Tori Bailey

TORI BAILEY

Tori Bailey is president of the Music Preservation Society, which organizes the W.C. Handy Music Festival. She also serves as general manager of Tuscumbia radio station WZZA, launched in 1972 by her father, Robert Carl Bailey (1935-2001).

Born in Leighton, Alabama, Bob Carl (as he was known) graduated from Leighton Training School in the mid-1950s and enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving a total of three-and-a-half years. Upon returning to the Shoals from Germany, where he had been stationed, he got his first job in radio as a disc jockey at WJOI. He subsequently moved to Huntsville to work part-time at WEUP, and went on to become one of the Huntsville Police Department’s first black officers. He then relocated to Triana, Alabama, where he served as the city’s first black police chief, before returning to the Shoals once again.

During the early 1960s, while working at Star Motors in Sheffield, Bailey met the dealership owner’s son-in-law, Rick Hall. When Hall left the car business and started FAME Studios, Bailey introduced him to childhood friend and fellow Leighton native Jimmy Hughes, whose song “Steal Away” (produced by Hall) would later become one of the Shoals area’s first million-selling singles.

Bailey, too, tried his hand at production, overseeing the recording of an unsuccessful single by a local gospel group. He met with greater success when he established a small chain of record stores, with three locations in Florence and Tuscumbia. He also teamed up with his friend Leonard Skipworth to promote concerts by James Brown, Clarence Carter, Little Milton and others at the Florence-Lauderdale Coliseum. In 1972, Bailey himself appeared on record, contributing spoken-word vocals to Z.Z. Hill’s hit “It Ain’t No Use,” cut at Broadway Sound Studio.

Encouraged by Brown to get into the radio business, he co-founded Muscle Shoals Broadcasting, Inc., with a group of established, white businessmen. Using Bailey’s money, the partnership purchased a local radio station and dissolved several years later, at which point Bob Carl and his wife Odessa assumed full ownership and became the first black radio station licensees in the Shoals.

"They knew that there was this need for a voice that was uncensored and unfettered. A voice that we controlled, that would speak to people in our community about issues that affected people in our community. A place where people could go to hear music, and not have to listen for an hour or two to hear a song that they recognized… There was a void, and they filled it."