Our hearts were filled with sadness when we learned late friday evening that our friend and colleague Ralph “Rollercoaster” McDowell had passed. The staff of WLBG are not just fellow employees, they are my family. I have worked with everyone here since I was a teenager and it’s always hard to say goodbye.
Ralph and I were friends long before he worked at WLBG. He, his uncle Howard and I spent many hours listening to music and telling stories before the idea of a live blues show ever came to be. Ralph and I would drive around the state buying old soul records at any record store we could find. I knew promotions people at record companies so I would get us backstage passes to concerts. The biggest smile I ever saw on Ralph’s face was the night Johnnie Taylor stepped off of a bus and through the back doors of a large night club. He walked by Ralph, shook his hand and said “So good to see you tonight brother”. After the show we spent several hours talking with Johnnie and his band and that was like a trip to Disney World for Ralph because his greatest joy was music. Ralph approached me about a live friday night blues show sometime in 1997. B&T Tape Shop sponsored it. Ralph named it the Friday Night Fish Fry. Over the next year I taught him how to use the studio equipment and computers. In those days we still played a lot of hard to find soul and blues on record because Ralph had a vast collection. We even played little known artists on 45′s he had mail ordered from John R. at WLAC in the early 60′s.
I moved on to other ventures in the broadcast industry and Ralph continued at WLBG, eventually hosting a nightly southern soul show and a live request Sunday afternoon show. When the prodigal son returned, there was Ralph. With the soul brothers reunited he was ready to get back down to business so we worked hard to build his Sunday afternoon show into a program much like the Fish Fry had been in the 90′s. His last late night show on WLBG was Thursday, December 19th, 2013.
Ralph’s favorite artists were, in this order: Sam “Lightnin” Hopkins, Johnnie Taylor, The Swanee Quintet, Tyrone Davis, Jimmy Reed and Albert King. James Brown may be the man in Augusta but Ralph was Soul Brother Number One in Laurens County.
Everyone that knew Ralph was his friend. From his classmates from Sanders, the staff at Bojangles, and just about anyone that walked through the door of B&T Tape Shop. I am proud to have been Ralph’s friend for the last 20 years. I would personally like to thank some people that have stood by Ralph as friends and prayer warriors in these last weeks. Roy Williams of the Flatt Ruff Baptist Church, Ms. Mary Simpson, Mr. Wister Jones, Mr. Melvin and Rose McDowell and Brian McDowell, a strong man of faith with a deep devotion to family.
Ralph and Howard…….We sho nuff had some good times.
Wyatt Mattison, General Manager
Real Radio 860 WLBG