WDIA At 2074 Union

WDIA's original studios were at 2074 Union Avenue in Midtown Memphis, and it was to this address, not the famous neon sign at 112 Union, that a young B.B. King walked in late 1948 or early 1949. WDIA went on the air on June 7, 1947, owned by two white businessmen, John Pepper and Bert Ferguson. On October 25, 1948, Ferguson put Nat D. Williams, a Black high school teacher, on the air, and the station soon turned its whole schedule over to Black programming, a first in the country. Riley King came in from the Greyhound station, several miles across town, with his guitar wrapped in newspaper. He saw Williams through the picture window, knocked when the microphone was off, and said he would like to make a record and go on the air. Ferguson told him they did not make records, but might be able to use him. He auditioned on the spot and was on the air that afternoon. The reason was a tonic. Ferguson and Pepper were also partners in a drug firm selling a patent medicine called Peptikon, and they wanted a program to match Sonny Boy Williamson's on KWEM, sponsored by rival Hadacol. King sang a jingle for it, and his job at Miss Annie's in West Memphis depended on a radio slot. He learned decades later that the tonic was about twelve percent alcohol. His billing went from the Beale Street Blues Boy to Blues Boy to B.B. WDIA went to 50,000 watts in 1954 as the Goodwill Station and later moved downtown.