Sorry that it's taken me so long to post on this subject. I'll fill in as many details as I can -- feel free to post more questions and I'll see what I can come up with.
First, the facilities at 112 Union:
From when I was first hired at WMPS in November 1975 (Roy Mack brought me on board for my first paid radio gig: running the Sunday morning public affairs block), here's what I recall:
As other posters (such as Rob and Dan) have indicated, all WMPS studios were on the third floor, with Plough Broadcasting corporate on the second floor. The huge record library was on the second floor as well. The librarian was a really sweet lady and I think her name was Jackie. If I'm not mistaken, she later worked at WREC.
Outside of business hours, employees needed two keys to get to WMPS: A key for the front door, as well as a key to the elevator. You could not take the stairs to the second or third floors, as the door to the stairwell was locked. The stairs could only be used for going down, and really were just a fire escape. Once inside the building, you pushed the call button for the elevator, but once inside the elevator, you had to use a key to activate the buttons allowing you access to the second or third floors. Inside the elevator, the floor indicator did not have 1-2-3 on it, but rather 1-2-WMPS. It was quite a rush for a 20-year-old upstart to see the light change from 2 to WMPS as the door opened on the third floor.
The elevator opened to a nice reception area, where visitors were greeted by receptionist Juanita Arnold. I got to know Juanita quite well while I waited on numerous occasions to present my latest aircheck to Roy Mack.
Past the reception area there was a very long hallway. The first door to the right (not really even a door, just an opening) was kind of a jock lounge/office. There were about half a dozen desks in there, and not much else.
The next stop on the right was the door to both the on-air studio and the newsroom. As you came through the door, if you took a hard right and went through another door, you were in the newsroom. The first room was the news gathering area, with city guides, wire machines, telephones, scanners and the like. The second room was the actual news announce booth.
When you came in the door from the hallway and went straight ahead through another door, you were entering the on-air studio. It was, I believe, up three steps (about 24 inches) from the hallway. I have no idea why it was designed that way. Was it to give the jocks a psychological boost as they entered? Was it to facilitate cables being run under the studio? I haven't a clue.
As Rob pointed out, it was a classic RCA console, with eight rotary pots (four on each side of an intercom button). To the left of the console were two of the ITC 3D cart machines. They were the ones with three cart slots in each machine, with the big green start buttons, the little red stop buttons and the yellow "ready" indicators. There was a third ITC triple-decker to the right of the console, but I think Dees is the only jock who used it, since his show had so many carted drops and elements.
Radio folks who used the ITC gear remember the "sec" and "ter" tones that could be encoded onto a cart either before or after recording. WMPS used the sec tone as a warning that a song or spot was about to end. It would blink a little light on the cart machine, but the engineers also had it set up to fire a little light bulb in the studio as well. The ter tone was the old-school way of sequencing spots in a set. The sequencing could be turned on or off with a switch. Songs and jingles did not have the ter tone -- only spots and promos.
The three ITC units were on three pots, so you could not go song-to-song on the air in the same machine, but rather go back and forth between 1 and 2.
There were two reel-to-reel machines in the studio, but they were both in a rack at the back of the studio, under a patch bay. Thankfully, there was a remote start within arm's reach of the jock.
There was also an ancient Gates turntable to the right of the console in a very awkward position. It was really only used for two purposes: For some of the public affairs shows which were provided on vinyl, and for Ron Jordan's legendary signoff sequence. Jordan ended every show with "Memphis, My Home Town" by Terry Lee Jenkins. As many of you already know, the song was a promotional jingle done for all the Plough stations in 1961. The Memphis version featured references to the Cotton Carnival, Mid-South Fair, and -- of course -- WMPS. Jordan would frequently pepper the song with horn honkings and cowbells in the background while it was playing. As it ended, he would -- I swear to you -- take the 33-45-78 shifter on the old Gates and change the speed wildly for the last 10 seconds or so. Poor Dan Sears had to follow that with the 6:55 news.
To the jock's left was a small cart rack, which was used for current songs, recurrent songs, jingles and promos. Commercials were kept in a big metal wire roll-around rack. It probably held about 250-300 carts. Dees had an identical roll-around rack with all of his drops and bits. When he was not on the air, it was rolled into the secondary on-air studio (more on that in a minute). All other song carts were in a wooden rack that covered an entire wall of the studio. In 1975, the only songs on that wall were from 1970-1974.
As the jock faced the board, directly behind him was a door leading to a mirror-image on-air studio. It had the same board, the same cart machines and was pretty much ready to go as an emergency backup to the main on-air studio. It was later used for dubbing music and simple production, but I don't know of any time that it was used on the air. That's not to say it wasn't -- I just don't know that it was.
If you faced the board in the secondary studio, you were looking down (remember, you're still about two feet above everything else) on the main production studio. There was an adjacent room with mics for voiceover sessions. By 1977, that room was converted to the production room (it was nicknamed the "blue" room because of the color scheme) and the 1975-era production room was the on-air studio.
