GREENVILLE — “Border to border, coast to coast, and all around the world, we finally made it to Friday night! It’s the “Sock Hop” on WNCT!” booms from your speaker.
If you’re hearing that, it’s Friday evening, 6:00 o’clock (ET), and you’re listening to someone you regard as a friend, John Moore the host of one of North Carolina’s most popular radio shows. Regulars from all over the country tune in by radio and the Internet each week.
It’s comfort food for the ears. In a time when radio dissects its audiences into smaller and smaller constituencies, the Sock Hop aims broad.
Moore says, “[Our music is] all ’50s and ’60s with an emphasis on ’62 plus. We have an amazing mix of listeners. We have one of the biggest concentrations of black audience outside urban music stations.”
If you’re not a child of the 1960s who loves music, you may know John instead from “Carolina Outdoor Journal.” He and Joe Albea co-host North Carolina Public Television’s premier sportsman’s broadcast. They are now entering their 20th year on the air.
What you may not know is that Moore, born in Hookerton and raised in Farmville, is a Mason. He’s a member of Farmville 517 and Jerusalem 95 (his grandfather’s lodge).
Moore never intended a broadcast career. On his way to a job interview elsewhere more than 40 years ago, he dropped by WNCT’s Greenville offices/studio to see a friend. When the station manager learned Moore had a First Class Radio License, he was invited into the office for a chat. He’s been broadcasting on radio and television ever since.
“I was lucky. I went through AM radio when it was the Boss Format. That was the last great format in radio. I came through the days of pioneering FM radio when you needed a converter [to pick up the stations].”
John also worked local television. While working on Carolina Today, WNCT-TV’s morning talk show, Moore met Joe Albea who provided outdoor features for the show. They eventually began working together on “Carolina Outdoor Journal.” As their reputation grew, they were picked up by WUNC-TV. In April, they were shooting the coming season of the sportsman’s staple. They broadcast across North Carolina on Saturday evening and Sunday morning.
In 1996, he started “Sock Hop,” his current Friday night hit.
Moore arrives at the radio station a couple of hours before the show starts. He scurries around the studio arranging his recordings, request faxes, and play lists, at the same time he is on the phone recording some of the show’s commercials which will appear that night. His patter with advertisers is the same as that with fans who will be calling in within minutes — laughing and making small talk while they do business.
Then, just before his 6:00 o’clock launch, the phone board lights up. The madness begins. All are vying to get a favorite song or anniversary or birthday mentioned on air. Moore looks like a juggler handling the computers and switches and scraps of paper and CDs needed for the evening’s show.
From behind a large smile, Moore says, “My job here when those hands are straight up and down at 6:00 is to make people forget about everything in the world except being 17 years old. For five solid hours, that’s my job.”
WNCT Sales Manager Lisa McHugh says, “The show brings people back to a time that makes them feel comfortable. They have fun. It becomes a date for them every Friday night.” The show has a healthy racial mix in its audience. Many listeners are from the day before radio was carved up into smaller and more targeted audiences. They grew up on AM and top-40 radio which mixed music and hits from black and white, country and rock, instrumental and pop cultures. Sock Hop is one of old radio’s last bastions in a business that now disregards broad audiences.
“I’m lucky that the station lets me do this,” smiles Moore.
Computers and the Internet have contributed greatly to “Sock Hop’s” widespread popularity. According to Moore, “Computer listening is important now. A lady from Polson, Montana was a truck driver. She heard about us from her brother in Raleigh who found us on the radio. She started telling people about it at truck stops. Now we have passionate listeners from as far away as Seattle WA, Scottsdale AZ, Amarillo TX, Pensacola FL, Virginia, Maryland, just all over, who tune in on Friday nights.”
Requests pour in over the phone lines, fax, and email from all over the country.
What brought John Moore to Freemasonry?
“In 1996, I became a Mason because the Shriners had been so kind to me and my family when my daughter was born with spina bifida. I sought to find out what I could do to return the favors that the Shriners had done for us. So, when we would go to Shrine Children’s Hospital in Greenville, South Carolina, I found that the route to the Shrine was through the Masons.”
“As luck would have it, my next door neighbor [the late John Turner Walston] was a Mason and was later my coach.” Moore is very active in Sudan Shrine. Both his sons are Masons.
Summer, his late daughter, died on John’s 40th birthday, three days after he returned to the States from Operation Desert Storm. John and his family went on to help create the Summer Moore Children’s Center in Greenville. The center is a private, nonprofit health and education agency serving children from seven counties in the east in cooperation with Easter Seals.
Moore is in the Shaggers Hall of Fame, has been named Outstanding Pitt Community College Alumnus, received North Carolina’s Order of the Long Leaf Pine, and is serving his second term as a Farmville town commissioner.
Want to see what things look like while John enjoys his work?
This article first appeared in The North Carolina Mason and is shared here by permission of the author and editor, me.
