“The New Voice of Laurens County” sputtered to life on Thanksgiving. Successful beach music DJ Pat Patterson says three people were listening.
Patterson and the engineer who volunteered to come in to install a key piece of equipment delivered the day before – and Patterson’s wife Robin who shares his vision of an earth-bound station to complement their worldwide-listened-to beach, boogie, blues and beyond radio program.
Patterson is realizing a dream of owning and programming his own radio station since his gig at 91.1 ended with the station’s sale to another company.
Patterson wants WPCC to be a throw-back — an un-corporate radio station where the same information isn’t on the air at the same time of the hour – hour after hour after hour.
For now, an automated program complements Patterson’s popular 4 to 7 p.m. live show. “We have future plans,” the station’s new owner said Thursday. “After the first of the year, we want things to be bigger and better.”
Slowly, Clinton residents are starting to realize 1410 AM is broadcasting again. “We want Clinton High sports and Presbyterian College sports to return to their home,” Patterson said.
The listeners of 1410 AM are joining a worldwide audience. Through the internet, listeners of The Large Time Network regularly contact Patterson from California and Colorado. He can count on a call or e-mail nearly everyday from a listener in Leeds, England.
With a single keystroke, Patterson can activate a customer-tracking part of his radio show’s website. A red dot signifies a listener – the United States is covered in red, and the next highest concentration is Europe.
The music of South and North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia’s coastlines, clearly, has legs.
“Three times a year, 30,000 members of SOS (Shaggers of the Strand) come to Myrtle Beach. In the spring many of them stay the whole 10 days. The Shag is the state dance of South Carolina. I’ve often wondered by PRT (South Carolina Parks, Recreation and Tourism) doesn’t get on board and promote it,” Patterson said. “As an entrepreneur, I see it as a great opportunity.”
And now, the opportunity is centered in Clinton. It opened when WPCC and WLBG in Laurens ended an operations agreement, and WPCC fell silent earlier this year.
As 2015 lies ahead, with Robin (a lifelong Clinton resident) and Pat Patterson at the helm, an important part of the beach music scene shifts to Clinton.
“Robin and I want to extend our sincere thanks to Sandy and Rhonda Cruickshanks for this opportunity. It has been a dream of mine to tie all that – the internet station – to a terrestrial station,” Pat Patterson said. “Like a chemist, Robin and I have developed a formula (for music programming) and it is very, very successful.”
For Pat Patterson, a trip to the Wax Museum set his course in radio.
He was in junior high school, listening to beach and oldies on the radio, already deciding he wanted to be a disc jockey, and his mom took him to the legendary store for vinyl records in Charlotte.
“I was doing our junior high sock hops,” Patterson said. “I loaded up” on vinyl records in the beach and boogie genre.
He has been a DJ and radio personality ever since.
His goal for WPCC is to have a morning DJ, an afternoon program and then have loyal listeners tune in for his 4-7 time slot. “People are going home from work, they’re getting home and turning it on, they’re eating,” Patterson said of the attraction of late afternoon – early evening. “In the summer, they are around the deck, eating outdoors.”
During the Drive at 5 segment of the program, Patterson unveils five super-rare songs from the mid-1940s to the late ‘50s – “that’s the most popular segment,” he says.
It carries some listeners back to their youth.
It carries younger listeners to a place contemporary music can’t take them. Beach and The Shag are popular on the college scene, nearly every Town Rhythms in Clinton has college and high school-age young people in attendance. Most of the time, they don’t show off their shag skills, but they are there, soaking up the beach.
Patterson said the internet version of his show is subtitled Beach, Boogie, Blues and Beyond because, every now and then, he will throw in something unexpected. It could be a country tune with a bluesy feel, or a throw-back sound from one of today’s artists.
This is the music that set the foundation for John Lennon’s work with The Beatles.
This is the roots music for Otis Redding, Ray Charles and James Brown, who used to say he was the inventor of rap. Jimi Hendrix played with Redding’s band in London. The Platter and Sam Cooke fed the imagination of Smokey Robinson, and all that musical vide fed into Motown.
Patterson said WPCC in its new incarnation will display the music of 1946 through today’s beach music scene.
And that vinyl that Pat Patterson still possesses, don’t be surprised if he doesn’t break it out one day. He did that on a radio show in Greenwood and a station owner told him to pull it – all that cracking and popping, didn’t Patterson know music today is “digitally remastered”?
“I don’t know, one of these Saturdays I might break out the turntable,” Patterson says, “and have a good time.”
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