'N' Roll Disc Jockey

Home , Alan Freed, Artie Singer, At the Hop, Barry Michaels, Bill Randle, Bob Horn (broadcaster)

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL DISC JOCKEY: 1950-1970

EDWARD G. SALSBERRY

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2014

To My Mom: Thank you for always believing in me To Chip and Matthew: Thank you for giving me the motivation to succeed

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The foundations for the research and writing of this dissertation began many years ago with helpful and caring scholars that I now consider friends. I wish to thank Dr.

Kathy Merlock Jackson and Dr. Bill Ruehlmann at Virginia Wesleyan College for renewing my interest in writing and providing me with the foundations of mass communication that I could build on to write this dissertation. I am indebted to Dr.

Stanley Tickton at Norfolk State University for his vast knowledge of broadcast administration and media law which introduced me to events in radio history that lay at the heart of this dissertation.

I would like to express my appreciation to Dr. David Ostroff, the chair of my committee, who helped me narrow my research topic from a myriad of broad ideas. I truly appreciate the work and support of the other members of my supervisory committee including Dr. Bernell Tripp, who provided me with the motivation to pursue my interest in radio history and provided the foundations for conducting historical research; Dr. Ronald Rodgers, whose editorial review was invaluable; and Dr. Benjamin

Wise, who graciously agreed to be a member of this committee after only one meeting.

Their collection of knowledge on American and mass communication history were critical in the construction and research of this dissertation.

Special thanks go to those who graciously took the time to allow me to interview them for this study: “Cousin Brucie” Bruce Morrow, Peter Altschuler, Hunter, and Barry

Michaels. Their insight into the history and evolution of rock ‘n’ roll radio and disc jockeys proved invaluable. Either from personal experience or family history, their contributions to this study span over half a century of information vital to this study.

I must also thank the Office of Graduate Studies at the College of Journalism and

Communications, particularly Mrs. Jody Hedge who seems to know every student individually and goes out of her way to help guide students through the administrative processes; Dr. Debbie Treise, whose help at the outset of my admission to the program was immeasurable.

Finally, I must extend my eternal gratitude to my wife Susan, who put up with an absentee partner throughout this journey due to late night studies and research. Many weekends were spent researching this study and she took care of things at home while I was otherwise distracted. This culmination of research would not have been possible without her love and support.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

ABSTRACT ...... 8

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 10

Statement of Purpose ...... 10 Methodology ...... 12 Literature Review ...... 14 Structure of Dissertation ...... 23 Implications ...... 24

2 HISTORICAL EVENTS IN AMERICAN CULTURE ...... 27

1950s ...... 28 Civil Rights ...... 28 Television ...... 31 Rock ‘n’ Roll Development and Social Impact ...... 35 1960s ...... 47 Equal Rights ...... 47 Rock ‘n’ Roll and Flower Power ...... 53 Beatlemania and the British Invasion ...... 59 Payola ...... 65 Summary ...... 74

3 ALAN FREED ...... 77

Biography ...... 77 Payola ...... 80

4 DICK CLARK ...... 86

Biography ...... 87 Payola ...... 94

5 BRUCE MORROW ...... 104

6 WOLFMAN JACK ...... 119

Early Life ...... 119 Birth of The Wolfman ...... 125 Border Radio ...... 131

Big Breaks ...... 136

7 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ...... 142

Present Day ...... 152 Discussion ...... 155

APPENDIX EXAMPLES OF DJ FAN CLUB CARDS ...... 158

REFERENCES ...... 160

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 182

Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL DISC JOCKEY: 1950-1970

Edward G. Salsberry

December 2014

Chair: David Ostroff Major: Mass Communication

In the last several decades, the role of the American disc jockey has evolved along with music and technology, each having an effect on the other. The evolution of rock ‘n’ roll music in the 1950s led to a different sound on the air, and not just with the music.

The radio announcer had evolved into the disc jockey, someone that connected with the music and the listeners. Several disc jockeys in music radio, beginning in the 1950s and extending throughout the 1960s, revolutionized the impact of radio through rock ‘n’ roll music on a new generation of listeners. Four such disc jockeys were selected for this study as examples of this impact: Alan Freed, Dick Clark, “Cousin Brucie” Bruce

Morrow, and Wolfman Jack.

Rock ‘n’ roll radio today lacks those prominent voices instantly identifiable by a mass audience outside of a radio station’s geographical area, but national recognition may not be necessary for the disc jockey to continue to have an influence on the perpetual viability of rock ‘n’ roll radio and retain their connection to the listener. The disc jockey has evolved into the on-air personality, more focused on entertainment than the music and many have shifted from music as a base for their radio shows to an all- talk format such as morning shows. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact

of these disc jockeys on radio and rock ‘n’ roll and the future need for disc jockeys in terrestrial radio.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Statement of Purpose

Disc jockeys are the connection between the music and the listeners. No one knows more about each than the person on the air. The early years of rock ‘n’ roll radio thrived on that connection and the importance of the disc jockey was proven over and over again in the popularity of personalities like Alan Freed, Dick Clark, “Cousin Brucie”

Bruce Morrow, and Wolfman Jack. These people influenced generations of listeners and musicians, often playing music on their radio shows that was not being aired anywhere else. Disc jockeys of the late 1950s and 1960s often cite predecessors such

as Alan Freed, Jocko Henderson, and John Richbourg, known on the air as John R, as

influences that generated their interest in a career in radio.1 Their ability to connect to

the listeners helped them achieve a popularity and a persona recognizable beyond the

medium of radio and earned Wolfman Jack and “Cousin Brucie” Bruce Morrow induction

into the National Association of Broadcasters Broadcasting Hall of Fame.2

There were certain disc jockeys throughout the country who were interested in

other types of music as well other than was being programmed in the early 1950s and

their interests turned towards rhythm and blues, or “race records” as they were being

called by the white population. “Race records,” the industry term for black artists’ pop-

tinged tunes with a heavy beat and lyrics packed with sexual innuendo,” was starting to

1 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012; Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 40-41.

2 National Association of Broadcasters, http://www.nab.org/events/awards/pastAwardWinners.asp?id=1926, accessed June12, 2010.

garner a large audience among white teenagers.3 WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee was

one of the early pioneers in playing African-American rhythm and blues “where the

legendary trio of Gene Nobles, John R. Richbourg, and Hoss Allen began playing black

music for hundreds of thousands of listeners as early as 1946.”4 These men created a

persona, particularly Richbourg and Allen, that made listeners believe they were black

even though they were white. These were the beginnings of the “personality deejay,” a

style that would be replicated by disc jockeys such as Alan Freed and Wolfman Jack.

One of the attributes of these disc jockeys that precipitated their popularity was that they

genuinely liked the music they were playing.5 Additionally, those that did enjoy a

successful career had “it”, that personality that appealed to a large audience.

The study of radio history has largely neglected to explicate the role of the disc

jockey during this time period and their role in the development radio as a social

recommendation engine for rock ‘n’ roll music. These four disc jockeys are just a few of

those iconic personalities that played an integral part in the popularity of radio and the

growth of rock ‘n’ roll, starting in the 1950s. These men were selected for their

popularity, their impact on the radio industry, their impact on society, and their direct

and indirect impact on one other. The purpose of this study is to examine the careers of

these four disc jockeys through the 1950s and 1960s and their influence in the

popularity of radio and rock ‘n’ roll music.

3 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 31.

4 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 10.

5 “Wolfman Jack’s Career on Wing,” The Press-Courier, Oxnard, CA, December 30, 1973, 11, Google news (Accessed February 21, 2013).

A secondary purpose is to hypothesize about the future of disc jockeys on

terrestrial radio stations that primarily play music in relationship to their importance to the audience. While thousands of radio stations operate throughout the United States,

there are a limited number of on-air positions available. That number has been pared

down even more due to the proliferation of voice-tracking that has eliminated positions

in the overnight hours and weekend broadcasts. The disc jockeys profiled in this study

are examples of the impact that a live voice on the radio can have and the influence it

carries. Terrestrial radio has had to once again address technology advancements that

threaten its existence and viability. Failing to capitalize in a timely manner on high

definition (HD) radio that would have allowed radio to at least compete on a clarity-of-

delivery level, the one remaining factor that makes terrestrial radio unique to other

delivery systems is localism.6 This study will briefly examine the idea of localism in radio programming that will illustrate the need for disc jockeys in all on-air shifts and

better serve the community in which it operates. Localism cannot exist without the disc

jockey to create that bond between the radio station and the listener.

Methodology

According to Nevins, “biography may be termed a form of history” and that

“biography humanizes the past and enriches personal experience of the present.”7 This

study contains a large body of biographical information in an effort to attain that goal,

6 iBiquity Digital Corporation, the developer of HD Radio technology, is still working with car manufacturers to make HD Radio standard in their vehicles. Many manufacturers have committed to making it standard, particularly foreign manufacturers, but domestic companies such as General Motors have been slow to commit to the technology. http://www.hdradio.com.

7 Nevins, Allan, 1938, The Gateway to History, New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 318, 320.

attempting to stimulate the imagination and humanize the disc jockeys that pioneered rock ‘n’ roll radio. Understanding history, and the biographies of those from the past, can illuminate the evolution of events that lead to the current status of disc jockeys in

America. Biographies and autobiographies will be mined to provide that humanization and provide a view beyond the public personality to include childhood as well as their entry into and growth in the radio industry. As the title suggests, there has been a change in the role of the disc jockey since the 1950s. Disc jockeys in today’s radio

landscape don’t elicit the same impact of their predecessors as will be explicated in the

biographies of the disc jockeys profiled in this study as well as comments from current

disc jockeys. There is no simple cause and effect for this change due to the interaction

and symbiotic relationship between media and the social world. While considered great

men at the height of their popularity and by many who study their careers, Croteau and

Hoynes’ model can be applied to describe their descent in popularity.8 There are

numerous disc jockeys that contributed to the growth of rock ‘n’ roll and radio; Dick

Biondi, Russ Knight, Gary Owens, Martin Block, Piano Red, and Dr. Jive were just a few

of these pioneers. The four disc jockeys selected for more detailed examination as part

of this study, Alan Freed, Dick Clark, Bruce Morrow, and Wolfman Jack, were chosen

based on their recognition on a more national level where most disc jockeys achieved

success with a local or regional audience.

As mentioned earlier, biographies are an important source to understanding the

past. This study relies on biographies and autobiographies of the disc jockeys profiled

in this study as a base for understanding their lives, their careers, and their popularity.

8 Croteau, David, and William Hoynes, 2003, Media Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences, Thousand Oaks, Calif: Pine Forge Press, 25.

These sources may contain inherent biases, so this study will attempt to cross-verify information using other artifacts such as newspaper and magazine articles from the time

period analyzed in this study. The study will also examine a variety of books focusing

on the impact of rock ‘n’ roll on American society, disc jockeys recognized for their

popularity, and various sources detailing payola, paying particular attention to the

credibility of sources as well as their timeliness to specific events. Oral history is an

important component to providing as well as validating biographies and will be a vital

part of this study, attempting to interview disc jockeys past and present as well as

family, friends, and co-workers of the disc jockeys profiled in this study. Interview

questions are designed to elicit responses pertaining to disc jockey’s careers in radio as

well as influences of earlier disc jockeys, music of the time period, and the importance

of the audience on their career. Attempts will also be made to interview others who may

have not had a career in radio, but had a personal relationship with the disc jockeys

profiled in this study in an attempt to gather information that may not be publically

known.

Literature Review

Much of the scholarly research done on radio involves the evolution of music

based on content analysis of popular music9 or radio programming based on oral

histories as well as previous research10, but little has been on the personalities on the

9 Belz, Carl I., 1967, "Popular Music and the Folk Tradition," Journal of American Folklore 80, no. 316: 130-142, America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, accessed March 1, 2010; Aquila, Richard, 1980, "Images of the American West In Rock Music," Western Historical Quarterly 11, no. 4: 415-432, America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, accessed April 5, 2010; Frith, Simon, Social Text, No. 9/10, The 60's Without Apology (Spring - Summer, 1984), 59-69, http://www.jstor.org/stable/466535, accessed February 2, 2010.

air. This research in some instances has attempted to define rock ‘n’ roll music and its implications on society or the use of radio as a teaching tool. Some research has been

done on some of the early pioneer broadcasters11, but the disc jockeys of the 1950s

and 1960s have not attracted much attention. As Killmeier points out, “the profession

has not been critically evaluated” in describing the disc jockeys of the time period being

explored in this study.12 The more popular disc jockeys, such as those profiled in this

study, have their careers immortalized in biographies and autobiographies.13

Scholars have plumbed the world of disc jockeys with varying success. Skillful biographies are few. Broad-brush studies of early rock radio are similarly absent. The three-decade phenomenon of disc jockey mania shaped popular music in Cleveland, Memphis, Nashville, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. Yet the ability to research such cross-country diversity has befuddled most music historians.14

Biographies and autobiographies provide an inside view of the lives and careers of

these polarizing individuals. These sources most often provide a chronological timeline

10 McCourt, Tom, and Eric W. Rothenbuhler, 2004, "Burnishing the Brand: Todd Storz and the Total Station Sound," Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 2, no. 1: 3-14, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost, accessed February 8, 2010; Funk, Clayton. Studies in Art Education, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Autumn, 1998), pp. 31-45, accessed February 2, 2010; Howe, Sondra Wieland. 2003, The NBC Music Appreciation Hour: Radio Broadcasts of Walter Damrosch, 1928-1942, Journal of Research in Music Education 51, (1) (Spring): 64-77, accessed February 2, 2010.

11 Etling, Laurence W., 1999, "Al Jarvis: Pioneer Disc Jockey," Popular Music & Society 23, no. 3: 41, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, accessed April 5, 2010; Olszewski, Michael F. 2009. The life and career of Pete "Mad Daddy" Myers. [Kent, Ohio]: Kent State University. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=kent1248121549

12 Killmeier, Matthew A., 2001, "Voices Between the Tracks: Disk Jockeys, Radio, and Popular Music, 1955-60," Journal of Communication Inquiry 25, no. 4: 353, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost, accessed April 20, 2010.

13 Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books; Clark, Dick, and Richard Robinson, 1976, Rock, Roll & Remember. New York: Crowell; Jackson, John A., 1991, Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll, New York: Schirmer Books; Kaufman, Murray, 1966, Murray the K Tells It Like It Is, Baby, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston; Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books.

14 Cooper, B. Lee, 2007, "American Disc Jockeys, 1945-1975: A Bibliographic and Discographic Survey," Popular Music & Society 30, no. 3: 401-423, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, accessed February 10, 2010, 402.

of a disc jockey’s life, including professional and personal information. While providing a wealth of information not generally found in other sources, scholars must remember that these books were written for a mass audience and cross-verification is not always possible. Researchers must determine what level of trust to place in the information made available in biographies and autobiographies, although realize that these works may be the primary source of information due to a lack of critical study available as well as the passing of many historical individuals and their close associates. This study is an attempt to start filling the void left by the lack of scholarly studies on disc jockeys and their influence in helping to shape a new era in the history of terrestrial radio and rock ‘n’ roll music as well as highlight the importance of disc jockeys in rock ‘n’ roll radio today.

