WLAY (AM)

[3] The station signed on in 1933 as WNRA, and has since secured its place in American music history thanks to its contribution to what is now commonly referred to as "The Muscle Shoals Sound".

A number of bluegrass and delta blues musicians made regular live appearances on the radio station including Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, Sonny Boy Williamson and Son House.

Sam Phillips, future founder of Sun Records, worked as a disc jockey at the radio station in his formative years and frequently cited the station's "open playlist" as the inspiration for what would become Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee, blending both country and blues music to form Rock and Roll.

In the early 1960s, Muscle Shoals began to develop as a popular music capital in the United States and WLAY played an important role in this growth.

Following the success of local resident Arthur Alexander (and his hit single "You Better Move On"; later covered by the Rolling Stones), the area quickly saw the rise of numerous recording studios.

The WLAY audience would frequently choose the "single" by artists such as Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Clarence Carter, and several others to be shipped nationwide after having heard the entire, completed session on the air.

Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, with an equally impressive pedigree of artists to its credit including Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Bob Seger, Paul Simon, The Staple Singers, Cher, Boz Scaggs, Cat Stevens, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Willie Nelson, The Rolling Stones, Joe Cocker and Traffic, was the site of the second day’s broadcast.

Additionally, the station spent hours sharing stories with famed area songwriters Donnie Fritts ("Breakfast in Bed", "We Had It All"), Earl "Peanut" Montgomery ("We Must Have Been Out Of Our Minds", "What’s Your Mama’s Name, Child?

"), Mark Narmore ("What I Love About Sunday"), Gary Baker ("I Swear") as well as legendary session players and contemporary Muscle Shoals-based artists including John Paul White, Jason Isbell, The Drive-By Truckers, Sons of Roswell, Dillon Hodges, Byron Green, Heartland, and The Shoals.

Further, The Sound began playing an increased amount of new local music in addition to the "classic" Muscle Shoals titles it had become known for.

The STA was granted and they kept stringing along on STAs into 2017, when they finally filed an application to permanently move the station's transmitter site to the WVNA-FM tower off New Cut Road, south of Tuscumbia.

[4] Effective April 1, 2019, URBan Radio sold WLAY and five sister stations to Singing River Media Group, LLC for $1.275 million.