By Tom Geddie
Forgive Tom Perryman if he gets a little picky sometimes. The long-time East Texas radio personality celebrates his 80th birthday on July 16, and “picky” is just about all he knows.
“All I’ve ever done is pick cotton and pick records on radio,” Tom said. And promote country music and its artists.
March was his 60th anniversary in the radio business, so it’s been a long time since the member of the Disc Jockey Hall of Fame and the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame has picked any cotton. The veteran midmorning deejay and manager on KKUS The Ranch 104.1 out of Tyler remains unique in the cookie-cutter radio world where individuality – especially in playlists – is not rewarded by the big corporations that run most of broadcasting these days. While most of those stations play the same shrinking list of songs over and over again until listeners even get tired of the good ones, Tom continues to do his own thing in his own way as a broadcaster and promoter.
He’s not eager to talk about his legacy yet, but is happy to talk about both his adventures and his accomplishments.
“Yeah, that’s all I could be known for, because that’s all I’ve ever done — as a pioneer and innovator in radio, especially country music,” he said.
“I’ve got so many firsts in radio that I couldn’t even begin to tell you. I helped promote and develop most all of the legends in the business, from the late 1940s into the 1950s and even the 1960s — everybody who was anybody: Jim Reeves, the Browns, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Sonny James, Slim Whitman, Kitty Wells.”
Much of that happened with the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport and the Big D Jamboree in Dallas after Tom got into radio — first at KEBE in Jacksonville and then KSIJ in Gladewater — at the end of World War II. Tom then owned KGRI in Henderson with Jim Reeves.
“Radio was still a novelty,” he said. “During the war you could not put new radio stations on the air because the Federal Communications Commission had a freeze on any construction permits for radio until the war was over. They lifted that in 1946 or 1947, and people started getting stations right here in East Texas.”
Tom got his FCC 1st class radio engineering license from Tyler Commercial College in 1947 after a short stint in the Navy.
Tom’s adventures in radio and promotion led him to Nashville in 1956 where he began an all-night deejay show, Opry Star Spotlight, on WSM and eventually bought, with Jim’s widow Mary Reeves, a station in nearby Murfreesboro. The Country Music Association named that Tennessee station the best in the country in 1969-70. He also helped program the Grand Ol’ Opry and start the popular country music FanFare event.
His return to Texas in 2001 couldn’t have come quick enough for Tom and his wife, Billie, despite his successes.
“I tell everybody I went to Nashville to become a star, but didn’t realize they spelled it star-ve.”
So, what about the legacy?
“Nobody even knows or remembers it, or gives a damn. The only people who know were our peers,” he said. “The new generation in any business doesn’t give a hoot about who did what, it’s what do you do for me now.
“Sam Phillips of Sun Records told me I was exactly the one responsible for breaking Elvis Presley on radio. I know it. Billie knows it. A few other people know it.
“But the main thing I’m proudest of is what I’m doing right here right now at KKUS – coming back and doing what I did over 50 years ago. We have the #1 demographics everywhere it’s heard, and are having it simulcast on the Internet. I’m as proud of that as anything I’ve ever done. That, and having my wife Billie to help all the way.”
Tom said he does what he does “right here right now” despite big-time corporate radio’s consultant-fueled rush toward conformity.
“You cannot, as a consultant, program in East Texas like you can in the metro markets like Los Angeles and New York,” he said. “I just got on the air and started doing what I knew would work in East Texas, and it baffles the people in contemporary modern radio.”
Tom believes those homogenized trends may have finally peaked and that only a handful of today’s popular country artists – George Strait, Alan Jackson, Dolly Parton, and maybe Vince Gill – will have the longevity of the artists he’s featured over the years.
“The record companies are in trouble. Some chain stores are folding up because of the Internet and the atmosphere — the way people acquire music.”
As a teenager “right out of the cotton patch,” Tom listened to KAND in Corsicana and KSKY in Dallas when he was laid up for several months – plaster from knees to neck – after back surgery. He listened intensely, and studied the way those deejays worked, and decided radio would be a lot more fun than picking cotton.
Tom said it’s hard for him to gauge the trends he’s seen during his childhood and his 60-year career. His audience is filled with World War II veterans, a few from the Korean war, and a lot from the Vietnam war, he said, wondering why there isn’t a TV or cable station directed at seniors — which is pretty much what he does on his KKUS show with sidekick Don Jones and at station remotes and as an emcee for numerous events.
“Somebody’s missing the boat,” he said. “The competition for eyes and ears in this day and time is tenfold what it was when I was growing up. People have so many choices that they are spoiled. The audience of this classic country music, once you get ’em, you’ve got ’em. They are a loyal audience.”
So, once again, what is his legacy?
Tom bases his music choices on what he’s experienced rather than on consultants.
“Everything I do and say is strictly my own opinion,” he said. “There’s nobody doing what I’m doing, and for this long. We’ve owned stations and run stations, and now I’m just back home doing what I want to do.”
“To me, one thing that’s very important is to be able to work with all of these different groups and communities — civic clubs and veterans and schools — and see what they are doing. I like people to be honest, to tell it like it is. I never blow any smoke,” he said.
Among his many awards and titles of recognition Tom was recently selected as “Broadcaster of the Year” by the East Texas Tourism Association and is nominated for “Pioneer Broadcaster of the Year” by the Texas Association of Broadcasters.”