Most disc jockeys do not receive notoriety on a large enough scale to generate interest in the publication of an autobiography or biography, such as those whose popularity was restricted by the reach of their radio signal. Disc jockeys such as

“Dewey Phillips, Nat D. Williams, Al Benson, Pete Meyers, Bill Randle, and Hunter

Hancock still search for authors who can place their contributions in context.”15 Even

those that have achieved a great amount of fame, such as Murray the K, cannot get a

biography published due to a lack of interest from publishers.16 There are several texts

that have identified the numerous disc jockeys in the history of radio in various

American radio markets who impacted the growth of radio and rock ‘n’ roll and supply a

glimpse into their careers as well as the connection they provided between the listeners

15 Ibid.

16 Peter Altschuler, (Son of Murray "the K" Kaufmann), interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview January 09, 2012.

and rock ‘n’ roll, furnishing a starting point for further analysis of their careers and their importance in the development of terrestrial radio and rock ‘n’ roll in future studies.17

While the focus of this study is the impact of the disc jockeys on radio and rock ‘n’

roll, technology assisted disc jockeys in growing their teenage audience. The development of radio as a technology is well documented in Regal’s Radio: the life story of a technology and Mclaurin and Harman’s Innovation and invention in the radio industry, tracing its development back to the works of Tesla, Hertz, Lodge, and many others that made Marconi’s telegraph possible.18 However, McCormack believed that

the invention of the regenerative circuit was the beginning of modern radio.19 The litigation regarding who should get credit for this important invention, Lee de Forest or

Edwin Armstrong, lasted for a number of years and details can be found in McCormack,

Hong, Lessing, and Sterling and Kitross’ works. Both men were profiled in Hijiya and

Lessing’s biographies, respectively, while de Forest also published his own

autobiography.20 Lessing’s work as well as Armstrong’s publications and demonstrations to the electrical trade’s community seem to prove that Armstrong was the inventor, but a notebook belonging to de Forest was revealed during appeals that

17 Douglas, Susan J., 1999, Listening in: radio and the American imagination : from Amos 'n' Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern, New York, N.Y.: Times Books; Fong-Torres, Ben, 1998, The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 radio, San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books; Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press.

18 Regal, Brian, 2005, Radio: the life story of a technology, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 19-23, Maclaurin, William Rupert and R. Joyce Harman. 1949. Invention & innovation in the radio industry. New York: Macmillian.

19 McCormack, Alfred, “Regenerative Circuit Litigation,” 5 Air L. Rev. 290 (1934), 283, http://www.heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/airlr5&id=1&size=2&collection=journals&index=journ als/airlr&set_as_cursor=clear

20 de Forest, Lee, 1950, Father of radio: the autobiography of Lee de Forest, Chicago: Wilcox & Follett; Hijiya, James A., 1992, Lee de Forest and the fatherhood of radio, Bethlehem, Pa: Lehigh University Press; Lawrence Lessing, 1956, Man of high fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong, a biography, Philadelphia: Lippincott.

induced the court to decide in favor of de Forest.21 “Today, engineering texts and

organizations generally give Armstrong credit for this crucial invention, but the law gave

it to de Forest.”22

The development of transistors is well documented by the Institute of Electrical

and Electronics Engineers, such as Pope’s work and speculation of improvements to

transistors that would make them usable in communication receivers.23 One of the

most comprehensive works in chronicling the history of broadcasting is Sterling and

Kittross’ Stay Tuned: A History of American Broadcasting, which notes the importance

of the use of transistors in the early 1960s, although they were invented in 1948 but not

perfected until many years later, as does Douglas as well in her work Listening in: radio

and the American imagination: from Amos 'n' Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman

Jack and Howard Stern.24 Smith, Wright, and Ostroff briefly mention it in their work on

broadcasting in the United States.25 As Regal points out, the development of the

transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories and the discovery of polyethylene by DuPont

chemist W. H. Carothers, a plastic that “had all the right properties but was also

21 de Forest, Lee, 1950, Father of radio: the autobiography of Lee de Forest, Chicago: Wilcox & Follett; Hong, Sungook, “A History of the Regeneration Circuit: From Invention to Patent Litigation,” http://www.ieee.org/portal/cms_docs_iportals/iportals/aboutus/history_center/conferences/che2004/Hong.pdf, Presented at the 2004 IEEE Conference on the History of Electronics.

22 Sterling, Christopher H. and John M. Kittross, 2002, Stay tuned a history of American broadcasting, LEA's communication series, Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 37-38.

23 Pope, A. E, 1955, "Some Recent Developments in Communication Receiver Design," Radio Engineers, Journal of the British Institution of 15 (7): 367-376.

24 Douglas, Susan J., 1999, Listening in: radio and the American imagination : from Amos 'n' Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern, New York, N.Y.: Times Books.; Sterling, Christopher H. and John M. Kittross, 2002, Stay tuned a history of American broadcasting, LEA's communication series, Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 408-409.

25 Smith, F. Leslie, John W. Wright, and David H. Ostroff, 1998, Perspectives on Radio and Television: Telecommunication in the United States, LEA's communication series, Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, 144.

inexpensive to produce and easy to mold into any shape” allowed for mass production of portable transistor radios.26 Morrow, a disc jockey profiled in this study who watched

the changes in radio first hand, noted that “the little transistor radio gave youth the

ability to travel and take it with them in their pockets and under their pillows in bed and

in cars.”27

While these advancements in technology were a boon for radio, radio was also

faced with the development of a new technology: television. The development of

television and its rapid growth in the 1950s as well as its effects on radio listenership

are detailed in works by Dominick, Messere, and Sherman; Douglas; Fisher; Magoun;

Sloan; Smith, Wright and Ostroff; Sterling and Kitross; Thumim; and Young and

Young.28 Haakenson’s work delineates trends in the broadcasting industry in the early

1950s, particularly the growth of television and the debate over the future of radio at that

time.29 This development in technology would force a change in radio programming as

radio stars migrated to television.

26 Regal, Brian, 2005, Radio: the life story of a technology, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 50-53.

27 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

28 Dominick, Joseph R., Fritz Messere, and Barry L. Sherman, 2007, Broadcasting, Cable, the Internet, and Beyond: An Introduction to Modern Electronic Media, Boston: McGraw-Hill; Douglas, Susan J., 1999, Listening in: radio and the American imagination : from Amos 'n' Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern, New York, N.Y.: Times Books; Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House; Magoun, Alexander B., 2007, Television: the life story of a technology, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press; Sloan, W. David, 1991, Perspectives on Mass Communication History, Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates; Smith, F. Leslie, John W. Wright, and David H. Ostroff, 1998, Perspectives on Radio and Television: Telecommunication in the United States, LEA's communication series, Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates; Sterling, Christopher H. and John M. Kittross, 2002, Stay tuned a history of American broadcasting, LEA's communication series, Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; Thumim, Janet, 2002, Small Screens, Big Ideas: television in the 1950s, London: I.B, Tauris; Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young, 2004, The 1950s, American Popular Culture Through History, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.

29 Haakenson, Robert, 1953, "Broadcasting, 32-Year Old Gargantua," Today's Speech 1, no. 1: 8-19, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 19, 2012).

Douglas; Fornatale and Mills; Fisher; Hatch; as well as Young and Young recognized this migration and Smith, Wright, and Ostroff’s work identified radio’s need to change its program structure “to survive television’s usurpation of its audiences.”30

Quimby suggests that television had a chance to provide what he calls “intelligent”

programming, such as documentaries, educational programs, and public service

programming where radio had failed that end by programming to appeal to a larger

mass audience.31 He does concede however that television, like radio, is driven by

advertisers who want to reach the largest audience possible and that programs such as

Quimby advocated had “a limited appeal” to potential listeners.32

Rock ‘n’ roll, in its infancy, “was an integral part of modern American culture.”33

Several texts detail the relationship between rock ‘n’ roll and society, such as works

from Altschuler, Friedlander, and Szatmary.34 Bronson points to Rock Around the Clock

by Bill Haley and His Comets as “the beginning of the rock era.”35 Ironically, Rock

30 Douglas, Susan J., 1999, Listening in: radio and the American imagination : from Amos 'n' Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern, New York, N.Y.: Times Books; Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House; Fornatale, Pete, and Joshua E. Mills, 1980, Radio in the Television Age, Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press; Hatch, Kristen, “Selling Soap: Post-War Television Soap Opera and the American Housewife,” In Small Screens, Big Ideas: Television in the 1950s, edited by Janet Thumim, 38. London: I.B, Tauris, 2002; Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young, 2004, The 1950s, American Popular Culture Through History, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press; Smith, F. Leslie, John W. Wright, and David H. Ostroff, 1998, Perspectives on Radio and Television: Telecommunication in the United States, LEA's communication series, Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, 55-57.

31 Quimby, Rollin W., 1952, "Must Television Inherit Radio's Weakness?," Western Speech 16, no. 3: 163- 168, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 19, 2012).

32 Ibid, 166.

33 Bumgardner, Ed, 2007, "Induction Ceremony Missing Spirit of Rock 'n' Roll," Winston-Salem Journal (NC), 5.

34 Altschuler, Glenn C., 2003, All Shook Up: How Rock 'n' Roll Changed America, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Friedlander, Paul, and Peter Miller, 2006, Rock & roll: a social history, Boulder, Colo: Westview Press; Szatmary, David P., 2010, Rockin' in Time: A Social History of Rock-and-Roll, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.

35 Bronson, Fred, 2003, The Billboard book of number 1 hits, New York: Billboard Books, ii.

Around the Clock was the theme song for Blackboard Jungle, a film about juvenile delinquency designed to equate rock ‘n’ roll music with antisocial behavior, but instead propelled the song to the top of the charts in 1956.36 Other movies, such as Rock,

Rock, Rock! Go, Johnny, Go! and Mr. Rock and Roll, all starring disc jockey Alan Freed,

were designed to both promote Freed as well as provide even more exposure of rock ‘n’

roll music to the teenage audience.37 Hollywood continued to play a pivotal role in the

growth of rock ‘n’ roll as “the movie industry geared up to make a glut of films featuring

rock artists,” none more prominent than Elvis Presley with his first of many movies in

1956 in Love Me Tender.38

The development of the Top 40 format in radio and rock ‘n’ roll as a music genre

are explained in works from Douglas; Fisher; Fong-Torres; Fornatale and Mills; Miller;

Smith, Wright, and Ostroff; McCourt and Rothenbuhler; and Sterling and Kittross.39

Douglas believes that Top 40 was actually used to limit what disc jockeys could play on

the air, limiting their influence especially in light of the payola scandal at the end of the

36 Batchelor, Bob, "Rock and Roll Music in the 1950s," In Pop Culture Universe: Icons, Idols, Ideas, ABC-CLIO, 2010-, Accessed September 5, 2012, http://popculture2.abc-clio.com/.

37 Douglas, Susan J., 1999, Listening in: radio and the American imagination : from Amos 'n' Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern, New York, N.Y.: Times Books, 246.

38 Batchelor, Bob, "Rock and Roll Music in the 1950s," In Pop Culture Universe: Icons, Idols, Ideas, ABC-CLIO, 2010-, Accessed September 5, 2012, http://popculture2.abc-clio.com/.

39 Douglas, Susan J., 1999, Listening in: radio and the American imagination : from Amos 'n' Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern, New York, N.Y.: Times Books; Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House; Fong-Torres, Ben, 1998, The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 radio, San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books; Fornatale, Pete, and Joshua E. Mills, 1980, Radio in the Television Age, Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press; McCourt, Tom, and Eric W. Rothenbuhler, 2004, "Burnishing the Brand: Todd Storz and the Total Station Sound." Radio Journal: International Studies In Broadcast & Audio Media 2, no. 1: 3-14, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost, accessed January 27, 2009; Miller, Jim, 1999, Flowers in the dustbin: the rise of rock and roll, 1947-1977, New York: Simon & Schuster; Smith, F. Leslie, John W. Wright, and David H. Ostroff, 1998, Perspectives on Radio and Television: Telecommunication in the United States, LEA's communication series, Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates; Sterling, Christopher H. and John M. Kittross, 2002, Stay tuned a history of American broadcasting, LEA's communication series, Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

1950s, explained in detail in Seagrave’s history of payola in the music industry and

Chappelle and Garafalo’s work covering history and politics in the music industry as well

as being explicated in this study.40

As was mentioned earlier, radio needed to change its programming structure and

essentially reinvent itself. While this study is focused, in part, on how radio did that in

the 1950s and 1960s with the talents of disc jockeys, radio finds itself again needing to

reinvent itself again due to advancements in technology. Hilliard and Keith state that

“radio began as a local phenomenon” and their work details the rise and demise of

localism in radio.41 Chambers states the advent of television forced radio to become a local medium, but that localism has been diluted due to media consolidation and voice- tracking, a now common practice whereby disc jockeys record their broadcast for distribution across several radio markets.42 Cole and Oettinger feel that “local service

might well emerge as the sole justification for the continued existence of our present

system for broadcasting,” although Sauls and Greer feel that localism may not be

enough to combat advances in technology and broadcast deregulation that threaten the

existence of terrestrial radio and the role of the disc jockey.43 This observation in 1978

40 Douglas, Susan J., 1999, Listening in: radio and the American imagination : from Amos 'n' Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern, New York, N.Y.: Times Books; Segrave, Kerry, 1994, Payola in the Music Industry: a History, 1880-1991. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland; Chapple, Steve, and Reebee Garofalo, 1977, Rock 'n' Roll is Here to Pay: the History and Politics of the Music Industry, Chicago: Nelson-Hall.

41 Hilliard, Robert L., and Michael C. Keith, 2005, The Quieted Voice: The Rise and Demise of Localism in American Radio, Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois University Press, 1.

42 Chambers, Todd, 2003, "Radio Programming Diversity in the Era of Consolidation," Journal Of Radio Studies 10, no. 1: 33-45, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost, accessed May 13, 2012.

