Musicians and singers such as Rob Cambre, Samirah Evans, Alan Fontenot, Bob French, Hazel the Delta Rambler, Sam Cammarata, Ernie K-Doe, Bobby Mitchell, Davis Rogan, Tom Saunders, John Sinclair, Don Vappie, Dr. Michael White and others have had their own shows on the station.

WWOZ is also known for its location broadcasts of live music events, including the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, co-owned with the station.

[8] The founders of WWOZ were brothers Walter and Jerry Brock, from Texas, who thought New Orleans needed a community radio station and began organizing it in the mid-1970s.

[6] A few months later the broadcasts moved to the space the station had been using in a dilapidated two-room apartment upstairs from the music club Tipitina's at Napoleon Avenue and Tchoupitoulas Street in Uptown New Orleans.

In the same year, Better Than Ezra, an alternative rock band from New Orleans, released a song titled "WWOZ", where they mention this radio station.

WWOZ made the decision to go off the air at midnight on August 27, 2005, in anticipation of Hurricane Katrina to allow its programmers and staff to evacuate the city.

The last song played before signing off that night was "What the Heck, Let’s Discotheque" by Side Effect, spun by DJ Soul Sister.

But the station's transmitter atop the Tidewater Building on Canal Street in downtown New Orleans was found to be intact and serviceable, given a studio source.

For some time after the station returned to the air, one programmer did a series of shows entirely from CDs rescued from the debris in post-Katrina muck.

[13][14] Pre-Katrina, thousands of hours of New Orleans music performances on tape via WWOZ were stored in a non-descript storage site.

The tapes were later shipped to the Library of Congress, which had previously named the WWOZ collection to its National Recording Registry.