Jimmy Hall, co-founder of Wet Willie in 1970, has been part of the foundation of southern rock for over 50 years. The band has had 8 charting albums throughout their career. Jimmy, singer/saxophonist/harmonicist, has also released 10 albums as a solo artist or collaborator. Multi-award winning program director, Ray White, caught up with Jimmy by the oceanfront in September of 2010 to talk about his Build Your Own Fire album, Wet Willie and being one of the key bands on the legendary record labels -Capricorn Records. In our showcase segment we honor the late, and great Dusty Hill of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band ZZ Top, who passed away on July 28, 2021. You can call it country or southern rock… we have the groundbreaking bands right here on Classic Artists Today.
Ray's passion for music and the musicians, started as a youth listening to transistor radios under the covers at bedtime. The bands and performers he liked, he followed throughout their career. In 2005 he was fed up with the evolution of a majority of the music the radio stations were playing and began investigating the bands he grew up listening to in the 1960's, 70's and 80's. Radio wasn't playing any of those band's "new" songs, just the "classic" hits. Researching the industry for a year, Ray launched Classic Artists Today syndicated radio show - featuring "new" songs by "classic" artists and included interviews and classic tracks too. The show was carried by several dozen radio stations in the U.S., Canada, Europe and the Caribbean. Featuring Rock/Pop musicians and bands, Ray and the show won several awards from New Music Weekly magazine. With the success of these shows, he launched Coool CAT syndicated radio show, 5 years later, featuring Soul/R&B/Smooth Jazz/Blues performers and bands. In 2017, Ray starting producing his show in a 30-minute podcast format. Today, you can hear his work at Sittin' In With The CAT and Sittin' In With The Coool CAT. The legacy continues!