43 Cole, Barry G., and Mal Oettinger, 1978, Reluctant Regulators: The FCC and the Broadcast Audience, Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 175; Sauls, Samuel J., and Danny Greer, 2007, “Radio and Localism: Has the FCC Dropped the Ball?” Journal of Radio Studies 14 (1) (05/25; 2012/05): 37-48, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10955040701301771, 40.

is even applicable today as economics and technology reduce the number of disc jockeys found on terrestrial radio. Sauls and Greer also describe the practice of voice- tracking in their study, and disc jockeys Hunter and Barry Michaels confirm that it is a practice utilized by their company as a cost-cutting tool, utilizing weekday disc jockeys and management personnel to fill night-time and weekend broadcasts in an effort to retain localism in their broadcasts.44 Hilliard and Keith’s work stress the effects of

deregulation and consolidation on radio broadcasting in communities and the need for a

return to localism in radio to serve those communities.45

Structure of Dissertation

The career and influence of the icons of radio that are explicated as part of this

study is presented in narrative form. Chapter One provides the groundwork, presenting

the topic, the purpose of the study, and applicable theories, as well as identification of

the key subjects and time periods being investigated. Chapter Two reviews the social

landscape of the time period ranging from the 1950s through the 1960s including the

influence of radio and the evolution of the music genre known as rock ‘n’ roll. Chapters

Three through Six focus on the disc jockeys being profiled in this study, each

personality separated by chapter. The final chapter will offer a summary, conclusions

derived based on implications of findings, discussion concerning the role of early disc

jockeys in the development of rock ‘n’ roll music, their influence on radio, the future

44 Hunter and Barry Michaels, interview by Edward Salsberry, interview January 16, 2012; Sauls, Samuel J., and Danny Greer, 2007, “Radio and Localism: Has the FCC Dropped the Ball?” Journal of Radio Studies 14 (1) (05/25; 2012/05): 37-48, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10955040701301771.

45 Hilliard, Robert L., and Michael C. Keith, 2005, The Quieted Voice: The Rise and Demise of Localism in American Radio, Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois University Press.

need for disc jockeys on terrestrial radio given the current media landscape, and recommendations for additional research.

Implications

Scholarly research investigating the role of disc jockeys in the development of radio is limited.46 In order to completely understand the development of radio as both

an industry and a component of American society, scholars need to investigate all

influences in that development. Rock ‘n’ roll music was instrumental in the rise of the

American disc jockey as well as assisting in the growth of radio amongst a new

generation and influencing record sales.47 While the influence of rock ‘n’ roll on

American society has been fairly well explored, the focus of that exploration has been

primarily on the music and the audience and not the conduits between the music and

the audience.48 Disc jockeys carved their niche as the agent for radio to become the

social recommendation engine for rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s, a trend that has waned over

the years as technology has advanced and radio stations owners look for cost-cutting

measures to combat a weakening economy in the late 2000s-early 2010s.49 Media

46 Two such studies are Etling, Laurence W., 1999, "Al Jarvis: Pioneer Disc Jockey." Popular Music & Society 23, no. 3: 41, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, accessed April 5, 2010, and Olszewski, Mike, and Max V. Grubb, 2010, From Aviating to Zoomerating: The Curious Life and Death of Radio’s ‘Mad Daddy,’ presented at the Broadcast Education Association 2010 Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, April 16, 2010.

47 Hall, Claude, 1965, "WABC, WMCA Disk Sales Powerhouses in Newark," Billboard 77, no. 34: 42, Google Books (accessed January 29, 2013).

48 Altschuler, Glenn C., 2003, All Shook Up: How Rock 'n' Roll Changed America, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Cooper, B. Lee, and Wayne S. Haney, 1995, Rock music in American popular culture: rock 'n' roll resources, New York: Haworth Press; DeCurtis, Anthony, 1992, Present tense: rock & roll and culture, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press; Grotto, Frederic, 2011, 13 Things Rock and Roll Can Do for You, Telemachus Press, LLC; Petigny, Alan Cecil, 2009, The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965, New York: Cambridge University Press; Szatmary, David P., 2010, Rockin' in Time: A Social History of Rock-and-Roll, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.

49 Salsberry, Edward, “Uses and Gratifications of Music Listeners: A New Social Recommendation Engine,” presented at the annual Broadcast Education Association conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, April 15, 2010.

historians must be cognizant of the many factors that influenced the development of radio as a mass medium, particularly during the time frame when the advent of television threatened its continued existence. The 1950s and 1960s gave rise to rock

‘n’ roll music and disc jockeys who gave radio personality. Gavin believed that “many

disk (sic) jockeys can’t program a good show,” but “a DJ who rates No. 1 must be doing

a lot of things right; so must a DJ who has a larger share of audience than any of his

other station colleagues.”50 One of Valerie Geller’s three principles in Creating Powerful

Radio is to never be boring.51 Disc jockeys in the 1950s and 1960s who were rated

number one were arguably anything but boring or they wouldn’t be memorable, such as

those profiled in this study.52

As previously discussed, scholarly research has neglected an important

component in the development of terrestrial radio and rock ‘n’ roll music: the disc

jockey. In order for media historians to fully document the development of terrestrial

radio and rock ‘n’ roll music, all aspects of that development need to be researched. It

is the assertion of this study that the disc jockey was a major component in that

development. It is the aim of this study to explore that component and to create further

interest in researching the men and women who played such an important part in

bringing rock ‘n’ roll to a mass audience and in turn, escalated the popularity of that

music and radio as the delivery engine for that music.

50 Gavin, Bill, 1964, "Musts on Making a Good Show," Billboard 76, no. 19: 14, Google Books (accessed January 29, 2013).

51 Geller, Valerie, 2007, Creating powerful radio: getting, keeping & growing audiences: news, talk, information & personality, broadcast, HD, satellite & internet, Burlington: Elsevier/Focal Press, xv.

52 1965, "Radio Response Rating, Top Disk Jockeys" Billboard 77, no. 34: 44, Google Books, accessed January 30, 2013.

The study of the importance of disc jockeys to radio in the 1950s and 1960s in the

wake of the development of television may be able to assist the radio industry in the 21st

century as it again finds itself dealing with new technology such as the Internet. While

many disc jockeys achieved national notoriety for their personalities and the music they played, such as those profiled in this study, their impetus was on selling local advertising once network advertising moved to television. Localism was a topic in many sidebar conversations at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in 2012 and 2013, so there seems to be interest in radio returning to what makes it a unique, intimate, and powerful medium. Media historians can assist the radio industry by conducting research on disc jockeys that were popular in the 1950s and 1960s when

radio was adjusting to a new technology, creating a stronger relationship between the

educational and professional communities.

CHAPTER 2 HISTORICAL EVENTS IN AMERICAN CULTURE

The difficulty in dividing this chapter by decades “is that events do not always fall neatly into ten-year segments,” but every decade has events that define that decade.1

This study does not provide an exhaustive list or analysis of those events, but provides and illustration of some of those events that defined the decades covered in this study.

The 1950s were dominated by the growth of television, the beginning of the Civil Rights

Movement, and the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. The 1960s saw Dr. Martin Luther King solidify his legacy as a leader in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the Vietnam

War, feminism, Flower Power, and radio’s payola scandal. Radio and society had an effect on each other as explained in texts previously noted. In order to fully understand the growth of and changes in rock ‘n’ roll radio, one must understand what events were taking place in American society during this time period. As rock ‘n’ roll grew out of rhythm and blues, or “race records,” it is important to understand the Civil Rights

Movement and why adults in the 1950s and early 1960s were adverse about accepting this music while teenagers were affecting change due to radio listening and record purchases.2 Douglas believed that “we cannot understand the changes in—and, I would suggest, the survival of radio in the 1950s and beyond if we don’t place radio in the context of changing race relations.”3 Rock ‘n’ roll went through a change due to the

Vietnam War where the music championed a peaceful approach and protested the war.

1 Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young, 2004, The 1950s, American Popular Culture Through History, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, xi.

2 MacDonald, J. Fred, 1979, Don't touch that dial!: Radio programming in American life, 1920-1960, Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 367-370.

3 Douglas, Susan J., 1999, Listening in: radio and the American imagination : from Amos 'n' Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern, New York, N.Y.: Times Books, 223.

This chapter will look at these two decades and explore some major events that took place during those time periods.

1950s

Civil Rights

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States is one of the most important events in modern U.S. history. At the forefront of this movement was The National

Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was founded in

1909.

The NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, the capital of Illinois and resting place of President Abraham Lincoln. Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, both the descendants of abolitionists, William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln's birth.4

The NAACP realized rapid growth through the early 1900’s, establishing branch

offices in major cities in the first few years of existence which led to a growth in

membership from approximately 9,000 in 1917 to approximately 90,000 by 1919.5

By 1946, the NAACP boasted a membership of approximately 600,000. “It

continued to act as a legislative and legal advocate, pushing for a federal anti-lynching law and for an end to state-mandated segregation.”6 The NAACP finally made headway

in their fight with a win in the U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education in

4 “NAACP: 100 Years of History,” NAACP, accessed February 17, 2011, http://www.naacp.org/pages/naacp-history

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

1954, which outlawed segregation in public schools. The NAACP boasts some of the most influential people in American History, such as Thurgood Marshall who headed the

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and served as one of the lead attorneys during this landmark case before going on to becoming the first African-American to serve on the United States Supreme Court.7 Arguably the most charismatic and well-

spoken member was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King earned his Ph.D. in systematic

theology at Boston University and went on to become the pastor at the Drexel Avenue

Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in 1954.8 It would be in Montgomery where

King would become involved with the NAACP.

On December 1, 1955, barely a year after King's arrival, the secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP refused to move from her seat in the front of the bus. Rosa Parks was arrested and sent to jail, but her act of defiance inspired the burgeoning civil rights movement in Montgomery. The Montgomery Improvement Association was formed with the NAACP Executive Committee and officers of the Montgomery NAACP, which had at that point been banned in the state. The Association led a boycott of the bus system, and King, already a member of the NAACP's executive committee, was chosen as its leader. The boycott lasted for over a year, during which time King was threatened, arrested and even had his house bombed. However, by December 1956 the MIA had won a clear victory – the United States District Court ruled in Browder v. Gayle that racial segregation on buses was unconstitutional.9

This decision came on the heels of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education

decision handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court, as mentioned earlier, that declared

separate schools for black and white children unconstitutional. State conferences of the

NAACP throughout the South worked to achieve equal rights for African-Americans

7 Ibid., FindLaw, accessed February 23, 2011, http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=347&invol=483

8 “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” NAACP, accessed March 3, 2011, http://www.naacp.org/pages/king

9 Ibid.

through the remainder of the 1950s with variable degrees of success and diverse tactics. Activists such as Rob Williams and Harry T. Moore worked on local and regional levels to prevent lynchings and murders such as the mutilation and execution of Emmitt Till in 1955 or arrests made famous such as the “kissing case” of 1958. Their work would not be recognized until years later as Williams was forced into exile outside the United States for a number of years and Moore died when his house was bombed in

1951.10

While operations such as Williams’ Radio Free Dixie, a radio station he started

while exiled in Cuba, was aimed at furthering the civil rights movement, radio stations

playing rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm and blues music took a slower approach at integration.

However, by 1956 two disc jockeys were staging live music shows grossing over

$175,000 during a two-week period in New York: “Dr. Jive” Tommy Smalls and Alan

Freed.11 The popularity of these two disc jockeys is relevant in that they were both

playing rhythm and blues on their radio shows, but Smalls was black and Freed was

white. There were songs that made both the popular and rhythm and blues (R&B) charts, but many that were on the R&B charts recorded by black artists were re- recorded by white artists and found their way onto the popular charts, such as Fats

Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame” recorded by Pat Boone and The Penguins’ “Earth Angel”

10 Dickson, Sandra H., Churchill Lee Roberts, and Terence Blanchard, 2005. Negroes with Guns, Rob Williams and Black Power, [South Burlington, VT]: California Newsreel; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 2000, Freedom Never Dies: The Legacy of Harry T. Moore. [Gainesville, FL]: University of Florida; Beauchamp, Keith A., 2005, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, [New York, N.Y.]: Thinkfilm.

11 1956, "Rock & Roll Supports 2 Big Budget Shows" Billboard 68, no. 1: 14, Google Books, accessed January 30, 2013.

recorded by the Crew Cuts.12 While black disc jockeys and music by black artists were

making strides towards being accepted by mainstream society, there was still more

work to do to achieve equality. While “numerous African American DJs gained stature as political activists and race leaders in their respective communities,” disc jockeys in

Birmingham couldn’t talk about integration or the civil rights movement on the air out of

“termination or worse.”13 As a result, disc jockeys at WENN in Birmingham resorted to

using coded messages in 1963 to activate the youth leaders of the community,

organizing marches of hundreds of protesters throughout the city.14 The efforts of these

disc jockeys is often credited with assisting in the “hastening the passage of landmark

legislation,” and paving “the way for social and political change.”15

Television

The 1950s are often considered a major portion of the “Golden Age of

Television.”16 The rise in television had a major impact on radio and forced the radio

industry to find a way to retain its position in the broadcast industry. “The years

following World War II witnessed a television revolution in the United States. Close to

12 1956, "1955’s Top Popular Records" and “1955’s Top R&B Records” Billboard 68, no. 1: 14, Google Books, accessed January 30, 2013.

13 Barlow, William, 1999, Voice over: the making of Black radio, Philadelphia, Pa: Temple University Press, 204; Williams, Julian, 2005, "Black Radio and Civil Rights: Birmingham, 1956–1963," Journal Of Radio Studies 12, no. 1: 47-60, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed May 11, 2013), 51.

14 Williams, Julian, 2005, "Black Radio and Civil Rights: Birmingham, 1956–1963," Journal Of Radio Studies 12, no. 1: 47-60, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed May 11, 2013), 57-58.

15 Ibid, 59.

16 “’Golden Age’ of Television Drama,” The Museum of Broadcast Communications, accessed March 31, 2011, http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=goldenage.

non-existent just after the war, TV was found in 9 of 10 U.S. homes just 15 years later.

No medium had ever seen such rapid acceptance in so short a period.”17

1950 marked the beginning of a mass exodus of radio talent to television.18 Bob

Hope was the first comedian to make the jump and other stars soon followed.19 “The

Colgate Comedy Hour, Your Show of Shows, and The Steve Allen Show all premiered

on network television” in 1950.20 Two major players emerged in the early development

of television: David Sarnoff and William S. Paley.

Sarnoff started his career with the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company as an

operator and quickly moved up into management. In a flurry of sales and mergers, the

American Marconi company was assumed by General Electric, which formed the Radio

Corporation of America (RCA). Sarnoff quickly moved up in management and by 1947

was the chairman of the board of RCA.21 Sarnoff was instrumental in the growth of AM

radio and “he was convinced television would be the next great step in mass

communication.”22 As the leader at RCA he helped create NBC radio in 1926, the first

radio network.23 In 1953 he took over the duties of the president of the National

17 Allen, Craig, 1991, "Television, 1948-Present: Entertainment of Information?" In Perspectives on Mass Communication History, edited by W. D. Sloan, Hillsdale, N.J: L. Erlbaum Associates, 334.

18 1951, "Editorial" Billboard 63, no. 17: 4, Google Books, accessed January 30, 2013.

19 1950, "CBS Can’t Clear Enough Outlets, NBC Snags Bob Hope" Billboard 62, no. 10: 58, Google Books, accessed January 30, 2013.

20 Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young, 2004, The 1950s, American Popular Culture Through History, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, xv.

21 1947, "RCA Board Accepts Harbord Resignation" Billboard 59, no. 28: 7, Google Books, accessed January 30, 2013.