As for the rest of the third floor, if you started back at reception and walked the hall, on the left side of the hall you would pass sales & traffic, restrooms, Roy Mack's office and a break room with vending machines. Believe it or not, there was no coffee machine in the break room. My early Sunday morning routine included making a pot of coffee at home and bringing it in a Thermos.
At the end of the hall was the general manager's office. If you made a right turn, the were a couple of small offices. When Dees was elevated to PD in 1976, that's where his office was located. The same office was used by subsequent PDs such as Michael St. John, Tommy Charles and Bob Knight.
I did not spend much time on the second floor, but here's what I remember:
As you exited the elevator and walked down the hall, Ed Crump's office was on the left. I remember visiting him in his office when all jocks were told to see him to make sure we were up to speed on log compliance. In 1975, jocks were only required to keep the program log, since back then a first-ticket engineer was required to be at the transmitter site 24/7. By 1977, transmitter readings were taken on a remote unit in the on-air studio, so jocks had the extra responsibility of doing the logs.
Further down to the right was the record library. There were literally thousands of albums, singles and old transcription discs. In 1977, I was given the task of filling out our BMI logs. I took the jocks' hand-written logs and typed them onto the BMI form. In those days, we had to list the song and composers on the BMI logs, so I spent long hours in the library looking up songwriters, which were usually on the record labels.
In 1977, there was also a production room on the second floor which was used for recording the 10 1/2-inch reels of music for the K97 automation system. A lady named Candy Wessling was in charge of that, and I believe she also produced reels of music for other Plough stations.
Now for the WMPS staff:
I'll cover three eras of WMPS that I know fairly well. Please add or correct if I have any errors or omissions.
The WMPS legendary line-up of 1975:
Rick Dees (Full name: Rigdon O. Dees III)
Roy Mack (also PD) (Real name: Roy McIlwain)
Bill Murray (also production whiz) (Real name: Bill McMurray)
Ron Jordan
Dan Wilson
Harry Simpson ("The Best of WMPS" as it was called, with the regular jocks pre-recording intros of the songs)
Bud Leonard - News
Dan Sears - News
Mark Adams - Weekends (Real name: Lance Holley)
Chris Reviere - Weekends (Real name: Rusty Reviere - see below)
Carlos Riley - Weekends (Real name: Cecil Holmes)
As many know, Harry Simpson was a first-class engineer, so he did overnights from the transmitter site on Benjestown Road in Frayser, which kept WMPS from having to employ an extra jock or engineer.
I'm pretty sure that Reviere replaced Adams in the fall of 1975. Rusty's name appeared in the phone book, so he used the name Chris on the air to deflect kids calling him at home. In the spring of 1976, WMPS got a new jingle package (Jam's "Energy"), and Roy Mack goofed and had them sing the jock jingle "Rusty Reviere." There was no way Roy was going to pay for another jingle, so he told Rusty he'd have to use his real name. Ron Jordan, in all his 1976 brilliance, referred to him as "Crusty Reviere" on the air for several weeks.
The final WMPS top 40 line-up:
Bob Tracy
Charlie O'Neil
Walt Jackson
Rob Grayson (As Robert Grey)
Kevin Murphy
Jennifer Fox (Real name: Denise Hay) (Confirming earlier post that she was the first female jock at WMPS)
Michael Jay (Real name: Michael J. Paige, best known as Michael Jeffries - see below)
Tommy Charles - PD (Would do fill-in on the air. He did middays at WMPS in 1973)
Bud Leonard - News
Mike Donegan - News
Rusty Reviere (Weekends)
Myself (Weekends)
After the March 1978 flip to country, here's where folks went:
Bob Tracy and Charlie O'Neil to WMAQ in Chicago.
Walt Jackson, Rob Grayson, Kevin Murphy, Bud Leonard, Mike Donegan and myself stay on.
Jennifer Fox to Miami.
Michael Jeffries to WDIA.
Rusty Reviere left radio, finished law school in 1979, and is now a Jackson, Tennessee attorney.
I don't know what became of Tommy Charles.
The initial 680 WMPS Country Music Radio line-up:
Kevin Murphy
Rob Grayson
Walt Jackson
Bill Murray (Returns as Production Director and fill-in on the air)
Debbie Conner
Jay Marvin (Real name: Marvin Yust)
Paul Wyatt (Weekends)
Don Roberts (Weekends)
Myself (Weekends)
Bud Leonard - News
Mike Donegan - News
Craig Scott - Interim PD and VP/Programming for Plough Broadcasting.
Bob Knight - PD who arrived in the summer of 1978. This is NOT Robert E. Knight.
Robert E. Knight - Chief Engineer
Somewhere I've got some pictures of me in the WMPS studio in 1975. When I find them, I'll put them on my still-being-developed website.
Thanks for your indulgence of my massive post. As you can see, I have great reverence for 112 Union Avenue.