Turner’s Drug Store and the Easy Pay Store in Belzoni became part of blues history as sponsors of some of the first radio programs in Mississippi to feature Delta blues. In 1947-48, stations in Yazoo City and Greenville began broadcasting live remote performances from Belzoni by Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2 and Elmore James. Williamson, James, and other musicians often performed outside the stores and inside the Easy Pay, which was wired for Williamson’s weekday 3:30 p.m. broadcasts over Yazoo City station WAZF while crowds watched through the front window. Williamson, already known for his “King Biscuit Time” program in Helena, Arkansas, broadcast on programs sponsored by the Easy Pay Store and Tallyho, an alcohol-laced vitamin and mineral tonic produced at Turner’s Drug Store. Elmore James often played guitar with Williamson and sang his own songs, including “Dust My Broom.” WAZF laid a direct telephone line to Belzoni and built a local studio to expand the remote broadcasts beginning on June 1, 1948, and WJPR in Greenville also carried the Easy Pay and Tallyho shows, helping raise the profiles of Williamson and James before their recording careers at Trumpet Records in Jackson. Drug store co-owner O. J. Turner, Jr., and Easy Pay proprietor George Gordon were partners in Tallyho, made under a formula licensed from Louisiana senator Dudley LeBlanc, creator of Hadacol. Turner’s son, O. J. “Bubba” III, mixed Tallyho in a No. 2 washtub at the drug store, and Turner, Jr., later delivered it to drug stores around the Delta. When not on the radio, Williamson and James played on the streets, in front of Turner’s, and at local juke joints and cafes. James had once lived on the Turner Brothers’ plantation with his family and his adopted play brother, Robert Earl Holston, who often joined him on guitar. Both James and Williamson lived in the Belzoni area at various times in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and both married Belzoni women, though neither stayed long in one place. Williamson began broadcasting for Hadacol in West Memphis in late 1948, sometimes with guests including the young B. B. King, who later hosted a Memphis blues show sponsored by another tonic, Pep-Ti-Kon.
