DJ Heavy – The Traffic Jam & Southern Soul at 6 Darrell Harris—better known as @Dj Heavy —was a Durham, North Carolina radio institution long before he landed at 94.9 The Surf in August 2022. His “Blue Light Basement Party” was a Raleigh-Durham area number-one rated radio show for thirteen years. He toured the country with the Blues Is All Right tour in the late nineties, working alongside Bobby “Blue” Bland, B.B. King, Lenny Williams, Percy Sledge, and Sir Charles Jones. He was the house DJ at the Sheraton near Raleigh-Durham airport, where he met artists passing through town—including, the Rolling Stones, who invited him to hang out in the presidential suite for three days. The name DJ Heavy? It dates back to when Harris weighed nearly 490 pounds. He’s since undergone major weight-loss surgery and survived a harrowing bout with malabsorption that put him in the hospital for months. He went from a hospital bed to a wheelchair, from a wheelchair to a walker, from a walker to a cane—and then had to do it all over again when he relapsed. Heavy credits his recovery to faith and sheer determination. His path to the Surf began about twenty years ago over breakfast at Mammy’s Kitchen in Myrtle Beach. The Surf was playing in the restaurant and Heavy thought: “I could work for that station. They play everything that I love.” It didn’t happen right away. Years later, when the station was adding to its lineup, Jim Quick—who had known Heavy for thirty-plus years since legendary shag DJ Big John Ruth introduced them—picked up the phone. Within a week, Heavy had sold his house in Durham and moved to Ocean Drive. His first show debuted August 15, 2022. Today Heavy hosts The Traffic Jam (weekdays 3–6 PM) and Southern Soul at 6 (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday). He brings encyclopedic knowledge of R&B, blues, and beach music to every show, mixing songs with stories from his years on the road. His approach is simple: “When I’m on the air, I try to make you feel like you’re in my living room.” And his signature sign-off has followed him from Raleigh to Ocean Drive: “I love you and ain’t a doggone thing you can do about it.”

Hey there, folks, it's Jim Quick here, your friendly neighborhood beach music troubadour. If you've ever caught me and Coastline tearing up the stage with some soulful shag rhythms, you know I'm all about that Carolina sound. I've been touring the Southeast for over 34 years now, and at one time we were cranking out more than 250 shows a year. We dropped sixteen albums along the way. But today, I want to take y'all on a little trip down memory lane about one of my favorite traditions: the SOS Midwinter Break in North Myrtle Beach. As someone who's performed at countless SOS events, including those electric Midwinter gatherings, this one's close to my heart. Let me tell you how it all started and why it's become the heartbeat of our shag community. Back in the beginning, around 1980, the Society of Stranders – or SOS as we all know it – was just a spark of an idea. It all kicked off with that first proclamation from the City of North Myrtle Beach, recognizing the "Strand" – that's Ocean Drive, or O.D. to the locals – as the epicenter of shag dancing and beach music. Shag itself? Oh, that's got roots going way back to the late 1940s in the African American communities along the Carolina coast, where folks started swinging to those smooth beach tunes. By the time SOS formalized in the early '80s, with its officers and board history tracing back to 1984, it was all about preserving that lifestyle – the dance, the music, the good times on the beach. You know, the Spring Safari in April and the Fall Migration in September were already huge—those 10-day blowouts where thousands of us would descend on Ocean Drive for non-stop shagging, live bands, and catching up with old friends from across the Carolinas. But folks started craving something in between, especially during those long, cold winter months when the beach felt a million miles away. The demand was clear: the community needed a midwinter pick-me-up to keep the spirit alive year-round, a shorter weekend getaway to shake off the January blues, refresh those dance steps with workshops, and reunite without waiting another six months. That's how the Midwinter Break (or Winter Workshop, as some still call it) came to be added as the third pillar—starting as a smaller, more intimate event but growing into its own beloved tradition, ensuring we'd have that SOS magic three times a year instead of just twice. It was all about keeping the groove going strong, no matter the season.