22 “Sarnoff, David,” The Museum of Broadcast Communications, accessed July 31, 2011, http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=sarnoffdavi.

23 Burns, Ken, Morgan Wesson, Geoffrey C. Ward, Jason Robards, and Tom Lewis, 2002, Empire of the air the men who made radio, [Alexandria, VA]: PBS DVD Video.

Broadcasting Company (NBC).24 He was correct in his assessment of television and

used his business acumen to turn NBC into a force in the television industry as he had

done with radio.25

As president of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and later chairman of

the board, William S. Paley’s shrewd management led to exponential growth and profits

for CBS in the years leading to the 1950s. While both Paley and Sarnoff had been born

to immigrants from the U.S.S.R., Sarnoff didn’t have the financial advantages that Paley

enjoyed and worked his way to the top while Paley’s father owned an extremely

successful cigar company. Paley’s father bought a failing network of radio stations with

the intent of using them to advertise his cigar business. Paley bought a controlling

interest in CBS radio and later expanded the network into television in direct competition

with Sarnoff’s NBC.26 Paley is remembered for two events of major importance in the

development of CBS television. One was the network option which provided

programming to affiliates for free and paid affiliates to air sponsored programs (which

the affiliates were required to air under the agreement).27 This allowed affiliates to

increase revenue with little effort and allowed networks to sell advertising time. The

24 1953, "NBC Prez White, III, Quits; Sarnoff takes Over Duties" Billboard 65, no. 31: 3, Google Books, accessed January 30, 2013.

25 1953, "A Resolution Unanimously Adopted by the NBC Television Affiliates" Billboard 65, no. 23: 8-9, Google Books, accessed January 30, 2013.

26 Sterling, Christopher H., and John M. Kittross, 2002, Stay Tuned: A History of American Broadcasting, LEA's communication series, Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; Smith, F. Leslie, John W. Wright, and David H. Ostroff, 1998, Perspectives on Radio and Television: Telecommunication in the United States, LEA's communication series, Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates; Dominick, Joseph R., Fritz Messere, and Barry L. Sherman, 2007, Broadcasting, Cable, the Internet, and Beyond: An Introduction to Modern Electronic Media, Boston: McGraw-Hill.

27 Smith, F. Leslie, John W. Wright, and David H. Ostroff, 1998, Perspectives on Radio and Television: Telecommunication in the United States, LEA's communication series, Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, 42-43.

second was what was considered a talent raid by Paley in 1948 of the radio and television talent, many of the stars from rival NBC.28 This raid would propel CBS into

the television ratings leader going into the 1950s in the critical prime time slots. “During

the 1950s, then, multi-channel television broadcasting to audiences numbering millions of viewers found its place at the centre of national life in the USA.”29 The impact of

television on other industries cannot be overstated. Walt Disney, having built an empire

in the animated film industry, realized the potential and influence that television would

have on his next proposed adventure: Disneyland.

In April 1954 it was announced that a theme park, Disneyland, would be built at Anaheim in Southern California. In a deal with the so-called ‘third’ (and struggling) network, ABC, a weekly television show also called Disneyland premiered in October. Walt Disney recognized the symbiosis: ‘I saw that if I was ever going to have my park, here was a way to tell millions of people about it – with TV’.30

Disney and ABC agreed to a seven-year contract for Disney to produce a one-

hour weekly show, giving Disney almost a full year of advertising and promotion for the

opening of the park Disneyland in 1955.31 Also in 1955, The Mickey Mouse Club would

make its television debut on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and would

score a 9.2 rating with a 44.9 percent share of audience in its first week.32

28 Ibid; 1949, "New CBS Onslaught Due? Bing, Fibber, Harris Next on Schedule?" Billboard 61, no. 3: 6, Google Books, accessed January 30, 2013; 1948, "The Jack Benny Story" Billboard 60, no. 48: 5, Google Books, accessed January 30, 2013.

29 Thumim, Janet, 2002, Small Screens, Big Ideas: television in the 1950s, London: I.B, Tauris, 6. 30 Ibid, 11; Marling, Karal Ann, 1994, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 122.

31 Walt Disney Productions, 1964, Disneyland, Verona: Arnoldo Mondadori, 20.

32 1955, "ABC’s ‘Mickey Mouse Club’ Grabs Solid Debut Ratings" Billboard 67, no. 42: 7, Google Books, accessed February 5, 2013

Radio also felt the impact as many of its stars and programs migrated to television and audience tastes in music were changing with a new generation. Traditional radio shows such as The Lone Ranger and Gunsmoke made the move as did comedians

Jack Benny and Milton Berle.33 Radio soap operas also found their way to television,

but The Guiding Light “was the only radio soap opera successfully to make the

transition to television.”34 Gunsmoke was the number one adventure program on television in September 1955 with The Lone Ranger ranking eighth during that same time period.35 Radio had already been broadcasting pre-recorded music, but this shift

in programming just forced radio to fill the time previously occupied by soap operas and

dramas.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Development and Social Impact

There is considerable debate about when rock ‘n’ roll music made its debut and

the classification of music that defines the genre has evolved throughout time and

divided into subcategories such as acid rock, glam rock, hard rock, classic rock, etc.

Alan Freed is often credited with coining the term “rock and roll” as the definition of

music that evolved from rhythm and blues and “race records” that became increasingly

popular with teenagers in the 1950s.36 Uslan and Solomon marked 1955 as “a year of

beginnings,” such as the opening of Disneyland, Lawrence Welk’s television show

33 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 6; 1948, "The Jack Benny Story" Billboard 60, no. 48: 5, Google Books, accessed January 30, 2013.

34 Hatch, Kristen, “Selling Soap: Post-War Television Soap Opera and the American Housewife,” In Small Screens, Big Ideas: Television in the 1950s, edited by Janet Thumim, 38. London: I.B, Tauris, 2002.

35 1955, "ARB Audience Composition Studies; Top Adventure Programs" Billboard 67, no. 42: 8, Google Books, accessed February 5, 2013.

36 Gould, Jonathan, 2007, Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America, New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 17-18.

featuring “champagne music,” and the break-through top ten rock ‘n’ roll hit “Rock

Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets.37 These beginnings, particularly the

birth of rock ‘n’ roll, were a progressive evolution rather than a sudden discovery.

As evidenced by the evolution of the rap and hip-hop music genres, African

American musicians in the United States have a history of innovation. This is evident in

the even earlier history of music in the blues genre. Many of today’s rock musicians will

cite blues music as a major influence in their development. As with any music genre,

rock ‘n’ roll had to get its roots somewhere, and most credit rhythm and blues as the

birthplace of American rock ‘n’ roll. It was recognized in 1955 that rhythm and blues

was having an impact on what was then called pop music, referring to it as an

“invasion.”38 That invasion was no more evident than in the surveys conducted by

Billboard magazine whereby songs now considered rock ‘n’ roll, such as Chuck Berry’s

Maybellene,” Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame,” and Billy Haley’s “Rock Around the

Clock” were all listed in the top 20 songs played on jukeboxes but only Pat Boone’s

cover of the Fats Domino classic made the top 20 list for songs played by disc jockeys.

Although crooners such as Frank Sinatra and Perry Como still managed to rank in the

top 15 songs played by disc jockeys, a shift in what audiences were buying and playing

on jukeboxes was showing in the charts.39 Hillbilly music and country and western also

had an impact on the development of rock ‘n’ roll as evidenced by the crossover appeal

37 Uslan, Michael and Bruce Solomon, 1981, Dick Clark’s the First 25 years of Rock & Roll, New York, NY: Greenwich House, 7.

38 Ackerman, Paul, "Tin Pan Alley Days Fade on Pop Music Broader Horizons" Billboard 67, no. 42: 1, Google Books, accessed February 5, 2013.

39 1955, "The Billboard Music Popularity Charts," Billboard 67, no. 42: 32, Google Books, accessed February 5, 2013.

of Jerry Lee Lewis’s and Elvis Presley’s Rockabilly style, a combination of hillbilly, country, and blues music.40

“Most historians are quick to point out that rock ‘n’ roll cannot be understood

simply as a music; that it must be understood as a social phenomenon.”41 Radio was

dominated by big band artists and vocalists such as Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Bing

Crosby, and Perry Como in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s and many of the vocalists

still enjoyed substantial popularity well into the 1950s. One of the hindrances in the

evolution of music was that radio stations often refused to play music by black artists.

Much of the conflict evolved around representation of songwriters and the collection and

distribution of royalties earned as a result of music aired on the radio. The American

Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) had a virtual monopoly on

copyrighted music, representing only established writers such as Cole Porter, Irving

Berlin, George Gershwin, and others. As a result of an impasse over royalty

negotiations, Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) was born to represent country artists like

Hank Williams and black artists such as Charlie “Bird” Parker and B.B. King that weren’t

represented by ASCAP.42 “BMI was founded by radio executives to provide competition

in the field of performing rights, to assure royalty payments to writers and publishers of

music not represented by the existing performing right organization and to provide an

40 1956, "Review Spotlight on C&W Records," Billboard 68, no. 51: 48, Google Books, accessed June 2, 2013; Davis, Peter G., “Warning—Composers At Work,” New York Magazine 15, no. 4: 64-65, Google Books, accessed June 2, 2013.

41 Garofalo, Reebee, and Steve Chapple, "The Pre-history of Rock and Roll," Radical America 14, no. 4 (1980): 61- 71, America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, accessed September 17, 2009, 61.

42 Ibid, 62-63; “ASCAP Rival Claims Gains,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 24, 1940. 2.

alternative source of licensing for all music users.”43 ASCAP was the older of the two

organizations collecting royalties for its members and represented the mainstream

artists such as Frank Sinatra. Meanwhile, BMI was created in 1939 to represent artists

that ASCAP wouldn’t represent, such as black and rock artists.44 Music, like America,

was still heavily segregated. Stations around the country in the 1950s were starting to

create what is “known as modern radio, or segmentation of audiences, and is now

called narrowcasting”.45 Many of these stations were starting to cater to audiences of a

new generation; the American youth were no longer satisfied with listening to their

parent’s music.46 Rock ‘n’ roll music was starting to dominate the “best selling pop

charts” in the fall of 1957.47 “Rock-‘n’-roll [sic] in the fifties caused some of the first

cracks and fissures of what later became known as the ‘Generation Gap’” between

parents and teenagers.48 “’Race records,’ the industry term for black artists’ pop-tinged

tunes with a heavy beat and lyrics packed with sexual innuendo,” were starting to

garner a large audience among white teenagers.49 The term “race records” would be

43 “Tradition,” BMI, accessed March 9, 2012, http://www.bmi.com/about/entry/533105.

44 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 82.

45 Killmeier, Matthew A., 2001, "Voices Between the Tracks: Disk [sic] Jockeys, Radio, and Popular Music, 1955-60," Journal of Communication Inquiry 25, no. 4: 353-374. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, accessed September 17, 2009, 359.

46 Rolontz, Bob, 1959, “Fading a Year Ago—Rock and Roll Ain’t Ready for Ol’ Rockin’ Chair Yet” Billboard 71, no. 34: 2, Google Books, accessed February 5, 2013.

47 Grevatt, Ren, "On the Beat; Rhythm & Blues—Rock & Roll" Billboard 69, no. 41: 69, Google Books, accessed February 5, 2013.

48 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 16.

49 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 31.

changed in the Billboard charts to Rhythm and Blues in 1949.50 Rhythm and blues was

becoming rock ‘n’ roll (a black euphemism for sex in the 1950s) and parents and racists

didn’t like it.51

The executive secretary of the Alabama White Citizens Council got right to the point in the early fifties: “The obscenity and vulgarity of the rock-‘n’-roll music is obviously a means by which the white man and his children can be driven to the level with the nigger. It is obviously Negro music.”52

Critics in the media and churches labeled rock ‘n’ roll as “jungle music” and others

labeled it as primitive.53 According to both Jerry Lee Lewis and his ex-wife Myra Lewis,

Lewis ran into some problems trying to get Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On played on the

radio in 1957 as the song was banned by most radio stations “for being too

provocative.”54 As a distributor told Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records in Memphis,

Tennessee, “Ever’body knows a whole lotta shakin’ is what humpin’ is all about.”

Racists particularly had a problem with the song.

“We don’t play songs by niggers on our station,” a program director in Texas told Sam. “Jerry Lee Lewis ain’t a nigger,” Sam informed him. “If he ain’t, he sure sounds like one. It’s a nigger song and it sounds like it’s sung by a nigger, so natur’ly we all thought he was a nigger.”55

50 Bronson, Fred, 1993, “Saluting the Roots: Five Decades of R&B Hitmakers” Billboard 105, no. 24: R3, Google Books, accessed February 5, 2013.

51 Jackson, John A., 1991, Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll, New York: Schirmer Books, 83; 1956, "Yeh-Heh-Heh-Hes, Baby," Time 67, no. 25: 56, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 6, 2013).

52 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 17.

53 Ibid.

54 Lewis, Myra, and Murray Silver, 1982, Great Balls of Fire: The Uncensored Story of Jerry Lee Lewis, New York: Quill, 81; “Jerry Lee Lewis: Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On,” All Things Considered: The Sounds of American Culture, NPR, last modified October 28, 2006, accessed February 6, 2013, http://www.npr.org/2006/10/28/6388855/jerrylee-lewis-whole-lotta-shakin-goin-on.

55 Ibid, 82.

However, by the second week of September, 1957, the song was number one in

sales on both country and western charts and rhythm and blues charts as well as being

the number one song played on rhythm and blues stations.56 Racists were in opposition

of rock ‘n’ roll as a whole, charging “that rock-and-roll (sic) – “the basic, heavy-beat

music of the Negroes,” bringing out basic animalism and vulgarity in man and that rock

‘n’ roll “represented a ‘plot to mongrelize America.’”57 Rock ‘n’ roll was also viewed as

being in opposition to religious beliefs.58 Rock ‘n’ roll of the 1950s was often referred to

as the devil’s music particularly Jerry Lee Lewis’ Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.59 Lewis

disagreed with that. “Raised in Assemblies of God churches, ‘I broke loose and spread

my wings, but to call it devil's music was stupid. It was a little harsh. I can't say that

Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On is devil's music.’"60 Still others viewed it as an avenue to

liberal morality.61 Author and social critic Vance Packard told a Senate subcommittee

56 1957, "The Billboard Music Popularity Charts" Billboard 69, no. 37: 61-63, Google Books, accessed February 5, 2013.

57 Szatmary, David P., 2010, Rockin' in Time: A Social History of Rock-and-Roll, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 22.

58 O'Callaghan, Fr Paul, 1988, "Rock 'n' Roll, Satanism, and our Children." Word Magazine, October 1988, 5-6.

59 Peter Altschuler, (Son of Murray "the K" Kaufmann), interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview January 09, 2012; "'Devil's Music' of the 1950s is Born Again," Fredericksburg.com - 'Devil's music' of the 1950s is born again, Free-Lance Star Publishing Co., last modified June 17, 2011, accessed February 6, 2013, http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2011/062011/06172011/633730.

