On August 14, 1945, Herbert Herff applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a construction permit to build a new radio station to broadcast with 250 watts on 1340 kHz in Memphis.

[10] Herff owned the station for 14 months before selling the AM and the still-unbuilt FM to Mid-South Broadcasting Company, headed by Prentis Furlow, owner of KTBS in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1947 for $300,000.

[11] The AM facility was moved to 46 Neely Street in 1949,[2] and the FM station on 106.9 MHz was on test by the start of 1950, being briefly used in an emergency to feed WMCF during an ice storm in the first week of January.

The Russwood Park fire, a five-alarm blaze in April 1960, destroyed the baseball stadium as well as the nearby WHHM studios and a bank branch, causing an estimated $1 million in damage.

[25] A dispute over covered losses escalated into litigation when Shipp sued the Agricultural Insurance Company, based in Watertown, New York, in a case that centered on the value of the radio station's lost record library and jingles.

Grumbles formerly had been a vice president of RKO Teleradio, owner in Memphis of WHBQ-AM-FM-TV, before cutting ties and searching for a station to own himself.

[28] Upon taking over in November, Grumbles replaced all the disc jockeys with a new airstaff, consisting mostly of former Memphians returning from other cities; he also changed the operation so that all music was played from cartridges instead of records.

However, two Connecticut men, Victor Muscat and Joseph P. Trantino, claimed to have bought a minority stake in the station from another Mercury shareholder and objected to the transaction.

[36] Meanwhile, Marvin C. Goff, trustee in bankruptcy, was tasked with finding a buyer for the radio station, reporting in June that two experienced broadcasters were "very strong prospects" to purchase the outlet.

[38][39] The $135,000 deal, plus $15,000 from the state of Tennessee for the condemnation of the transmitter site in order to build today's Interstate 240, would give WHHM's creditors 33 cents of every dollar they were owed.

[41] On December 31, 1963, the FCC granted an application to transfer the license and to relocate the transmitter to the existing WLOK site at 1386 South McLemore Avenue.

[43] The studios were just blocks from the Lorraine Motel; when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on April 4, 1968, death threats were made on Tom Watson—the station's only White employee—who had to be escorted out of the building.

The new general manager, Billy T. Lathem, was viewed by the 11 Black employees on staff as an "Uncle Tom who made promises but didn't carry them through".

[59][60] Gilliam Communications made several other expansions: it attempted to win the rights to channel 13 in Memphis when RKO General was to be replaced as owner of WHBQ-TV, and it ran station WERD in Jacksonville, Florida, for four years before selling it at a loss.

[55] WLOK was also recognized in the 1990s and early 2000s as one of the leading gospel stations in the United States, including by Religion & Media Monthly magazine and the National Black Programmers Coalition.