It’s a thoroughly Memphis thing when you get an institution and a legend together to celebrate with music, food, and a lot of hosannas. For free.
And that’s how it is with the WLOK Stone Soul Picnic, which celebrates its 50th anniversary on Saturday, August 30th, at the Coronet on Shelby Oaks Drive. That picnic is the institution, a popular gathering that predates the Memphis in May International Festival and has followed the same formula since: honoring listeners with free food, ongoing music, and a celebration of the community.
As for the legend, that would be the Bar-Kays, the storied R&B group that is even older than the Stone Soul Picnic. They began as a Stax Records studio session group in 1966 and got global recognition with “Soul Finger” the next year. Tragedy happened that same year when four members of the band and Stax star Otis Redding were killed in a plane crash. But through the grief, surviving members reformed the group and they’ve been churning out and charting Memphis funk and soul ever since.
So it makes all the sense in the world that the Bar-Kays with James Alexander will be the headliners for the Stone Soul Picnic this weekend. And it won’t be the first time the institution and the legend have created Memphis magic together — the group has appeared at the picnic enough times in the past that nobody can quite remember how many times they have taken the stage.
When it comes to origin stories, this one is something of a classic. Art Gilliam, president and CEO of the station, said, “Three guys who were associated with WLOK were sitting around and just trying to think of a way to do a promotion for the radio station. They came up with the idea of going to what was then Riverside Park, spinning a few records, and getting local companies to provide food and sodas.”
So they promoted the picnic, not even sure it would be an inaugural event, but maybe a fun one-off where a couple hundred people might come by. “It turned out that thousands of people showed up and they were overwhelmed,” Gilliam said. Before some other notable big events got fully started — Memphis in May International Festival comes to mind — they’d check out the Stone Soul Picnic to see what success looked like.
The trio who were just knocking around some ideas for a radio promotion were WLOK staffers David Acey (who went on to found the Africa in April Cultural Awareness Festival), Garland “Wild Child” Markham, and Sherman Austin. Acey and Austin are still living and plan to attend, where they and “Wild Child” will be honored.
And what about that name? It was originally called the WLOK Stoned Soul Picnic, named for the song written by Laura Nyro and made into an album and huge hit by the 5th Dimension in 1968. The name was a big part of the Sixties lexicon with all the inferences you could imagine. But as WLOK became more of a gospel music station, it was deemed prudent to drop the “d” and just make it Stone Soul Picnic. As Gilliam dryly noted, “‘Stoned’ had some connotations in that era that were different than what we were intending.”
“That’s My Radio Station”
Gilliam has been the driving force at WLOK since he formed Gilliam Communications, Inc., and acquired it in 1977, making it the first Black-owned radio station in Memphis. While he wasn’t there at the inception of the Stone Soul Picnic, he saw how much it mattered to the community, and he has always been an advocate of the connection of radio to the community, so it was an easy call for him to continue the event. He’s said, “You’ll find that people will say ‘That’s my radio station,’ but you won’t find them saying ‘That’s my TV station.’ It’s the whole sense of community that people attach to their favorite radio station. Younger people today are more social-media oriented, but for the most part, radio is a unifying element for our community.”
He bought the station from Starr Broadcasting Group, a conservative outfit that had dropped the Jesse Jackson-inspired Rainbow PUSH show from the lineup. One of the first things Gilliam did was to bring it back because it was what the community wanted, and the show is still broadcast on Sundays.
Most of the station’s programming is music, and it was primarily R&B until the mid-1980s when it went gospel, as it continues today. “We made the switch to gospel in a way that put us even closer to the community,” Gilliam says, “because it put us closer to the church part of the community.”
The Stone Soul Picnic reflects that gospel orientation with most of this weekend’s 11 performing acts. Among them are The Echoaires, Josh Bracy & Power Anointed, and Memphis Music Hall of Fame singer Chick Rodgers.
But there’s a lot of love for R&B as well as reflected in headliner group the Bar-Kays. James Alexander, bassist and one of the original members of the group, leads it today.
“WLOK is an inspirational station now,” he said, “and mostly gospel, but they’ve always wanted to have some R&B. I always thought that doing that gives a cross-section of audience that they can have. Although WLOK is a gospel station, people listen to secular music, too. Art has always kept that connection.”
“We Should Carry On”
And the Bar-Kays in particular, with their definitive Memphis sound, as well as their history of tragedy and triumph, is a soulful fit with the picnic and the people who go there. Alexander said, “I’m one of the original founders of the Bar-Kays, and we date back to 1964. I was the last member to come into the group, and as you well know, four of the members perished with Otis Redding in 1967 in a plane crash.”