60 Gundersen, Edna, “Jerry Lee Lewis Struts His Stuff as Music’s ‘Mean Old Man,’” USATODAY.com - Jerry Lee Lewis Struts His Stuff as Music’s ‘Mean Old Man,’ Gannett Co. Inc., last updated September 7, 2010, accessed July 9, 2013, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2010-09-07-jerrylee07_CV_N.htm.

61 1956, "Bobby-Soxers’ Gallup," Time 68, no. 7: 74, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 6, 2013).

that rock ‘n’ roll was responsible for stirring “the animal instinct in modern teenagers” and that the lyrics contained euphemisms for sex.62

Russ Sanjek, later vice president of Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), which initially licensed most rocks songs, explained the white fear of possible white and African-American sexual relations: “It was a time when many a mother ripped pictures of Fats Domino off her daughter’s bedroom wall. She remembered what she felt toward her Bing Crosby pinup, and she didn’t want her daughter screaming for Fats.”63

Throughout the 1950s, social dancing to music such as rock ‘n’ roll was considered morally wrong by evangelicals.64 “Religious leaders, guarding the moral fabric of America, especially felt compelled to speak out against (Elvis) Presley.”65

Parents took issue as well with one mother declaring, “It looks like a Roman orgy when

those kids get together.”66 Even Little Richard came to a self- realization that rock ‘n’

roll was the devil’s music, saying that “rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t glorify God.”67 He abandoned

his rock ‘n’ roll career for the ministry, saying “If you want to live for the Lord, you can’t

rock-and-roll [sic], too. God doesn’t like it.”68 He elaborated on his views of rock ‘n’ roll

in his biography.

62 Szatmary, David P., 2010, Rockin' in Time: A Social History of Rock-and-Roll, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 23.

63 Ibid.

64 Petigny, Alan Cecil, 2009, The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965, New York: Cambridge University Press, 58.

65 Szatmary, David P., 2010, Rockin' in Time: A Social History of Rock-and-Roll, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 50.

66 Petigny, Alan Cecil, 2009, The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965, New York: Cambridge University Press, 181.

67 “’Little Richard’ Gives Life to God, Again,” The Ledger, Lakeland, FL, October 30, 1978, 2, Google news, accessed July 9, 2013.

68 Petigny, Alan Cecil, 2009, The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965, New York: Cambridge University Press, 56.

My true belief about Rock ‘n’ Roll—and there have been a lot of phrases attributed to me over the years—is this: I believe this kind of music is demonic. I have seen the rock groups and the punk-rock people in this country. And some of their lyrics is [sic] demonic. They talk against God. A lot of the beats in music today are taken from voodoo, from the voodoo drums.69

Students at Wake Forest College staged a protest in 1957 after the State Baptist

Commission in North Carolina prohibited social dancing. “About 500 or 600 students,

mostly male, demonstrated…dancing to the music of blaring phonographs and shouting

such slogans as ‘Down with the Baptists.’ An effigy of the outgoing convention

president, Dr. J.C. Campe of Hendersonville, was burned.”70 “Thus, with the debut of

rock ‘n’ roll . . . the 1950s is seen as an era of increased sexual titillation, while the

portrait of the sixties – with its free love, coed dorms, and oral contraceptives – is one of

increased sexual activity.”71

One of the attractions of rock ‘n’ roll to teenagers in the 1950s was that it was a

new type of music that was substantially different than their parent’s music.

Hesmondhalgh explains that music plays an important role in people’s lives, providing

“two contrasting but co-existing dimensions of musical experience in modern

societies.”72 He says that music provides both “encounters of self-identity (this is who I am; this is who I’m not” and “collective identity (this is who we are; this is who we’re

69 White, Charles, 1994, The life and times of Little Richard: the quasar of rock. [Cambridge, Mass]: Da Capo Press.

70 "Dancing Ban Draws Students’ Protest," The Washington Observer, Washington, PA, November 22, 1957, 5, Google news, accessed February 6, 2013.

71 Petigny, Alan Cecil, 2009, The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965, New York: Cambridge University Press, 103.

72 Hesmondhalgh, David, 2008, "Towards a Critical Understanding of Music, Emotion and Self-identity," Consumption, Markets & Culture 11, no. 4: 329, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost, accessed November 9, 2011.

not).”73 Rock ‘n’ roll provided both of those roles to teenagers in the 1950s, bestowing a sense of self-identity that distinguished their independence from their parent’s music as well as providing the teenage demographic with a collective identity and a sense of unity. Coleman’s research conducted in the late 1950s supports this claim in his argument that teenagers used music as a part of the construction of their identity.74

Studies in the 1970s “emphasized the power of the ideology in music – especially in the

lyrics – in contributing to the solidarity of social movements.”75 In this examination, the

evolution of rock ‘n’ roll and its adoption by the teenage demographic of the 1950s

would be that social movement. Lewis’ examination of music as symbolic

communication, rather than taking theoretical approaches previously found in the study

of popular music in sociology, hypothesizes that popular music is “a system of meaning”

to particular social groups.76 Time magazine reported “that psychologists believed that

teenagers embraced rock ‘n’ roll because of a deep-seated, abnormal need to

belong.”77 Parents in the 1950s may not have understood or known what type of

meaning their children were receiving from or placing on the new type of music that was

being called rock ‘n’ roll.

73 Ibid.

74 Coleman, James Samuel, 1961, The Adolescent Society; The Social Life of the Teenager and its Impact on Education, [New York]: Free Press of Glencoe.

75 Lewis, George H., 1983, "The Meanings In the Music and the Music's In Me: Popular Music as Symbolic Communication," Theory, Culture & Society 2, no. 1: 133, Left Index, EBSCOhost, accessed November 9, 2011.

76 Ibid, 140.

77 Altschuler, Glenn C., 2003, All Shook Up: How Rock 'n' Roll Changed America, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 6.

Grotto postulated that many of life’s lessons can be learned from rock ‘n’ roll

music.78 This was a major concern of parents since, as mentioned earlier, they viewed

the lyrics to these songs as obscene and vulgar. “A few went further, declaring the

music of teenagers a tool in a conspiracy to ruin the morals of a generation of

Americans.”79 Additionally, parents were concerned with the on-stage actions of artists

such as Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley, whose styles were different but created the

same swooning and uncontrollable screaming of young girls throughout the United

States. When asked about his gyrations on stage, Presley said, "Some people tap their

feet, some people snap their fingers and some people just sway back and forth. I just

sort of do them all together, I guess." 80 A pastor in Des Moines, Iowa told his

congregation that “Elvis Presley is morally insane.”81 Time magazine was quite biased

in its view of Elvis Presley, calling him a “sexhibitionist.”82 However, Time wasn’t as

critical of rock ‘n’ roll and the teenagers that listened to it. Violence had erupted at

several rock ‘n’ roll shows throughout the country, prompting city officials to ban rock

concerts in civic buildings.83 One particular show in Boston, hosted by disc jockey Alan

78 Grotto, Frederic, 2011, 13 Things Rock and Roll Can Do for You, Telemachus Press, LLC.

79 Altschuler, Glenn C., 2003, All Shook Up: How Rock 'n' Roll Changed America, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 6.

80 Presley, Elvis, 2011, Young man with a big beat: the complete ’56 Elvis Presley masters [box set, original recording remastered], New York: Sony Legacy, Disc 5.

81 “Elvis Morally Insane, Minister Says,” The Spartanburg Herald, Spartanburg, SC, December 5, 1956, 16, Google news, accessed February 6, 2013.

82 1957, "Lonely & Shook Up," Time 69, no. 21: 103, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 6, 2013).

83 Petigny, Alan Cecil, 2009, The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965, New York: Cambridge University Press, 181; Szatmary, David P., 2010, Rockin' in Time: A Social History of Rock-and-Roll, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 49; Altschuler, Glenn C., 2003, All Shook Up: How Rock 'n' Roll Changed America, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3-5.

Freed and headlined by Jerry Lee Lewis, left fifteen people injured and or robbed.84

“Freed’s defenders pointed out that the Arena area has been the site of frequent

muggings in past” and teens probably did not participate in the violence, Boston mayor

John Hynes barred rock-an-roll shows from the city.”85 An incident at a U.S. Navy base

in Rhode Island during a Fats Domino concert resulted in a ban on future rock concerts at the naval base as well.86 All these incidents led parents and public officials to

associate rock ‘n’ roll with increased violence.

Parents were concerned with behavioral changes in several aspects of their

children’s lives in the 1950s. Changes in hairstyles and clothing were two of the most

obvious changes. Exiting was the clean-cut look of Pat Boone and Dick Clark, both

often pictured with a business man’s haircut and a jacket with tie. The new look being

sported by teenagers were ducktail haircuts, seen as “a form of retaliation against what

their environment has done to them as individuals.”87 As this hairstyle continued to

prove popular into the 1960s, one student was suspended from school and his father

lost an argument with the school board over his son’s right to wear the hairstyle he

chose.88 While it is generally considered that the United States underwent a sexual

84 "Boston Rock ‘n’ Roll Violence Brings Ban," The Miami News, Miami, FL, May 5, 1958, 3A, Google news, accessed February 6, 2013; 1958, "Rock ‘n’ Riot," Time 71, no. 20: 52, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 6, 2013).

85 Ibid.

86 Altschuler, Glenn C., 2003, All Shook Up: How Rock 'n' Roll Changed America, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4.

87 “Ducktail Haircut, Car, Low Grades Blamed on Society,” The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, VA, April 25, 1958, 2, Google news, accessed February 6, 2013.

88 “Father Plans Court Fight Over Son’s Right to Wear Ducktail Haircut to School,” Lewiston Evening Journal, Lewiston-Auburn, ME, November 8, 1961, 6, Google news, accessed February 6, 2013.

revolution in the 1960s, Petigny argues that it may have occurred earlier.89 His

argument is that there seems to be more evidence that there was an increase in

premarital sex in the 1950s, but Americans were “more willing to acknowledge the

extracurricular activities of their youth than they had been during the previous

decade.”90

While the debate raged between generations over rock ‘n’ roll and its connections

to African Americans, morality, and sexuality, it was white disc jockeys throughout the

United States who were bringing this music to the white teenagers of America. Every

major city had its top disc jockeys: Hunter Hancock at several stations in Los Angeles,

Dick Biondi (who would lay his claim to greater fame at WLS-AM in Chicago in 1960) in

Youngstown, Ohio at WHOT-AM, “Dr. Jive” Tommy Smalls at WWRL-AM and “Jocko”

Henderson at WOV-AM and WADO-AM in New York, John R. and Gene Nobles in

Nashville at WLAC-AM, George “Hound Dog” Lorenz in Buffalo at WKBW-AM, “Jumpin”

George Oxford in San Francisco/Oakland at KSAN-AM, Porky Chedwick in Pittsburgh at

WHOD-AM (later re-christened WAMO-AM), Dewey Phillips in Memphis at WHBQ-AM, and Alan “Moondog” Freed at WJW-AM in Cleveland and WINS-AM/WABC-AM in New

York to name a few.91 These disc jockeys introduced artists such as Bo Diddley, Buddy

Holly, Chuck Berry, and a host of others to the American teenager.

89 Petigny, Alan Cecil, 2009, The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965, New York: Cambridge University Press, 116-117.

90 Ibid.

91 Fong-Torres, Ben, 1998, The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 radio, San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 22-26.

1960s

How you remember the sixties is completely dependent on how you survived the sixties. Those who saw it down the barrel of an M-16 in Southeast Asia have a different perspective than the guys with a college deferment. The memories of black civil rights workers in Montgomery will differ greatly from those of middle- class whites who lived in suburbia. If you were the parents of a teenager, you were probably torn between complete bewilderment and sheer terror.92

As most historians know, the 1960s were a time of protests and this section is

included to highlight those social issues to provide a background for the social climate

radio was operating under. The American public’s frustration with the government and

its involvement in Vietnam as well as the continuing struggle of African-Americans and

women in their pursuit of equal rights under the law highlighted the decade. Radio

would become more important in the Civil Rights Movement as activists sought more

media attention to further their cause.93 The 1960s also found the United States in another cultural shift as rock ‘n’ roll had evolved and its listeners experimented with drugs. Disc jockeys found themselves embroiled in a pay-for-play scandal that would shape the future of radio forever.

Equal Rights

As mentioned earlier, legislation did little to make an immediate impact on increasing the civil rights of African Americans, especially in Birmingham, Alabama.

Women also found themselves in a struggle for equal rights, although they were starting

to make some inroads into the male dominated disc jockey profession.94 While

Caucasian women weren’t turned away from businesses or forced to use different

92 Ladd, Jim, 1991, Radio waves: life and revolution on the FM dial, New York: St. Martin's Press, 5.

93 Ward, Brian, 2004, Radio and the struggle for civil rights in the South, Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

94 Bundy, June, 1960, "Vox Jox" The Billboard 72, no. 14: 28, Google Books (accessed February 7, 2013).

drinking fountains, they found themselves struggling for equality in the workplace after

World War II.95 Betty Friedan’s The Feminist Mystique is often identified as precipitating

second-wave feminism in the United States.96 Television had started slowly moving

women out of the home and into the workplace, but to jobs stereotypically given to

women. Jobs such as secretary, meter maid, and hospital helper were just a few held

by Lucille Ball’s character on The Lucy Show. On The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Tyler

Moore’s character was a stay-at-home mom and Frances Bavier’s character Aunt Bee

was a housekeeper on The Andy Griffith Show. In actual society, women were moving

out of the workplace and back into the home. Their life focused around maintaining the

home for their families and allowing men to make the major decisions in their lives.

“They gloried in their role as women, and wrote proudly on the census blank:

“Occupation: housewife”.”97

However, Friedan stumbled upon a realization in 1959 that there was a growing problem among women, a problem that had no name.98 Although women’s influence in major purchases was beginning to rise by the mid-1950s, women were becoming restless and unsure of the reasons why they were experiencing these feelings.99 “A

Cleveland doctor called it “the housewife’s syndrome”,” but that syndrome was an

emptiness the housewives felt within, a lack of personal identity and fulfillment outside

95 Field, Connie, Lola Weixel, Margaret Wright, Lyn Childs, Gladys Belcher, and Wanita Allen, 2007, The life and times of Rosie the Riveter, [Franklin Lakes, NJ]: Clarity Educational Productions.

