Early Wright

Early Wright went on the air at WROX in Clarksdale in 1947 and became the first Black disc jockey in Mississippi. Born on 10 February 1915, he was an auto mechanic by trade, with a repair shop in the town from 1937, and he came to the station in 1945 as manager of a gospel group called the Four Star Quartet. He was recording an announcement for them when the station manager, Preston Hinman, noticed his voice and offered him a show of his own. He kept it for half a century. The programme ran four hours a night and he split it in two with a persona for each half: the Soul Man, who played blues, and Brother Early, who played gospel. Musicians came in to be interviewed and to plug a show that night, among them Muddy Waters, B. B. King, Sonny Boy Williamson, Pinetop Perkins and Robert Nighthawk. So, early in his career, did Elvis Presley. What the job actually was is easy to miss at this distance. A Black voice on a commercial station in the Mississippi Delta in 1947 was close to unheard of, and the show carried more than records: community events, church notices, funeral announcements, and advertising for the stores across the tracks that served Black customers, sponsors Wright signed himself. He broadcast from 257 Delta Avenue until 1955 and from the Alcazar Hotel on Third Street afterwards, and he was still on the air in the 1990s. He died on 10 December 1999. A WROX museum opened in the Delta Avenue building in 2004; the Alcazar, built in 1915 and once reckoned the best hotel in the state, stands vacant.