WJMI is a radio station

Radio station

Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...

 licensed

City of license

A city of license or community of license, in American and Canadian broadcasting, is the community that a radio station or television station is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator....

 to Jackson, Mississippi

Jackson, Mississippi

Jackson is the capital and the most populous city of the US state of Mississippi. It is one of two county seats of Hinds County ,. The population of the city declined from 184,256 at the 2000 census to 173,514 at the 2010 census...

, USA with a Mainstream Urban

Mainstream Urban

Mainstream Urban is a term used to describe a radio format similar to an Urban Contemporary format. The format differentiates itself due to two factors: playlist composition and target demographic...

 musical format. The station is owned by Inner City Broadcasting Corporation

Inner City Broadcasting Corporation

The Inner City Broadcasting Corporation is an American media company based in New York City. ICBC is notable for being one of the first broadcasting companies wholly owned by black people...

.

Station history

The station began in 1968 as an FM sister to station WRBC-AM and was owned by the Rebel Broadcasting Company. Most of the disc jockeys who were on WRBC took shifts on the FM station, and hosting a shift on the FM station was used to test new talent for WRBC.

Among the more famous voices to be heard on WJMI were Bob Pittman

Robert W. Pittman

Robert Warren "Bob" Pittman , is an American businessman and the founder of MTV. On October 2, 2011, Pittman was named CEO of Clear Channel Media Holdings, Inc.. Pittman has also been the CEO of MTV Networks, AOL, Six Flags Theme Parks, Quantum Media, Century 21 Real Estate and Time Warner...

 (founder of MTV

MTV

MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

), Walt Grayson (later a television weatherperson for two Jackson television stations), and Mary Lewis.

The station then broadcast from 7:00 a.m. until midnight. It was affiliated with the ABC-FM news network and broadcast the news each hour at fifteen minutes past the hour with local news following.

The station began as an easy listening

Easy listening

Easy listening is a broad style of popular music and radio format that emerged in the 1950s, evolving out of big band music, and related to MOR music as played on many AM radio stations. It encompasses the exotica, beautiful music, light music, lounge music, ambient music, and space age pop genres...

 station with some of the talent later recalling that every version of "Spanish Eyes

Moon Over Naples

"Moon Over Naples" is a 1965 instrumental composed and originally performed by German bandleader Bert Kaempfert and was the first track on his album, The Magic Music of Far Away Places for Decca Records....

" was played on the station. By the 1970s, though, the station had evolved into an adult contemporary station which played album-cuts from such singer-songwriters as Carole King

Carole King

Carole King is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer, King had an album, Tapestry, top the U.S...

, Carly Simon

Carly Simon

Carly Elisabeth Simon is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and children's author. She rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records, and has since been the recipient of two Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award for her work...

, Paul Simon

Paul Simon

Paul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...

, and Helen Reddy

Helen Reddy

Helen Reddy , often referred to as "The Queen of 70s Pop", is an Australian-American singer and actress. In the 1970s, she enjoyed international success, especially in the United States, where she placed fifteen singles in the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. Six of those 15 songs made the Top 10...

, bubblegum music (such as David Cassidy

David Cassidy

David Bruce Cassidy is an American actor, singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for his role as the character of Keith Partridge in the 1970s musical/sitcom The Partridge Family. He was one of pop culture's most celebrated teen idols, enjoying a successful pop career in the 1970s, and...

, Bobby Sherman

Bobby Sherman

Robert Cabot "Bobby" Sherman, Jr. , is an American singer, actor and occasional songwriter, who became a popular teen idol in the late 1960s and early 1970s.He graduated in 1961 from Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California...

, and the Partridge Family, and middle-of-the-road artists such as Johnny Mathis

Johnny Mathis

John Royce "Johnny" Mathis is an American singer of popular music. Starting his career with singles of standards, he became highly popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status, and 73 making the Billboard charts...

, Vikki Carr

Vikki Carr

Vikki Carr is an American singer and humanitarian from El Paso, Texas. She has performed in a variety of music genres, including jazz, pop and country, but has enjoyed her greatest success singing in Spanish.-Career:After taking the stage name 'Vikki Carr', she signed with Liberty Records in 1962...

, and Andy Williams

Andy Williams

Howard Andrew "Andy" Williams is an American singer who has recorded 18 Gold- and three Platinum-certified albums. He hosted The Andy Williams Show, a TV variety show, from 1962 to 1971, as well as numerous television specials, and owns his own theater, the Moon River Theatre in Branson, Missouri,...

. Instrumental music and soft easy-listening music was played on the station, especially preceding the news.

WJMI was one of the first stations to employ female disc jockeys.

There were occasionally contests for concerts (such as the 1971 State Fair appearance of actor-singer Bobby Sherman

Bobby Sherman

Robert Cabot "Bobby" Sherman, Jr. , is an American singer, actor and occasional songwriter, who became a popular teen idol in the late 1960s and early 1970s.He graduated in 1961 from Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California...

).

On April 1, 1973, WJMI was sold to new owners, who then flipped the format to its current rhythm-and-blues, which they have programmed ever since.