Documentary on rise, fall of WZZQ, Jackson's first rock station, to air. See when and where

A documentary film more than four years in the making about fabled former Jackson radio station WZZQ will see its premiere this May on Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

The documentary is the culmination of years of work on the meteoric rise and lightning-quick fall of Jackson's first free-form rock station.

Ann Ford, director of “WZZQ The Movie” announced this week that air dates have been set for Monday, May 20 at 8 p.m.; Friday, May 24 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, May 25 at 7 p.m.; Sunday, May 26 at 4:30 p.m.; and Thursday, May 30 at 2 p.m.

The movie will air simultaneously statewide on all eight MPB television stations including WMPN in Jackson and WMAH which serves south Mississippi including Hattiesburg.

“This is the perfect way to share it with the people of Mississippi,” Ford said, expressing gratitude to MPB executives John Gibson and Taiwo Gaynor for their willingness to air the documentary.

Because the footage contains actual air recordings from the radio station, including music clips, charges for licensing the movie theatrically would have been “astronomical,” she said.

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Ford said the final cut of roughly 56 minutes was edited from more than 10 hours of interviews of former announcers, contributors and fans, some of whom participated in a public “listener event” at Duling Hall in August of 2022.

Asked how she decided to edit the extensive footage down to just under an hour, Ford said, “I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted the story structure to be — how the station began, what people remember, and how it ended.”

The timing of the interviews proved to be critical, as four of the key players involved have subsequently died.

• Announcer Sergio Fernandez, who was interviewed in 2019, died in 2021.

• Curtis Jones (known on air as “Sebastian”), who participated in the 2022 panel discussion, died in 2023.

• Bruce Owen, one of the station’s earliest announcers (who also participated in the 2022 panel), died in 2023.

• Station manager Marshall Magee, who declined to be interviewed due to health issues but who features prominently in the story, also died in 2023.

Other participants include former on-air personalities Phil Seymour, Bill Fitzhugh, Randy Bell, Lamar Evans, Perez Hodge, Randall Pinkston, and Bill Ellison — the latter a well-known musician in the Jackson area who Ford credits with spearheading the idea for the film. “We were talking about WZZQ in his driveway and Bill said, “Somebody should make a documentary,” Ford said.

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Also interviewed will be Norbert Putnam, the producer of Dan Fogelberg’s 1972 album “Home Free” who discusses how WZZQ was instrumental in introducing Fogelberg to both Jackson audiences and beyond.

WZZQ’s history as a rock station began in 1968 with what was known as WJDX-FM operating from the WLBT building on Jefferson Street. It was one of Mississippi’s first FM radio stations and had been on the air since 1948 airing mostly easy listening and classical music.

It also had very limited listenership in an era when AM radio was still king as far as ratings. Two men, Phil Seymour and Fred Mitchell, who had been exposed to pioneering free-form stations like KSAN in San Francisco, approached station management about trying a similar rock format in Jackson.

With little to lose, the station’s owner, Lamar Life Insurance, gave Seymour and Mitchell the OK.

Owen, who began working there in 1969, said during the 2022 listener event that getting new albums for the station was a struggle in the beginning, since few record companies took them seriously. But as more automobiles became equipped with FM radios in the 70s, the audience quickly grew.

By 1973 new studios had been built on Beasley Road, the station’s call letters were changed to WZZQ, and by the following year the station hosted a free concert at the reservoir attracting upwards of 10,000 young people.

“Our philosophy was to teach people about good music. That might not have been the smartest thing to do at a commercial station, but it seemed to work,” Jones told the Clarion Ledger in 2022.

Former music director David Adcock, who died in 2001, wrote in a 1981 newspaper article, “We were at our best when we could create a complete emotional experience — one with a beginning, a middle and an end. At ZZQ no one song stood alone. It acquired its significance from what came before and what followed after.”

WZZQ’s downfall resulted at least partially from its unlikely success. As FM radio became more dominant management tightened the playlists, a move met with criticism from some of the station’s more loyal fans.

And by 1981, rumors began circulating that Lamar Life, which had lost its license to operate flagship TV station WLBT a decade earlier, was ready to call it quits in the broadcasting business. The prospective buyer? A country radio station owner and promoter from Little Rock named Kerby Confer who saw the financial advantage of bringing Jackson its first FM country station.

The original plan, according to some industry insiders, was to let WZZQ continue as a rock station though the summer. But Confer and others got wind that competing WSLI-FM was also contemplating a switch to country and were determined to beat them to the punch.

The hammer came down a little after midnight on July 2, 1981 with a “death set” of songs culminating with “The End” by The Doors. By morning the station was playing music by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers under its new nickname “Miss 103.”

And for whatever heartbreak and criticisms the format change generated at the time, Miss 103 also became a very successful radio station that continues on at 102.9 FM today.

Assisting Ford in the creation of “WZZQ The Movie” has been producer Robbie Fisher and director of photography Don Warren of Cue Burn Films, LLC.

Ed Inman is a Jackson-based free-lance writer.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Documentary on Jackson rock and roll radio station WZZQ to air on MPB