96 Hatch, Kristen, “Selling Soap: Post-War Television Soap Opera and the American Housewife,” In Small screens, big ideas: television in the 1950s, edited by Janet Thumim, London: I.B. Tauris, 2002, 35

97 Friedan, Betty, 1963, The Feminine Mystique, New York: W.W. Norton, 18.

98 Ibid, 19-20.

99 Ibid, 19-22; Petigny, Alan Cecil, 2009, The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965, New York: Cambridge University Press, 140-141.

their roles as wives and mothers.100 While proud of the work they did within the home,

they felt there was more outside the home and “a rising number of white, middle-class

women” were “unwilling to be treated like second-class citizens in the boardroom” as

well as in education.101 The feminist movement of the 1960s, including the formation of

the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966, ran parallel to the equal rights

movement championed by the African American population. Although there were

African American women “involved with NOW from the outset,” feminist activism among

minority women didn’t start to be recognized until the 1970s.102 Based on past history

of women in the workplace during World War II, women were looking for something to

once again contribute to society other than being “just a housewife.”103 As Friedan

stated, “If a job is to be the way out of the trap for a woman, it must be a job that she

can take seriously as part of a life plan, work to which she can grow as part of

society.”104 As feminists moved for more equality based on gender, African Americans

such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King were still working for equality based on race.

The Equal Rights Movement still had much work to be done. However, by 1956

women were increasingly finding jobs as radio disc jockeys.105 WHER, a station in

Memphis, Tennessee owned by Sam Philips who also owned Sun Records, was the

100 Friedan, Betty, 1963, The Feminine Mystique, New York: W.W. Norton, 20-22.

101 Thompson, Becky, 2002, “Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism”, Feminist Studies 28, no. 2, (July 1): 338. http://www.proquest.com/, accessed January 17, 2012.

102 Ibid, 338-339.

103 Friedan, Betty, 1963, The Feminine Mystique, New York: W.W. Norton, 344.

104 Ibid, 345.

105 Bundy, June, 1956, "Gals Across Nation Are Grabbing Mikes to Gab on Deejay Shows," The Billboard 68, no. 1: 15, Google Books, accessed February 4, 2013.

first all-female staffed station in the United States in 1957 and in 1960 provided a model for WDIA in Hawaii to fill positions with women where possible.106

Although legislation was being put into place, it was still a problem getting it

enforced. Browder v. Gayle didn’t end segregation on public transportation. In 1960,

Jimmie Louis Warren was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama, for sitting next to a white

man on a bus.

I got on the bus, and it was a seat vacant beside this white fellow. It was so crowded that people were standing on the bus. All the rest of the black folk was sitting in the back or standing up . . . . And at this particular stop this white lady got off the bus. Where she had been sitting beside this white gentleman, I sat down beside him....He grabbed me and said no nigger was going to sit by him.... He tried to push me out of the seat, and I held on . . . . [The driver] stopped the bus, got off, and made a phone call, right there on Twenty-sixth Street and about Twentieth Avenue in North Birmingham. He stopped at a telephone booth and called the police.... So the police came . . . . [and] arrested me, taking me in, and locked me up.107

There were varying ideas among equal rights activists on how to approach the

common goal of equality. While the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King attempted to take a

peaceful approach, others like Rob Williams felt that the African American community

had to fight fire with fire.

I made a statement that if the law, if the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution cannot be enforced in this social jungle called Dixie, it is time that Negroes must defend themselves even if it is necessary to resort to violence…it is time for Negro men to stand up and be men and that if it is necessary for us to die we must be willing to die. If it’s necessary for us to kill we must be willing to kill.108

106 Bundy, June, 1960, "Vox Jox" The Billboard 72, no. 14: 28, Google Books (accessed February 7, 2013); Bundy, June, 1960, "Vox Jox" The Billboard 69, no. 17: 50, Google Books (accessed February 7, 2013).

107 Krochmal, Max, 2010, "An Unmistakably Working-Class Vision: Birmingham's Foot Soldiers and Their Civil Rights Movement," Journal of Southern History 76, no. 4: 923-960, Academic Search Alumni Edition, EBSCOhost, accessed February 24, 2011.

108 Dickson, Sandra H., Churchill Lee Roberts, and Terence Blanchard, 2005, Negroes with guns Rob Williams and Black power, [South Burlington, VT]: California Newsreel.

While this stance cost Williams his position within the NAACP as well as

precipitating his fleeing the country on charges of kidnapping, he was expressing a

frustration felt throughout the country with the lack of advancement of equal rights and

the continued repression of African Americans. Williams’ 1962 book “Negroes with

Guns” fueled the radical militant element of the civil rights movement, influencing Huey

P. Newton, a founder of the Black Panther Party, “and remained a bible of militance to a

generation of young African American revolutionaries.”109 However, it was in 1963 with

his “I Have a Dream” speech that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was able to gather

nationwide attention to the movement, which allowed the movement to gather enough

support to prompt President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the National Voting Rights Act of 1965.110 The movement would continue long after

King’s assassination in 1968.

Radio in the southern portion of the United States was still divided on segregation

and integration. Phil Meltzer, a native New Yorker, had bought WKOS at the end of

1962, a black-oriented station in Columbus, Georgia. Upon his arrival in town he found protesters insisting on the integration of the public library, something he felt should have already happened and offered to help. He was successful in quelling the protests and assisted in the integration, but found himself and his station struggling for survival in the community. He formed an unlikely friendship with Allen Woodall, the owner of cross- town station WDAK, whose racial views were in direct contrast with Meltzer’s. As a result, the station was able to appeal to newly integrated businesses that advertising on

109 Tyson, Timothy B., 1999, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 289.

110 “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” NAACP, accessed March 3, 2011, http://www.naacp.org/pages/king.

his station would help them target the black consumer and allowed Meltzer to position his station as a leader in the black community.111

Stations like WERD in Atlanta, the first black-owned radio station in the United

States, provided airtime to organizations like the National Urban League (NUL) and the

Atlanta Negro Voters League in their work to end segregation.112 The owner, Jesse

Blayton, would go on to be the chairman of the NUL and differed in his philosophy for

ending segregation with the NAACP, who he viewed as being more militant in their

approach.113 As women were starting to gain a foothold in the radio industry, the

popularity of African American disc jockeys was steadily rising such as Jocko

Henderson, Frankie Crocker, and Herb Kent. There was also a shift in the black

listening audience.

This group not only accepted African-American disc jockeys who sounded “white” but also white DJs who played black music. Although white DJs had appealed to African-American listeners in the 1940s and 1950s, they had done so by imitating the black communications style. However, by the 1960s, African-American listeners accepted white DJs who simply played black music but used few, if any, black idiomatic phrases or language.114

As “corporate America discovered the buying power of African Americans,”

companies started buying more advertising on “black-formatted radio stations.”115 This

also precipitated a shift in programming ideology. “Format radio became preferred over

111 Ward, Brian, 2004, Radio and the struggle for civil rights in the South, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 150-153.

112 Ibid, 164-165.

113 Ibid, 161-165.

114 Williams, Gilbert Anthony, 1998, Legendary pioneers of Black radio, Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2.

115 Ibid, 21.

personality radio,” not just in black radio stations but throughout the entire radio industry.116

Rock ‘n’ Roll and Flower Power

As stated earlier, the 1960s were a time of protests and that was reflected in music

and its listeners. As the music and the audience changed, the disc jockeys needed to

adapt as well. As will be explicated in this section, rock ‘n’ roll branched out to create

sub-genres or mutate with less popular genres. As a result, the animated personalities

of the disc jockeys in the 1950s became less important than the format of the radio

station in the 1960s. The late 1960s would also usher in the increased popularity of FM

radio and with it, a new type of disc jockey.

The Civil Rights Movement had “freedom songs” from artists such as Nina Simone

and Curtis Mayfield, documenting their protest of discrimination through song.117 Rock

‘n’ roll split into many diverse paths based on sound and lyrics, most notably the British

invasion and folk music.

Belz suggests that folk music in the 1960s became its own genre away from rock

‘n’ roll, a form of music that was embraced by musicians and a large hippie audience

that was intent on protesting the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.118 Aquila

explicates the “California sound” in rock music whereby he points out that rock music in

116 Ibid.

117 Kernodle, Tammy L., 2008, "I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free: Nina Simone and the Redefining of the Freedom Song of the 1960s," Journal of the Society for American Music 2, no. 3: 295. RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, EBSCOhost, accessed February 24, 2011.

118 Belz, Carl I., 1967, "Popular Music and the Folk Tradition," Journal of American Folklore 80, no. 316: 130-142, America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, accessed March 1, 2010.

the 1960s was intrinsically linked to location.119 He specifically identifies the California

sound and the San Francisco sound, while both originating on the West Coast of the

United States, were very different in their musical composition and lyrical message.

The California sound was identified with surfer life, most aptly defined by songs from

The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and The Safaris to name a few. The San Francisco

sound was more identifiable with the hippie population, which was more about

relaxation, peace, love, and harmony with the world as well as experimentation with

drugs such as marijuana and LSD.120

Timothy Leary, one-time Harvard professor, became the guru of LSD experimentation. His favorite phrase, “turn on, tune in, drop out,” was a call to drug use and a counterculture life adopted by many American college students.121

Like the proponents of the Civil Rights Movement, the hippie movement was also

divided into two distinct approaches to the same ideology. As mentioned, the hippie

movement was primarily about peace in opposition to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

One of the two primary groups were those who took a more militant approach and were

most often found on college campuses throughout the United States. Simmon and

Trout’s study of college hippies found that, in that environment, they were recruited and

socialized as well as categorized based on year in college and participation within the

hippie community. The group identified as politicals were primarily upperclassmen or

119 Aquila, Richard, 1980, "Images of the American West in Rock Music," Western Historical Quarterly 11, no. 4: 415-432. America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, accessed April 5, 2010.

120 Ibid; Rielly, Edward J., 2003, The 1960s, American Popular Culture Through History, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 31-35.

121 Rielly, Edward J., 2003, The 1960s, American Popular Culture Through History, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 33.

graduate students and was more often the group to take the militant approach to protests.122 The other group was found in distinct areas of the U.S., primarily in New

York’s East Village and the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.123 These hippies

garnered more attention as they engaged in a more bohemian lifestyle and were often

the targets of persecution from the establishment.124

Near Boulder, Colorado, a restaurant sign says, “Hippies not served here.” Large billboards in upstate New York carry slogans like “Keep America Clean: Take a Bath.” and “Keep America Clean: Get a Haircut.”125

Police sweeps were common in San Francisco and Berkeley in the late 1960s.

“People were brutally scattered by club-wielding policemen who first closed exits from

the assaulted area and then began systematically to beat and arrest those who were

trapped.”126 Regardless of their location or penchant for drug use, the common theme

tying hippies together was their opposition to the war in Vietnam.

The Vietnam War was the longest and most protested was in U.S. history, taking the lives of approximately 58,000 Americans. While the U.S. soldiers were fighting overseas, Americans staged protests and sit-ins on college campuses nationwide.127

Similarly, the hippies were protesting the war and the establishment in the Haight-

Ashbury district of San Francisco, and this was reflected in the music of the time and

122 Simmon, Geoffrey, and Grafton Trout, 1967, Hippies in College-from Teeny-boppers to Drug Freaks, Society (New Brunswick) 5 (2) (-12): 27-32

123 Ibid.

124 Brown, Michael E., 1969, The Condemnation and Persecution of Hippies. Society (New Brunswick) 6 (10) (-09): 33-46.

125 Ibid, 36.

126 Ibid.

127 Rielly, Edward J., 2003, The 1960s, American Popular Culture Through History, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 17.

the geographical location. This district of San Francisco became a central location for hippies to gather as a sub-culture community. Artists like the Grateful Dead became synonymous with the district and their fans with recreational drug use in an anti- establishment protest.

Music mattered to 60s politics for its openness, its ambiguity. It was possible, for example, for some performers (the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, the Stones, the Dead) to be a source of solidarity and enthusiasm for both the antiwar movement and the American soldiers in Vietnam.128

In 1967, Tom Donahue a top disc jockey on Top 40 radio station KYA-AM abruptly

quit as he found himself tired of format radio. He joined KMPX-FM as the program director with the idea that FM radio was the right place for a more free-form style of programming.129 His idea of programming an FM station harkened back to beginning of

rock ‘n’ roll radio stations before Top 40 became a standard format in the 1950s.

“There’s no restriction on the deejay. He can play a large variety of music and the

records are played without worrying about the length of the cut.”130 Ladd credits

Donahue with the on-air style of not talking over the beginnings and ends of songs as

was common on AM stations as well as playing several songs in a row then back-

announcing them to let listeners know what had been played rather than talking

between each song.131 Donahue didn’t believe he invented non-format radio, but rather

128 Frith, Simon, 1984, Rock and the Politics of Memory. Social Text(9/10, The 60's without Apology) (Spring - Summer): pp. 67-68, http://www.jstor.org/stable/466535, accessed February 2, 2010.

129 Ladd, Jim, 1991, Radio waves: life and revolution on the FM dial, New York: St. Martin's Press, 6-10; Hall, Claude, 1967, “KMPX-FM’s Donahue Programs Music With a Wide Open View” Billboard 79, no. 52: 18, Google Books, accessed February 7, 2013.

130 Hall, Claude, 1967, “KMPX-FM’s Donahue Programs Music With a Wide Open View” Billboard 79, no. 52: 18, Google Books, accessed February 7, 2013.

131 Ladd, Jim, 1991, Radio waves: life and revolution on the FM dial, New York: St. Martin's Press, 10.

just his idea “to put it into operation.”132 This idea would give new rock ‘n’ roll artists,

such as the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, and The Doors a platform

to reach more listeners.

The 1960s found rock ‘n’ roll mixing with politics and drugs, splintering into several

sub-genres; psychedelic rock, acid rock, progressive rock, and folk rock to name a few.

Artists like the Grateful Dead would embody the spirit of the Haight-Ashbury hippies while folk artists such as Joan Baez, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan would become voices of the anti-war and equal rights movements. The groups were united in their overall theme of peace and equality.

Folk music traditionally had been anti-establishment, and its revival in the 1960s wedded folk to protest even more securely as folk singers joined the vanguard in protesting the Vietnam War and demanding equal rights for people of color.133

Belz believed that “folk artists seem to produce their best work when they sing of

things which they feel and live through—things which they understand, in however basic

or simplified fashion.”134 Belz goes on to say that “world issues are usually beyond this

realm,” but Vietnam was a world issue that captured the attention of American youth

and their musical counterparts.135 Baez stated that, "I went to jail for 11 days for

disturbing the peace; I was trying to disturb the war." 136 Baez was also active in the

132 Hall, Claude, 1967, “KMPX-FM’s Donahue Programs Music With a Wide Open View” Billboard 79, no. 52: 22, Google Books, accessed February 7, 2013.

133 Rielly, Edward J., 2003, The 1960s, American Popular Culture through History, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 151.

134 Belz, Carl I., 1967, "Popular Music and the Folk Tradition," Journal of American Folklore 80, no. 316: 139, America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, accessed March 1, 2010.

135 Ibid.

136 Gilliland, John, Show 19 - Blowin' in the Wind: Pop Discovers Folk Music, [Part 2], UNT Digital Library. http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19769/, accessed February 1, 2012.

civil rights movement, marching with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963.137

While somewhat paranoid, Phil Ochs was another folk activist who had taken an anti-

war stance in the 1960s.138 While a fan of Dylan’s, Ochs didn’t feel the admiration was

mutual.

