WYEP has had a few libraries of vinyl records over the five decades it’s been on air. At the station’s first home at 4 Cable Place in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood, conditions for record storage weren't so great. According to long-time WYEP Bluegrass host, Bruce Mountjoy, the station’s first home had quite a scent profile.
“The smell of Cable Place was a unique mix of mildew, must, sewage,” Mountjoy said. “It was a combination of smells that was unlike anything else.”
The damp and musty conditions caused warped records and mold to form on the paper sleeves. The station’s first music library was probably a few thousand records and limited to mostly jazz, folk and some bluegrass. DJs who wanted to play the latest rock ‘n’ roll of the time would have to bring in their own vinyl from home. Also, the studio at Cable Place was not a very secure site — there were lots of people always coming and going, and even though most records were marked up with “WYEP” and sometimes a note like “Removal is Theft,” records disappeared from the library at a steady pace.
When WYEP shut down to restructure in 1985, the Cable Place studio was closed, most of the equipment and some of the records were moved to storage, but some were left behind. According to Willie Weber, son of the late Jerry — the namesake of Jerry’s Records in Squirrel Hill — the remainder of the records that were left behind were sold to Jerry’s by the Cable Place landlord to recoup some lost money from WYEP.
After WYEP’s restructuring, the station prepared to return to the airwaves in 1987, and part of that preparation was rebuilding the music library. Upon the completion of the new broadcast studios at Chatham College (now Chatham University), some of the records came back from storage, others were sent in from record labels, and some were purchased. The new collection was smaller and better cared for (the building was also air conditioned), but still limited in scope (there were a lot of New Age records, says WYEP’s Rosemary Welsch). Still, like before, many DJs in the Chatham era still brought vinyl records from home, especially Harry Wagner (aka Harry the Wire), who had a very large collection of records.
By the early 90’s, CD’s were beginning to take over as the primary format for music on the radio, so stations began swapping out their record shelves for CD shelves. By 1994, WYEP had outgrown the studios at Chatham College, and moved the station into newly built studios in the Birmingham Place building on Carson Street in the South Side. One thing that didn’t move to the new facility was the record collection: Records were offered to station staff and volunteers first, and then, according to Willie Weber, WYEP reached out to his dad (Jerry), and sold what was left to Jerry’s Records.
In 2006, the CD library did travel to WYEP’s current home, the Community Broadcast Center on the South Side. It's estimated there are now about 55,000 discs in the collection according to WYEP’s Music Director, Kyle Smith. These days, WYEP gets fewer CD’s and the physical library hasn’t grown much in the last few years. WYEP’s music library grows daily, however, but on a hard drive. According to Smith, the station has about half a million songs possible to play, and it takes up almost 2 terabytes of space.
However, with the return of vinyl, WYEP still likes to celebrate records and at times has programmed some special all-vinyl events over the past few years. In January of 2017, WYEP hosted an all-vinyl day, playing 12 hours of records from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. — and to celebrate WYEP’s 45th anniversary, Rosemary Welsch played all 45’s on the Afternoon Mix.
Even today, if you listen carefully, there are still some hosts that do still play vinyl on WYEP, including Bruce Mountjoy of the “Bluegrass Jam Session,” Wrett Weatherspoon on “Big Town Blues,” Kerem Gokmen on “Dubmission” and Clara Kent’s even worked in a few on “More Bounce.” However, there’s not much of a vinyl library at the station these days, so everyone brings in records from home to play them on their shows.
In January of 2021 WYEP launched “The Grooves,” an all vinyl radio show (hosted by me, Brian Siewiorek) you can hear Wednesdays from 10 p.m. to midnight. And yes, those are really are all my records.
