say is that he came here one night and we rapped Regardless of the details the Rambler soon became a permanent fixture on the Mike James show Noting his popularity James also allowed other characters to visit his show among them Mr James an English chap and Ernestine Bean the hootchie-kootchie queen But the Tennessee Midnight Rambler was to play second fiddle to no one and James soon dropped the other characters from the program No one seems to know where the Tennessee Midnight Rambler came This story was written by Tony Kiss a senior journalism major at East Tennessee State University Photographs on the cover and these pages were taken by Harold Durham of Empire Photographies Johnson City 'I Page 4 Times-NeWs Weekender Maty.