Riding Around in Harlan County: Appalachian Broadcasts & Podcasts

Last summer, we spent quite a bit of time in different counties in Eastern Kentucky conducting interviews for a couple of research and oral history projects we were working on. Because of Timi's family roots in Harlan County, we spent a couple of days at a time so we could interview several people in Cumberland and Harlan and drive around some of the communities and neighborhoods where she spent time as a child. 

Site of Timi's maternal great-grandmother Gigi's homeplace in Coxton (August 15, 2018)

We stayed at the Benham Schoolhouse Inn and were fortunate to see friends and conduct some interviews at the Godbey Appalachian Center at the Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College (SKCTC) campus in Cumberland. One day, Timi unexpectedly ran into Theresa Osborne, who she had interviewed for another project several years before. 

Osborne is a member of the Kentucky Oral History Commission, and she has participated in the well-known Higher Ground series of community-based plays, which is a project of the SKCTC Appalachian Program and includes oral history methodologies. Timi spent time in Harlan County during some of the early productions, and Higher Ground was one of the hosts for the Knoxville/Harlan County Micro-Fest gathering organized by the Network of Ensemble Theaters in 2012. As follow-up to this event, Timi produced an "Appalachian Mixtape” with MicroFest participants, which included recording interviews with selected regional artists, collecting music by participants, and editing/mixing content for the final single-track digital production. The feature-length production features interview excerpts with Higher Ground participants like Osborne, executive producer Robert Gipe, and others.

 
In 2016, several Higher Ground participants also produced a radio/podcast program called, "Shew Buddy!" that explored the theme of young people struggling to stay or leave the region by using "monologues and dialogues from past plays, interviews with actors who played those characters, new oral histories collected specifically for the show, songs that reinforce the themes of the stories, and poetry readings by local authors."

In Timi's conversation with Osborne last summer, she mentioned a radio program that she co-hosted/co-produced called, "History Alive." The show began with early technical support in the form of "the loan of a digital recorder from the Kentucky Oral History Commission" and was part of the SKCTC Appalachian Program's "long tradition of collecting and preserving local history through the use of oral history interviews." The show was broadcast on WCPM, a local radio station, for six years.

WCPM Radio Station, Cumberland, Kentucky (September 8, 2018)

One sunny afternoon, we were driving around Cumberland before an oral history interview, and we rounded a curve in the road and came upon the WCPM radio station, which is also one of several radio stations where Frances and John Reedy also had a regular program in their early musical career.
 

Source: The One Year History of 
The Tri-State Broadcasting Company 
and "Heaven's Radio Station" - WCPM

In 1949, WCPM began broadcasting in Middlesboro as part of the "Tri-State Broadcasting Company," which apparently dissolved in 1950. During that brief time, Frances and John Reedy had a regular show as the Stone Mountain Hillbillies and performed every Monday through Friday afternoon at 4:00 p.m.

In 1950, WCPM was purchased by the Cumberland Gap Broadcasting Company and merged with another local station WMIK. WCPM was apparently bought out again and then relocated to Cumberland by 1951. The "Good Coal Network" included both WCPM and WHLN in Harlan where the Reedys also had a show for more than 17 years. It seems likely that their show would then have been broadcast on both stations after WCPM moved. According to most recent news, WCPM stopped broadcasting in 2016 after 65 years, so it was not an active radio station when we drove by last summer, though the grounds were mowed and well-kept. 

Several online archives, such as American Radio History and the National Radio Club, include some digitized artifacts from WCPM and WHLN, and the early history of the station in Middlesboro includes some digitized documents and other primary research. However, there does not appear to be any audio documentation of either the original radio broadcasts or interviews with people who were involved with or listened to WCPM. We're sorry for all the voices that are lost over time as technologies change and people pass on, but we're glad to have stumbled upon WCPM while rambling through the mountain landscapes of Harlan County.