They were guitarist Jimmy King, organist Ronnie Caldwell, saxophonist Phalon Jones, and drummer Carl Cunningham. Trumpeter Ben Cauley survived the crash. Alexander had missed the trip due to illness.
As devastating as it was, Alexander felt a deep sense that the band’s legacy should continue. “Early on when we were very young and formed the group, we had always said that if something was to happen to any one of us, whoever was left, we should carry on, keep the group going. We stuck by that and I was the guy that reformed the group,” he said. They were already with Stax, which helped the effort to keep the band going. “Then in 1975, Stax went under, but we still kept the group together. In 1976, we signed with Mercury Records and we went on to have a string of gold and platinum albums with Mercury, and it’s just been one thing after another.”
And throughout it all, the band was making appearances at the Stone Soul Picnic with Alexander, Cauley, and new members. “We started out as an instrumental group, and then in the 1970s we added singer Larry Dodson, who stayed with us for a very long time, retiring in 2017. We’ve been able to maintain that whole sound the whole time, and we like to keep a lot of young people around us. That’s one of the things that keeps us going, and fortunately we have a lot of devoted fans.”
And after 60-plus years, the hits just keep on coming. “We’ve got a live album coming out pretty soon,” Alexander said. “We recorded last year at the Overton Park Shell as part of its concert series, and we hope to release it for the Christmas holidays this year.”
But right now, it’s all about being at the Coronet this weekend. And that’s a fairly recent venue for the long-running picnic.
Gilliam said that the first picnic was at Martin Luther King Riverside Park, but it was just called Riverside at the time. “We kept it there for many years, and then moved over to Tom Lee Park because more events of that type were going there — and it had lighting. Later we went to the Overton Park Shell because of the ambiance and the trees and an atmosphere that was different than what Tom Lee Park had at the time.”
But weather issues caused Gilliam to reconsider having the picnic outdoors, so WLOK moved inside at the Coronet. He acknowledges the space is limiting, but the weather isn’t an issue, and people come and go throughout the day as it runs from noon to 7 p.m. And, as it has been for 50 years, the food and music are free.
“It’s absolutely been a successful event,” he said. “And you don’t have very many events here that are 50 years old — or even businesses that are 50 years old. In the community, and in the Black community in particular, you’ll have churches that are very, very old, some a hundred and more, but you don’t have many entities that have had that kind of success. I think people do take some pride in it, and at WLOK, we take pride in the fact of what we represent in the community.”
THE LINEUP
Noon-12:05 p.m. — Opening Prayer
12:05 p.m.–12:15 p.m. — Sonji Wright- “Star Spangle Banner”/“Lift Every Voice”
12:25 p.m.–12:40 p.m. — Memphis Baptist Ministerial Association Chorus
12:50 p.m.–1:20 p.m. — Mighty Men of Brown
1:30 p.m.–1:45 p.m. — Essie & the Melodic Truth
1:55 p.m.–2:25 p.m. — Vincent Tharpe & Kenosis
2:35 p.m.-3:05 p.m. — New Friendship Baptist Church Choir
3:15 p.m.-3:45 p.m. — Roney Strong & the Strong Family
3:55 p.m.-4:25 p.m. — Josh Bracy & Power Anointed
4:35 p.m.-5:05 p.m. — The Echoaires
5:15 p.m.-5:45 p.m. — Chick Rodgers
5:55 p.m.-6:55 p.m. — Bar-Kays
Bring the kids! The first 30 children 12 and under will receive a free goodie bag. Two lucky winners will also be selected to win a family pack of four movie passes each, donated by Malco Theatres.
UP NEXT
WLOK is hosting another cultural event a couple of weeks down the road. Its Black Film Festival is a five-day event that has been presented by the radio station for almost a decade and aims to bring a range of cinematic productions that represent Black culture, from classic films to new work by budding filmmakers.
The first event features short works by new filmmakers and has a $1,000 prize for the top auteur. The next night is a screening of The Fire Inside (2024), the story of Claressa Shields, the first American woman to win an Olympic boxing gold medal. It’s a red-carpet event with a buffet dinner from several restaurants — all for $10.
The Friday screening at Crosstown Concourse is 2002’s Drumline and will feature drumlines from schools in Memphis. On Saturday, a screening of 2008’s Cadillac Records will be at Studio on the Square. And the Sunday showing, also at Studio on the Square, will be 2024’s The Forge, featuring Memphis actor Aspen Kennedy.
September 17th at Stax: New Filmmakers’ Production
September 18th at Pink Palace: The Fire Inside
September 19th at Crosstown Theater: Drumline
September 20th at Studio on the Square: Cadillac Records
September 21st at Studio on the Square: The Forge