Talent: WINK MARTINDALE
interviews ELVIS PRESLEY
Station: WHBQ Memphis
Date: August, 1956
Time: 37:00
(unscoped)
Wink Martindale and Elvis, 1956
One of this aircheck's subjects went on to become a game-show TV star. The other? Well, he had a singing career of note.
It was 1950 when Wink Martindale got his first radio gig - as a disc jockey at age 17 in his hometown of Jackson, Tennessee. He made $25 a week at WPLI. After jocking at a couple of other Jackson stations, he moved to WHBQ Memphis where he's heard below playing interview tapes with the then-rising star Elvis Presley in August 1956. Martindale moved to Los Angeles in 1959 to work at KHJ (pre-Drake), followed by gigs at a string of other Los Angeles stations: KRLA, KFWB, KGIL, KKGO/KJQI, KMPC, KABC and KJQI. His radio career was overshadowed by his other gig - as a TV show host, on popular shows like Gambit, Tic-Tac-Dough, Bumper Stumpers and High Rollers.
Martindale also had a hit record - the spoken-word "Deck of Cards." It went to #7 in 1959.
As for the other guy, Elvis sold over a billion records - not bad for a guy who never received formal music training and could not read music.
Hear Wink
Martindale with Elvis Presley on WHBQ from
August, 1956 here. 
(The Charlie Ritenburg Collection)