Walter Ralph Emery (March 10, 1933 – January 15, 2022) was an American country music disc jockey, radio and television host from McEwen, Tennessee.
[citation needed] He hosted a late-afternoon program on WSM-TV in the late 1960s, Sixteenth Avenue South (named for one of the streets on Nashville's Music Row of recording studios), with the same format.
Owing to the morning show's popularity and demands on his time, Emery ended his long run on the overnight shift on WSM radio in 1972; Hairl Hensley replaced him and went on to a thirty-year career with the station.
From the mid-1960s until the early 1990s (except for several years in the 1960s when hosted by country singer Bobby Lord and a two-year period between 1970 and 1972), Emery also hosted a weekday morning show, Opry Almanac (later dubbed The Ralph Emery Show), on WSMV, which featured an in-studio band of local session musicians and aspiring singers (including The Judds and Lorrie Morgan), along with news and weather updates and in-studio live commercials.
His eye and ear for talent was inclusive in breaking color barriers and started the careers of younger African-American singers such as J.P.Netters, who was included as a part of his studio band in the early 1980s.
[4] The song "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" details an unpleasant on-air exchange between Emery, Roger McGuinn and Gram Parsons of the 1960s rock group The Byrds, concerning their 1968 appearance at The Grand Ole Opry.