Wvon

WVON began as WHFC in 1926, broadcasting from the Hotel Flanders in Chicago, Illinois. Like many small stations of the time, WHFC was squeezed into a shared-time frequency, with as many as five stations taking turns on 1310. In 1930, they were given permission to move to 1420 with two other stations. WHFC bought out the other two in 1936 and changed its city of license to Cicero, Illinois. WHFC was shifted to 1450 in 1941. In 1963, WHFC became WVON when it was purchased by Leonard & Phil Chess, the owners of Chess Records, a successful record label specializing in blues music. WVON debuted on April 1, 1963 and quickly became a success playing R&B music, ranking consistently among the top five most listened to stations in the market. Despite having only 250 watts of power, WVON's non-directional signal was engineered well enough to blanket the south and west sides of Chicago. WVON was a "heritage" station to Chicago's black community featuring great Black air personalities like Lucky Cordell, Bruce Brown, Herb Kent "The Cool Gent", E. Rodney Jones, Cecil Hale, Joe Cobb, Ed "Nassau Daddy" Cook, Bill "Butter Ball" Crane, Pervis Spann, Yvonne Daniels, Don Cornelius, Sid McCoy (who would accompany Cornelius when he formed Soul Train), Richard Pegue, Bernadine C. Washington, Jay Johnson, newsmen Roy Wood and Jim Moloney, a very young reporter/engineer Larry Langford and many others. WVON became well-known outside the Chicago area as well. Berry Gordy, the president of Motown Records, sent every song he produced immediately to WVON before any other station. Other similar stations across the country took inspiration from WVON's format. The station also had an active role during the Civil Rights Movement, covering it extensively.