Get to Know Your On-Air Hosts- The Vivacious Pam Wells

KTSU is excited to bring our listeners closer to the music with our “Get to Know Your On-Air Hosts” series. Each month, we highlight one of our talented on-air hosts to give you a better sense of who they are beyond the airwaves.

For this special Women’s History month feature, we are thrilled to shine the spotlight on The Vivacious Pam Wells host of Vintage Classics on Fridays from 9am-1pm.

Q: What inspired you to start your show? What motivates you to continue hosting each week?

Pam Wells: So, I grew up in an era of music where R&B artists and R&B music was elevated and revered. The genre of music was protected, you know, our music was our culture, and we embraced it. every phase of it from early Johnny Mathis, Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles Ella Fitzgerald, Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughan, oh my goodness, I could go down a list of a million artists to the from the 60s to the 70s! We celebrated it and radio was our way of feeling it. Radio always preserved the music, and then after being in radio for a while, what I recognized was that we were so focused on playing the number one hits and on playing the billboard top charts that we abandoned our legacy. I just refused to allow that to happen. It was and still is so important to me because I’m a firm believer that if you don’t know where you came from, you don’t know where you’re going.

I’ve watched students no longer know how to play instruments. I’ve watched everything move to digital, and even though you can emulate that artistry of long ago, you really can’t duplicate that sound. When you listen, you have a higher appreciation for what that artistry is, so when I hear young people say, oh, you know, I heard that song by LL Cool J– No, LL didn’t do it, James Brown did the lick.

So, it’s important to me to lay that foundation and really tell the history. That’s what inspired me to start the show.

What motivates me to continue hosting every week is that I’m listening to music and flashing back every week, or having discussions with some of my friends or my listeners. Well, let me say this– what motivates me is the listeners, so let’s start there, because the listeners are calling in and going, “Oh my goodness, Pam, do you remember this song?” and “Girl I was this age when this song came out!” and, “Do you remember this cut?” and “Oh my God, do you have it?”

This is what motivates me to go dig it up to dig deep. I’m telling you for many years when I was off the air, I was kind of abandoning my collection. Now I’m like rejuvenated and I am out here hunting for music, not just streaming.

I’m dedicated to restoring my collection of music and reviving that music and my soul. So, it is a revival for my spirit and prayerfully it is a revival for the soul of those people that appreciate this genre. Plus, I love my KSU listeners. They’re just off the chain most of the time.

Q: What is something your audience would be surprised to learn about you?

Pam Wells: That’s a hard question for me to answer. You know, they obviously know that I’m well-traveled. Maybe they wouldn’t know that that I’m a spa fanatic– I am a spa nut. I have traveled the world, and I make it a point to make sure that I have a spa day. I have to have a spa experience.

My favorite of which– well, I have two one was in Whistler, British Columbia, a place called Scandinave Spa. It is up in the mountains of Whistler, and it is an outdoor spa where you do a cold plunge and a hot plunge and you’re outside taking in the breath-taking mountains as you’re freezing, and then you go inside, and you heat up and you go back outside, and you do the cold plunge again. It is absolutely fabulous. Then my other favorite was in Hong Kong where you go get this like two-hour treatment and somebody winds up walking on your back. It was exhilarating. it was just outrageous.

So yeah, I like to travel the world when I have an opportunity to, and I love to get a good spa treatment; and I like it to be eclectic So that would probably surprise some people.

Q: Any closing thoughts/motivation for our readers and listeners?

Pam Wells: I always leave my listeners with the reminder that God loves you and I love you too, and he is always preparing us for what he is always preparing for us. My closing thought here is, never put a period where God put a comma. I’m a testimony to that because I’d actually put a period to this radio thing and look at God. He’d put a comma there and here I am. So, we must always be open to what he’s prepared for us and sometimes I believe that we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit just when God is about to bring a miracle, so don’t give up five minutes before the miracle and don’t give up when times get tough– hang in there. The best is yet to come.

That’s it for me from The Vivacious One– love you!

Thank you so much to The Vivacious Pam Wells for taking the time to share your powerful story with our audience!