I’m quite sure Dylan despises what I write. I’ve talked to him about this at some length—and I get the impression he can’t accept what I’m doing. Because in his mind it’s political and therefore bullshit. Because I’m not writing about myself and my deepest emotions, he feels. And I’m not facing the thing as brutally honest as he is – in other words, he thinks I could be much more honest with myself. And this is the disturbing thing. Here’s the man I most respect in the world, Dylan, telling me that – “hey, your writing is bullshit,” essentially.139

Folk music as a whole encompassed activism and poetry, many of the lines

between the two blurred in songs like Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” or Ochs “Changes” as well as others that were definitive in their message such as Pete Seeger’s “Waist

Deep in the Big Muddy” and his adaptation of “We Shall Overcome,” recorded by Joan

Baez, for the civil rights movement.140 The whole genre captured the attention of the

Flower Children, civil rights activists, and politicians, but for others it was the English

Invasion that fascinated the American teenager and made disc jockeys scramble to make it a part of their show and their identity.

137 Rielly, Edward J., 2003, The 1960s, American Popular Culture Through History, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 153.

138 Cunningham, Sis, and Gordon Friesen, 1965, An Interview with Phil Ochs, Broadside Magazine, http://www.broadsidemagazine.com/All/63.pdf, accessed February 1, 2012.

139 Ibid, 4.

140 “About Pete Seeger,” Pete Seeger Music, accessed February 2, 2012, http://www.peteseegermusic.com/about.html

Beatlemania and the British Invasion

Looking to expand their audience beyond the shores of the United Kingdom,

British bands looked west to the United States where many found their musical influences. Since The Beatles landed in the United States in 1964, British groups found

an enthusiastic audience in the United States and radio disc jockeys clamoring for

interviews. “The Beatles in 1964 were the first unmistakably non-American performers

in any mass medium to achieve the status of superstars on an international scale.”141

Artists such as The Yardbirds, The Rolling Stones, and the Kinks, while providing

different styles of British rock ‘n’ roll, found success in the U.S. The identifying sound

emanating from the Liverpool, England music scene was referred to as the Mersey

beat, named for the county which encompasses the city of Liverpool, and most notably

the style of the early Beatles. “The Yardbirds made their first recordings as a backup

band for Chicago blues great Sonny Boy Williamson” and “quickly made a name for

themselves in London's rapidly exploding R&B circuit, taking over the Rolling Stones'

residency at the famed Crawdaddy club.”142 “As the self-consciously dangerous alternative to the bouncy Merseybeat of The Beatles in the British Invasion, the Stones had pioneered the gritty, hard-driving blues-based rock & roll (sic) that came to define hard rock.”143 The Kinks were a band that dabbled in both styles with songs such as

“Sunday Afternoon” and “You Really Got Me.” However, it was The Beatles that led the

way for British bands to capture a new audience.

141 Gould, Jonathan, 2007, Can't Buy Me Love: the Beatles, Britain, and America, New York: Harmony Books, 9.

142 Unterberger, Richie, The Yardbirds, in Rovi Corporation [database online], Available from http://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-yardbirds-p5888/biography, accessed February 2, 2012.

143 Erlewine, Stephen Thomas, The Rolling Stones, in Rovi Corporation [database online], available from http://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-rolling-stones-p5289, accessed February 2, 2012.

The Beatles captured the American imagination through two media avenues, radio and television. The Beatles first appeared live in the United States on the Ed Sullivan

Show on February 9, 1964.144 It was at a press conference prior to this appearance where Murray “the K” Kaufman, the top disc jockey at radio station WINS-AM that year, first met The Beatles. According to Altschuler, “Murray was in Florida on vacation when he got a phone call from the station saying The Beatles are coming. . . . His response was ‘Call an exterminator. I’m on vacation. Leave me alone. Don’t tell me about bugs.’” 145 Kaufman returned to New York to attend the press conference on February

7, 1964, positioning himself near the feet of the band. Amid the chaos and multiple

attempts by reporters to ask questions, someone screamed out, “Hey! "Would you tell

Murray the K to cut that crap out?" and the band responded by looking down at

Kaufman and telling him “cut that crap out.”146

According to Kaufman’s son, Peter Altschuler, Murray “the K” Kaufman’s

association with The Beatles was much maligned. It is his account that many said,

“Hey, where’d this guy come from? He’s riding on their coattails. He’s a nobody.”147

He says that “Brian (Epstein) came to Murray. Murray did not go looking for the

Beatles….when they arrived, Brian Epstein had already done his homework and he

knew that if he wanted the Beatles to be a success in New York City which in 1964 was

144 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 93.

145 Peter Altschuler, (Son of Murray "the K" Kaufmann), interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview January 09, 2012.

146 “Beatles 1st USA Press Conference February 7, 1964 NYC,” YouTube video, 2:12, posted by “Katmak21,” April 14, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM34IbQ3MS8.

147 Ibid.

the top music market in the world and Murray was the top rated rock and roll (sic) disc jockey in New York then Brian Epstein had to be in Murray’s good graces.”

Bruce Morrow believed that Murray the K had declared himself “The Fifth Beatle” as so many other disc jockeys were doing at that time.148 Competition among radio

stations, particularly in New York, was fierce as radio stations looked for ways to

capitalize on Beatlemania. According to Kaufman, the moniker came from the band as a result of his travelling with the band and sharing a room with George Harrison.149

The Beatles arrival in America and their subsequent domination of rock ‘n’ roll

radio was an unparalleled event in broadcasting. Their domination of American media

continued with their own animated television show in the late 1960s. The Beatles ruled

the Billboard Top 100 charts in the United States in 1964 with six number one hits and

the remainder of the decade with a total of 21 number one songs from 1964-1969.150

Although the Beatles dominated American music charts and Top 40 stations, rock

‘n’ roll was as diverse as its audience. The culmination of all that was rock ‘n’ roll in the

1960s could be found at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair held at Max Yasgur’s farm in

Bethel, New York in August of 1969. Named as one of Rolling Stone magazine’s 50

Moments that Changed Rock and Roll History, Woodstock brought together “the hippie

nation” for three days of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

On the weekend of August 15th, 1969, an estimated 400,000 people from all over America descended on the 600-acre dairy farm of Max Yasgur, in

148 Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 150.

149 “Murray the K of WINS radio,” interview by Martin A. Grove, Ottawa Beatles Site, accessed February 8, 2013, http://beatles.ncf.ca/murrayk.html.

150 “Billboard Hot 100 #1 Songs (1960 - 1969),” DigitalDreamDoor.com, accessed February 20, 2012, http://digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_billbord2.html.

Bethel, New York, for a three-day concert, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. On Monday, August 18th, they all melted back into America after witnessing legendary performances by, among others, the Who, Santana, Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Joe Cocker, Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix and, in only their second live show together, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.151

Never before had a concert of such magnitude ever been staged and the number

of people expected to attend was far less than the throngs of people that gathered in

upstate New York. “You couldn’t wrap your mind around how many people were there,”

said Wavy Gravy, one of the show’s MC’s.152 Disc jockey “Cousin Brucie” Bruce

Morrow remembered it as a fusion of normal society and teenage rebellion into a single

wave representing a new norm during his two days at the concert.153 The actual

number of attendees couldn’t be determined as the organizers estimated “more than

half of the 300,000 people who attended the fair got in free because three times the

expected number of people turned up and broke down the entire ticket-selling, ticket- taking procedure.”154 David Crosby remembers seeing cars lined up for miles as he

and his band mates flew in by helicopter.

"It was a hectic scene, and we were all kind of winging it," says Crosby. "Behind us were Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone — all these bands — and we really wanted to be good in front of them. For me, the high point

151 Cave, Damien, Matt Diehl, Gavin Edwards, Jenny Eliscu, David Fricke, Lauren Gitlin, Matt Hendrickson, Kirk Miller, Austin Scaggs, and Rob Sheffield, 2004,. "Mud, Nudity, Rock & Roll," Rolling Stone no. 951: 122-123, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, accessed February 21, 2012.

152 Ibid.

153 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

154 "State Investigating Handling of Tickets at Woodstock Fair," 1969. New York Times (1923-Current File), Aug 27, 45, accessed February 20, 2012, http://www.uflib.ufl.edu.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/docview/118561711?accountid=10920.

was us going out and singing 'Suite: Judy Blue Eyes' and getting all the way through it and not screwing up. It was stoned and funny and fine."155

The concert was essentially a free-for-all, dependent on the civility of the

attendees. Tickets were sold, but as described earlier that became a failed enterprise

as there was no assigned seating and no control over entry. Some attendees were

surprised by what they saw, but not necessarily shocked.

“Images of nudity, sexual freedom, and drug use at Woodstock struck Americans with horror or fascination, depending on their point of view or age.”156 Not all of the concert-goers were there for the drugs, but a plethora was available, “laid out for sale "at bargain prices" on long tables up in the woods, under a big sign, DRUG STORE, sometimes handed out with a smile to 5-year-olds, their palms up, begging, "Free dope, anyone?"”.157

Woodstock had its share of controversy and logistical issues, but it is generally

considered a huge success. "It was incredible," said Carlos Santana. "I'll never forget

the way the music sounded bouncing up against a field of bodies."158

Despite delays, the danger of electrical shocks and general backstage anarchy, Woodstock pulled off the ultimate magic act of the 1960s: turning utter rain-soaked chaos into the greatest rock festival ever and the decade's most famous and successful experiment in peace and community.159

The festival earned a permanent place in American culture as one of the defining moments of the 1960s. It represented an open, classless society of music, sex, drugs, love, and peace, all the more so because the event

155 Cave, Damien, Matt Diehl, Gavin Edwards, Jenny Eliscu, David Fricke, Lauren Gitlin, Matt Hendrickson, Kirk Miller, Austin Scaggs, and Rob Sheffield, 2004, "Mud, Nudity, Rock & Roll," Rolling Stone no. 951: 122-123, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, accessed February 21, 2012.

156 Rielly, Edward J., 2003, The 1960s, American Popular Culture Through History, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 171.

157 Romm, Ethel Grodzins, “Sex, Drugs, Rock ‘N roll in Redneck Country,” The Huffington Post (blog), posted August 15, 2009 (11:36 a.m.), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ethel-grodzins-romm/sex-drugs-rock-n-roll- in_b_259934.html

158 Cave, Damien, Matt Diehl, Gavin Edwards, Jenny Eliscu, David Fricke, Lauren Gitlin, Matt Hendrickson, Kirk Miller, Austin Scaggs, and Rob Sheffield, 2004, "Mud, Nudity, Rock & Roll," Rolling Stone no. 951: 122-123, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, accessed February 21, 2012.

159 Ibid.

remained largely free of violence and the tragic consequences one might expect from a gathering so large and so young. For many, it seemed to promise a new America.160

Music that had found a media outlet in FM just a few years earlier in California had

finally found a stage to capture the attention of the entire United States. Life magazine

put out a special issue on the Woodstock festival to treat it “as both a music event and

as a social happening.”161 However, Top 40 radio had yet to embrace this change in

rock ‘n’ roll and the new teenage listening audience, which Steve Harris at Elektra

Records felt was a missed opportunity to increase listenership.162 At many Top 40

stations, playlists were still strictly monitored. Morrow says that some songs were

banned from being played, such as Anne Murray’s rendition of “Snowbird.” “They

decided that “Snowbird” was cocaine.”163 However, KALB-AM in Alexandria, Louisiana

felt the best programming strategy after Woodstock was to return “on-air responsibility to the disk [sic] jockey.”164 CKFH in Canada took the same approach in what they

called AM AW (the AW standing for After Woodstock) in allowing their disc jockeys

more control in what they were playing. At some stations, this was a relaxation in

programming compared to the beginning of the decade when song selection was taken

out of the hands of the disc jockeys as a result of the payola scandal.

160 Rielly, Edward J., 2003, The 1960s, American Popular Culture Through History, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 171.

161 1969, "Life Puts Out Special on Woodstock Festival" Billboard 81, no. 36: 3, Google Books, accessed February 8, 2013; 1969, Woodstock Music Festival, Life, August 1969, Google Books, accessed February 11, 2013.

162 Ibid, 40.

163 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

164 1970, "How Gaines Made KALB All Smiles" Billboard 82, no. 48: 32-34, Google Books, accessed February 8, 2013.

Payola

While rock ‘n’ roll was the biggest transformation to terrestrial radio in the 1950s,

nothing changed the blueprint for radio in the 1960s more than the U.S. House of

Representatives hearings on payola in 1960. Payola can be traced back to the late

1800’s, but “the term was first coined by the trade publication Variety in 1938.”165 While

the practice of payola wasn’t illegal at the time, it was being viewed as a problem in the

early 1950s. There were those that believed that the disc jockeys had too much power

in the music that was being played and therefore creating the “hits.” There were also

those promoters and middlemen that balked at having to pay to get their music on the

radio, but record executives argued that the audience decided if a record was a hit.166

Billboard magazine stated in 1950 that “payola to disk [sic] jockeys is at an all-time

peak, according to the parties who should know – the publishers and the record men

who do the paying. They, who must accept the onus for having started the practice, are

now moaning the blues.”167 While it was already viewed as a problem, the practice of

payola continued throughout the 1950s. Smaller record labels and their recording

artists had a more difficult time getting their records played on mainstream radio

stations. Some disc jockeys had an affinity for rhythm and blues, most famously Alan

Freed, and found that since the white teenage consumer was buying more of these

records, they should start playing more of them on the air. As various genres combined

165 Segrave, Kerry, 1994, Payola in the Music Industry: a History, 1880-1991. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1; Chapple, Steve, and Reebee Garofalo, 1977, Rock 'n' Roll is Here to Pay: the History and Politics of the Music Industry, Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 66; 1938, "Greasing is Rife Again" Variety 131, no. 4: 41, Variety Archives, accessed February 10, 2013.

166 Segrave, Kerry, 1994, Payola in the Music Industry: a History, 1880-1991. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 84-86.

167 1950, "Hungry DJ’s a Growing Headache" Billboard 62, no. 51: 1, Google Books, accessed February 9, 2013.

to transform into rock ‘n’ roll, they played this music on the air and redefined their occupation by the music that they played and their on-air patter which resonated with the teenage audience, giving the rock ‘n’ roll disc jockey increased power in the radio and music industries.

The practice of payola was seen to be more of a problem in the genres of rhythm and blues, hillbilly, and the developing rock ‘n’ roll.168 It’s possible that the focus was

paid on these genres as they were not popular with established music and radio

industry. This view can also be tied to the long-running feud between The American

Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music, Inc.

