Rev. Billy Burrell, whose gospel devotional and country music morning show made him one of the most recognized voices in north Georgia radio, died Wednesday at the age of 96.
Friends of Georgia Radio poignantly recognized Burrell: “Few outside the region ever heard his name, but for anyone who lived in the Georgia mountains north of Atlanta over the last half-century, Burrell’s voice was as familiar as the sunrise.”
Up until his 2022 retirement, Burrell hosted mornings on WCON(AM/FM) in Cornelia. “Sunshine Melodies,” Burrell’s devotional program, ran for 71 years. Friends of Georgia Radio believes Burrell’s program to be the longest-running weekday radio show hosted by the same person in North American broadcasting history.
“Billy Burrell was an integral part of the station for so many years,” Clayton Foster, part of the family that runs WCON, told our Elle Kehres this year for Radio World’s profile of the station. “He had a morning devotion, hosted the birthday party, opened the barn door and kept his audience informed on so many levels.”
Burrell was an ordained minister who pastored more than a dozen churches over his lifetime, including 30 years at Hazel Creek Baptist Church in Mt. Airy.
“I felt a definite call of using radio to get the message out to people,” he said according to Friends of Georgia Radio. “I’d encourage everybody, wherever they work, whatever they do, to go ahead and bootleg the Gospel.”
According to a biography provided by Friends of Georgia Radio, Burrell began his radio career in 1951 as an early-morning announcer at WLET(AM) in Toccoa, where he hosted a half-hour devotional of gospel music, scripture and prayer.
The show’s name came from a misread of a record label: Burrell spotted a 78 RPM disc labeled “Sunshine Medley” and he read it as “Sunshine Melodies.” The name would stick for the rest of his career.
While pastoring Calvary Baptist Church in Starkville, Miss., Burrell built a homemade recording setup out of turntables and a reel-to-reel deck and mailed his devotional abc to Georgia for five years so it would never miss a morning.
He returned to northeast Georgia to pastor Harmony Baptist Church in Homer and began recording the show for WCON. He joined the station on July 8, 1959.
In 1965, Burrell ran into WCON owner John Foster at the old Cornelia post office. Foster needed someone to fill in on mornings; Burrell said yes, and the fill-in turned into 57 years live behind the microphone.
The Habersham County Commission honored him for decades of radio ministry, and on his 90th birthday in 2020, the mayor of Cornelia declared “Billy Burrell Day” while Senator John Wilkinson presented him with a Senate resolution honoring his career.
Burrell hosted “Sunshine Melodies” for the final time on July 1, 2022, at age 92. He told his longtime co-host Joel Williams the decision hadn’t really been his: “The Lord started this thing, and the Lord told me when to quit.”
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