Pervis Spann

Pervis Spann was born in Itta Bena, Mississippi. During his teenage years, he cared for his family by picking cotton and managing a local movie theater, The Dixie Theater after his mother could no longer do that because she suffered a stroke. Spann, his sister and mother moved to Battle Creek, Michigan in 1949. Shortly after moving to Michigan, Spann left to work in Gary, Indiana, and spent a time in the forces in the Korean War, before returning to live in Chicago, Illinois, where he worked in a steel mill, drove a taxi, and repaired television sets.[3][4]

Under the G.I. Bill, Spann attended the Midwestern Broadcasting School, before starting work on WOPA radio in 1959. Spann organized his first concert, featuring B.B. King and Junior Parker, in 1960.[4] Three years later, when Leonard and Phil Chess launched WVON, Spann was given a regular late-night blues slot,[1] and won attention with an 87-hour "sleepless sit-in" on the station to raise money for Martin Luther King Jr.. During the 1960s, Spann managed the careers of leading blues and soul performers, including B.B. King,[4] and claimed to have a role in discovering the Jackson 5 and Chaka Khan. Spann co-owned several clubs, including the Burning Spear.[5] After WVON was sold in 1975, Spann helped set up a new blues and gospel-oriented station, WXOL, on the same frequency in 1979; it became WVON again in 1983 and his daughter Melody Spann-Cooper runs it now as a talk show station.[5] Spann continued to promote blues festivals, and also ran station WXSS in Memphis, Tennessee, during the 1980s.[3][4]

• David Whiteis, "Not So Smooth Operator", Chicago Reader, January 18, 2001