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KTFW's Joe Bielinski enters Texas Country Music Hall of Fame [Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas](Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Aug. 18--MINGUS -- For nearly half a century, the Trio Club was the hottest nightclub between Abilene and Fort Worth. On the main drag of this otherwise remote town, it regularly hosted country-music legends such as Bob Wills, Hank Thompson and Faron Young. For many of those years, Mingus was the only place that you could drink legally between Abilene and Fort Worth -- the surrounding counties were dry. The Trio Club is dormant now. Big-city venues like Billy Bob's and Gilley's took away some of its business. When larger counties allowed alcohol sales, there was no reason for many of its longtime patrons to continue making the drive. But Joe Bielinski has never forgotten the club. His parents ran it for 50 years. The house he grew up in is practically in its back yard. "It always featured hard-core country music," says Bielinski, 50. "When I was 6 years old, I used to stand on the stage during the Saturday-night dances and watch the people dance and watch the musicians. I guess it was just implanted in my mind." Bielinski, who became mayor of Mingus at one point, has never lost that love of and fascination with old country music. Since 1991, he has been sharing it with radio listeners on his show Classic Country Review, which airs 7-10 p.m. Sundays on Fort Worth's KTFW/92.1 FM. It's a mix of old country music and interviews with classic-country stars, stuff that you don't generally hear on the radio anymore except on shows like Bielinski's. Saturday, Bielinski will officially become a member of the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame during an induction ceremony in the East Texas town of Carthage. Music icons Mickey Gilley and Moe Bandy -- both of whom Bielinski has interviewed -- will also be inducted. "His knowledge of country music has always been outstanding," says longtime radio host Bill Mack, who nominated Bielinski for the honor. "And he still presents country music as a disc jockey, and we're running short on DJs now. I think he's contributed so much that he deserves to be put in that very special place of honor." Live from Fort Worth Bielinski still lives in Mingus, still close to the Trio Club. With modern radio technology, he could easily do his show from his house. But he makes the 70-mile or so trip to Fort Worth every Sunday to do Classic Country Review. "I never tape it," he says. "It's good to get out of Mingus once a week and go downtown. That's a wonderful area there, Sundance Square, and a lot of the stars that play on Saturday nights will [stay over in town] till Sunday, and they'll pop in on my show." Bielinski says he only features hard-core country. He's interviewed about 45 Grand Ole Opry artists, scoring big names like Jimmy Dean, who was a country singer before he was a sausage king; Porter Wagoner, shortly before he died; and Buck Owens, shortly before he retired from touring. The show's 20th anniversary is in September, and there'll be a celebratory concert Sept. 25 at Will Rogers Memorial Center, featuring such classic-country names as Moe Bandy, Jim Ed Brown, David Frizzell and George Hamilton IV. It hasn't always been a Fort Worth-based show. When it started, Classic Country Review was broadcast much closer to home, at Mineral Wells' KYXS. Bielinski, a drummer who began playing in bands at 15, had developed a lot of connections in the music industry. He had also assembled a huge vinyl-record collection -- he estimates that it's currently about 50,000 albums -- and thought that it would be a good idea to share his music with radio listeners. He went to KYXS and told the boss he wanted to do a classic-country show. The boss told Bielinski that the show would probably be better suited to a small AM station. "'I said, 'No -- it would be so cool to put classic country on FM. We'd be the first people to do this,'" Bielinski recalls. "We argued around there, and he finally said, 'Listen. You're not worth a damn to me if you don't make me money. I don't care how many records you have, I don't care how much knowledge you have -- you bring me back 10 signed [advertising] contracts for six months, and I'll put you on the air.'" Bielinski was pretty well-known in the area. He brought back 20 contracts, and he had a show. KYXS evolved into KFWR/95.9 FM "The Ranch" and moved its studios into Sundance Square. Bielinski's show moved to classic-country KTFW, the Ranch's sister station. Just because he likes driving to Fort Worth doesn't mean that he likes driving in the city, and the move took some getting used to. "When I found out we were moving into Fort Worth, it was like culture-shock city," Bielinski says. "But this is my career, and whatever I have to do, I'm going to follow that." Mayor by name Bielinski is well known in Mingus for another reason: He's the town's former mayor. That came as a surprise to him, especially considering the fact that he never actually ran for the office. "I was in college at Tarleton in Stephenville, and I came home, and Mother said, 'The city secretary's on the phone,'" he recalls. "And I'm a wild college kid, and I said, 'What does she want?' "So I asked her, and she said, 'Joe, you need to be at the City Council meeting Monday night.' I said, 'For what?' 'To be sworn in.' 'For what?' She said, 'For mayor.' I said, 'I didn't run for mayor!' She said, 'You were written in.' I beat the incumbent and two people running." At the time, Bielinski was 20 years old. As he puts it, he was just trying to play drums and chase girls. But then he thought that maybe he could do something with the unexpected position. He got interested, and during his eight-year tenure, Mingus got a new city hall, paved streets and a repaired water system. At the time, he says, he was the youngest mayor in Texas history. (A few years later, Brian Zimmerman, an 11-year-old in Crabb, beat Bielinski's record by several years; People even did a story about him.) "A lot of people didn't even know my name was Joe," Bielinski says. "They just called me 'Mayor,' and that's what my nickname is. And it's stuck with me to this day." The license plate on his pickup still reads "MAYOR B." And he recently launched a website, themayorofcountrymusic.com. Thanks to the Internet, he has a lot of fans in other cities. Some of them are as young as he was when he became a country-music fan. But he also knows he has to tread a careful line with these fans. "I don't play the old old stuff," he says. "I play the 'newer-sounding' old stuff, where it bridges the gap. I play the more modern honky-tonk, when they had modern-sounding steel guitar. If a younger person hears [country pioneer] Jimmie Rodgers or stuff like that -- not that it's not good -- it doesn't sound good on FM stereo." Even when he started the show in 1991, Bielinski says, "modern" country just wasn't for him. He goes back to country's 1950s and '60s heyday, playing it as if it's the most natural thing in the world to hear on a country station in 2011. And that's never going to change. "I'm just convinced, and I knew this going in, that in radio, if you love all sorts of country, you're not going to please anybody," he says. "So I knew I had to go in, be hard-core, gather my audience, and they would stick with me. If I loved everything, I'd be just another disc jockey." Robert Philpot, 817-390-7872 ___ To see more of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dfw.com. Copyright (c) 2011, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail [email protected], or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544) |