Arkansas AM station that launched legends returns

Last Updated on May 29, 2014 by askcbiorg

Decades ago, unknown blues musicians paid $15 to appear on an east Arkansas radio station, hoping a few minutes of exposure would help them become the legends they now are: B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson and Ike Turner.

KWEM-AM fell silent in 1960 after more than a decade in the Mississippi River town of West Memphis, which musician Rufus Thomas then called “the Las Vegas of the South.” Fifty-four years later, the station will be revived online this week by Mid-South Community College and on 93.3 FM by mid-August.

Read more from the Houston Chronicle.