KBLX PD Elroy Smith, Laser Focused, Still Eager to Win

Elroy Smith has always been a larger-than-life figure in our great industry. He was one of the first people I met when I started in the industry when he invited me to the table to eat with industry notables when I was in my early 20s at a Jack the Rapper convention in Atlanta.

I was dead broke and had left my job as a waiter at the (then) new Marriott Marquis in Atlanta a few months prior. I quit that job and my pay was cut into a fourth of what I was making as a waiter.  I was making a paltry $210 a month at WIGO and my rent was $350.00.

I snuck into that convention, I was young, poor and thrilled to be on a journey into the music industry but I felt incredibly out of place sitting with the people that I had seen in the trade magazines while working at WIGO. The late Nate Quick and I nicknamed the station “Nam” (as in Vietnam) and I almost quit the industry by working there before I really got started, but the trade magazines that were sitting around the station gave me insight into the industry, most notably “Jack the Rapper.”

Sitting at that table, I felt like I was sitting with a bunch of stars and Elroy treated me just like he treated them and I never forgot that. It is an incredible irony some 30 something years later that I would have my own trade site and magazine (started 24 years ago) but maybe not. Perhaps we get clues to our future by how we start the journey.

Over the years, we’ve seen a LOT of changes, a lot of people are either no longer with us or have left the industry.

To still be in the industry is an incredible blessing. I’ve noticed over the last few years that Elroy, once the accompli