(BMI) as the latter was more likely to represent artists in those genres.169 The initial

investigations by the Federal Trade Commission were fueled by the contempt held by

ASCAP towards BMI.170

Since BMI’s inception, the two organizations clashed as ASCAP found less of their

represented artists’ music being played on “white” radio stations, replaced by rhythm

and blues and rock ‘n’ roll. In Billboard’s “Honor Roll of Hits” for the week ending March

12, 1960, which is a list of the top songs in the United States “according to record sales

and disk [sic] jockey performances,” only nine of the 30 songs listed were from artists

168 Wexler, Jerry, 1951. "R. & B. Jockeys Ride Payola" The Billboard 63, no. 2: 1, Google Books, accessed February 10, 2013; 1953, "’Hot Stove’ D.J.’s Hit R&B Field" Variety 191, no. 1: 61, Variety Archives, accessed February 10, 2013.

169 Humphrey, Harold, 1942. "Music Highlights of 1941" The Billboard 54, no. 5: 64, Google Books, accessed February 10, 2013; 1960, "Syd Nathan Blasts Off" Billboard 72, no. 4: 6, Google Books, accessed February 10, 2013.

170 “Prove Charges of Payola, U.S. Unit Orders ASCAP,” Milwaukee Sentinel, Milwaukee, WI, January 12, 1960, 1, Google news, accessed February 9, 2013; 1960, "ASCAP, BMI Set For All-Out Fight" Billboard 72, no. 3: 1, Google Books, accessed February 9, 2013.

represented by ASCAP.171 After a disc jockey convention in Miami in 1959 hosted by

Top 40 mastermind Todd Storz, ASCAP president Stanley Adams charged “that payola was ‘becoming rampant as a big business operation as a result of the collective activity of the broadcasting industry through its wholly-owned music publishing and licensing organization—Broadcast Music Inc.,’” especially since the Miami Herald had reported on the weekend-long party financed by record companies”172

The House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight, chaired by Rep. Oren Harris

(D-Arkansas), had recently completed its investigation of corruption in television quiz shows, succeeding where a New York grand jury had failed in getting confessions that the contestants were provided answers to questions, coached on how to respond, and

that outcomes were pre-determined in game shows such as Twenty One.173 Harris and

his committee then turned their focus to the radio industry. Variety reported in 1960 that

it was “ASCAP songsmiths who take credit for switching the spotlight from the television

quiz rigging to the disk [sic] jockey payola”.”174

171 1960, "The Nation’s Top Tunes: Honor Roll of Hits" Billboard 72, no. 12: 32, Google Books, accessed February 10, 2013.

172 “Prove Charges of Payola, U.S. Unit Orders ASCAP,” Milwaukee Sentinel, Milwaukee, WI, January 12, 1960, 1, Google news, accessed February 9, 2013; Miller, Gene, “DJs Spin an End-All Fling; Barbecue, Champagne Chaser,” Miami Herald, Miami, FL, June 1, 1959, 10-C.

173 “Quiz Show Scandals,” The Museum of Broadcast Communications, accessed March 9, 2012, http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=quizshowsca; Lambert, Bruce, “Dan Enright, 74, TV Producer; Was Figure in Quiz Show Scandal,” New York Times May 24, 1992, accessed February 10, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/24/us/dan-enright-74-tv-producer-was-figure-in-quiz-show-scandal.html.

174 Schoenfeld, Herm, "Old Pitch for Web-Disk Split" Variety 218, no. 11: 61, Variety Archives, accessed February 11, 2013.

Although it wasn’t illegal, there were some that felt that it wasn’t as big of an issue or rampant throughout the radio industry.175 Radio station management and ownership

were aware of the problem, prompting action by some stations such as WFMS which

set a rule for its announcers that they would be fired if found guilty of accepting

payola.176 Others, such as Carl M. Watson at NBC, felt that it was wide-spread throughout the industry and needed to be dealt with.177 Robert W. Sarnoff at NBC, felt

that it was prevalent throughout the industry and there was nothing he could do about

it.178 Bill Randle, a disc jockey at WERE in Cleveland, Ohio, believed as far back as

1952 “that approximately 100 top deejays in the country controlled the popular music

business.”179 As a result, performers turned to the disc jockeys to attempt to get their

music on the air.180 However, others such as Alan W. Livingston, who was the vice

president of Capitol Records, and Tony Donald, a disc jockey at WQAM in Miami,

argued that it wasn’t the disc jockey that made records a hit, it was the listeners.181

While the disc jockeys may not have made the records hits, they did control what songs

made it on the air. Based on the premise that the granting of a radio station license is

175 1947, "Jock Payola Charges Denied; 99% Co-Operate, says McCarthy" Billboard, March 22, 1947, 15, Google Books, accessed February 10, 2013.

176 Segrave, Kerry, 1994, Payola in the Music Industry: a History, 1880-1991. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 84.

177 Allen, Robert S. and Paul Scott, “’Payola’ is Common, Old Memo Reveals,” Evening Independent, St. Petersburg, FL, November 17, 1959, 4A, Google news, accessed February 10, 2013.

178 Segrave, Kerry, 1994, Payola in the Music Industry: a History, 1880-1991. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 88.

179 Randle, Bill, “100 Deejays Control Music Biz” Variety 188, no. 4: 73, 92, Variety Archives, accessed February 12, 2013.

180 Segrave, Kerry, 1994, Payola in the Music Industry: a History, 1880-1991. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 89.

181 Livingston, Alan W., “Cap’s Veep Thinks DJ’ Best Thing to Music Biz in Yrs.’” Variety 183, no. 11: 49, Variety Archives, accessed February 12, 2013; Donald, Tony, “Cross-section DJ Opinion Explores Several Facets of the ‘Frankenstein’” Variety 183, no. 10: 45, Variety Archives, accessed February 12, 2013.

predicated on that station operating in the public interest, the practice of payola created a conflict of interest.

While this study didn’t find any evidence that the investigations on payola were the result of anyone targeting particular disc jockeys, there were prominent disc jockeys questioned during the hearings as music radio was the main target of the House

Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight investigating payola.182 According to the

transcripts of those hearings, the committee became involved as a result of a statement

at a previous hearing by “Max Hess, owner of the Hess Bros. Department store, of

Allentown, Pa., about numerous secret payments made to obtain plugs for that store, or

its wares, on radio and television programs. Hess testified that this “is a common

practice.””183 The committee proposed that this practice caused many problems for

American society.

The quality of broadcast programs declines when the choice of program materials is made, not in the public interest, but in the interest of those who are willing to pay to obtain exposure of their records. The public is misled as to the popularity of the records played. Moreover, these practices constitute unfair competition with honest businessmen who refuse to engage in them. They tend to drive out of business small firms who lack the means to survive this unfair competition.184

182 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012; U.S. House of Representatives. 1960. Responsibilities of Broadcast Licensees and Station Personnel: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. 86th Congress. 2d Session on Payola and Other Deceptive Practices in the Broadcasting Field, Part I: February 8, 9, 10, 15, 17, 18, 19, March 4, 1960. Part II: January 27, 28, 29, May 2, 3, August 30, 31, 1960, Washington D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960, retrieved from LexisNexis Congressional Hearings Digital Collection July 2, 2010.

183 U.S. House of Representatives, 1960, Responsibilities of Broadcast Licensees and Station Personnel: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 86th Congress. 2d Session on Payola and Other Deceptive Practices in the Broadcasting Field, Part I: February 8, 9, 10, 15, 17, 18, 19, March 4, 1960, U.S. Government Printing Office. 1960, Retrieved from LexisNexis Congressional Hearings Digital Collection July 2, 2010, 1.

184 Ibid.

The problems with these statements are twofold: One, it assumes that record

choices are made solely on the exchange of monetary considerations and two, that the

disc jockeys were the initiators of the practice of payola. The practice of payola wasn’t

new; “in the heyday of sheet music, song pluggers handed out cash to get barroom

pianists to play their tunes, and in the 1930s and ‘40s, promoters paid bandleaders to

push their songs.”185 However, the term today is associated with radio. Not all disc

jockeys accepted payola nor asked for it, but there were many that did and counted on it

as part of their income. For disc jockey Hunter Hancock, money from record companies

accounted for half of his income.186 Disc jockeys had total control of the station while

on the air, and “what he liked, he played. And what he got paid to like, he played

too.”187 This contradicts the statement by the subcommittee that decisions to play

particular records were made solely on the basis of payola. Many disc jockeys in 1957

were still fans of jazz and ballads and would have preferred to be playing more of that

genre on their shows, but felt they were in a “rock and roll straightjacket.”188 There were

also those like Ed McKenzie of WXYZ in Detroit that wasn’t a fan of the music he played, but wanted to give the public what they wanted.189 While payola was prevalent

before rock ‘n’ roll, its development may have been aided by payola as smaller record

labels that were producing rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll music struggled to get air-

185 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 79.

186 Ibid, from author’s interview with Hunter Hancock.

187 Ibid.

188 Simon, Bill, "Jocks Not Playing Disks They Prefer" Billboard 69, no. 46: 38, Google Books, accessed February 10, 2013.

189 1957, “Jocks on Pops, Payola, Polls” Variety 207, no. 11: 45, Variety Archives, accessed February 17, 2013.

time against the larger labels on Top 40 stations, but minor labels were more flexible in dealing with rhythm and blues and “hillbilly” stations.190

Even a classic such as Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene” needed payola grease to get it started: after Leonard Chess of Chess Records offered New York deejay Alan Freed a songwriting credit on the tune, Freed played the song for two hours straight on his WINS show. “Maybellene” shot up to #1 on the charts and Freed raked in a share of the profits.191

This was another point of contention in the payola investigation. Disc jockeys

were being listed as co-authors of songs and receiving royalties on those songs.192

Murray “the K” Kaufman is currently listed as a co-author of Bobby Darin’s “Splish

Splash,” but the Atlantic pressing of the record in August 1958 lists Kaufman’s mother,

Jean Murray, as the co-author.193 Kaufman’s son suggests that the initial credit given to

his grandmother was to deflect any accusations of payola, a subject which would

become the focus of a congressional investigation a year later.194 Additionally, disc

jockeys such as Dick Clark and Alan Freed were branching out into the music business

and there were concerns that music labels that were owned by disc jockeys were

190 1953, "’Hot Stove’ D.J.’s Hit R&B Field" Variety 191, no. 1: 61, Variety Archives, accessed February 10, 2013.

191 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 80; Hardeman, Simon, “Blue heaven: music mogul Marshall Chess,” The Independent May 27, 2008, accessed February 11, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/blue- heaven-music-mogul-marshall-chess-834540.html.

192 Ibid, 85; Ibid.

193 Image of 45 rpm record downloaded from http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bobby-Darin-Splish-Splash-Queen-Of- The-Hop-45rpm-Unplayed-Atlantic-Reissue-/370747963309?pt=Music_on_Vinyl&hash=item56524cf7ad, February 19, 2013; BMI Repertoire listing at http://repertoire.bmi.com/title.asp?blnWriter=True&blnPublisher=True&blnArtist=True&page=1&keyid=1397167 &ShowNbr=0&ShowSeqNbr=0&querytype=WorkID, accessed February19, 2013.

194 Peter Altschuler, (Son of Murray "the K" Kaufmann), interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview January 09, 2012.

getting preferential status on their shows.195 A large portion of the investigations were

focused on Clark and Freed and will be discussed later in this study. Another disc

jockey that was intensively questioned by the committee was Norman Prescott who

worked in the Boston area during the 1950s. He admitted to accepting payola, but

provided a revelation that many disc jockeys would echo: he probably would have

played the records anyway because that’s what the teenage public wanted.196

Billboard magazine reported that Earl T. Kintner, chairman of the Federal Trade

Commission, said that “255 deejays or other station personnel 56 cities in 26 states,

and 95 additional cases are under study” for taking payola.197 The effects of this

investigation were felt throughout the radio industry and changed the influence and

responsibilities of disc jockeys for decades to come. As a result of the commencement

of the hearings, disc jockeys were “resigning or getting fired by platoons.”198 Many disc

jockeys, such as Alan Freed of WINS, Tommy Smalls of WWRL, and Peter Tripp of

WMGM, lost their jobs, were arrested and charged under New York’s commercial

195 U.S. House of Representatives, 1960, Responsibilities of Broadcast Licensees and Station Personnel: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 86th Congress. 2d Session on Payola and Other Deceptive Practices in the Broadcasting Field, Part II: January 27, 28, 29, May 2, 3, August 30, 31, 1960, Washington D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960, retrieved from LexisNexis Congressional Hearings Digital Collection July 2, 2010.

196 Ibid, 37; Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 86; Segrave, Kerry, 1994, Payola in the Music Industry: a History, 1880-1991. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 91.

197 Hall, Mildred, "Solons Clash Over Committee Delay on Clark Appearance" Billboard 72, no. 10: 1, Google Books, accessed February 11, 2013.

198 “The Old Payola Roll Blues,” New Castle News, New Castle, PA, February 8, 1960, 4, Access Newspaper Archives, accessed February 19, 2013, http://access.newspaperarchive.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/new-castle-news/1960-02- 08/page-4.

bribery laws since payola was not yet illegal.199 Tripp and Freed were both found guilty

and given fines and suspended jail sentences.200 However, the Internal Revenue

Service conducted its own investigation and found that many disc jockeys, such as

Murray the K and Hunter Hancock of Los Angeles, did not claim other payments and

were found guilty of tax evasion.201 Producer Rick Sklar at WINS had reason to suspect

Kaufman was receiving payola one night when Kaufman called in sick. Sklar was in the control room and received an angry phone call from someone claiming to have an arrangement with Kaufman to play a particular song at 8:15 pm and wanted to know where his song was. The caller hung up without identifying himself, but Sklar checked the records and found that Kaufman had played the same song at that time every night for six weeks.202

Disc jockeys were no longer allowed to select their own songs to play on the air

nor make suggestions. This in turn centralized programming, which some felt caused

radio to become boring.203 Radio station group owners hired music programmers to

199 1960, Photograph, "Accused Payola Profiteers Being Booked" Life 48, no. 21: 34, Google Books, accessed February 11, 2013; 1960, “Payolateers Arrested” DownBeat 27, no. 12: 11, accessed February 19, 2013, http://www.alanfreed.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/283-Down-Beat-6-23-60.pdf.

200 “N.Y. Disc Jockey Fined in Payola, Term Suspended” Cumberland Evening Times, Cumberland, MD, October 17, 1961, 1, Access Newspaper Archives, accessed February 19, 2013, http://access.newspaperarchive.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/cumberland-evening-times/1961-10-17; “Alan Freed is Indicted on Tax Count” The Galveston News, Galveston, TX, March 17, 1964, 5, Access Newspaper Archives, accessed February 19, 2013, http://access.newspaperarchive.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/galveston-daily-news/1964-03- 17/page-5.

201 Peter Altschuler, (Son of Murray "the K" Kaufmann), interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview January 09, 2012; 1962, "Suspend Sentence on Hancock" Billboard 74, no. 10: 33, Google Books, accessed February 19, 2013.

202 Sklar, Rick, 1984, Rocking America: An Insider's Story : How the All-hit Radio Stations Took Over, New York: St. Martin's Press, 53.

203 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012, Leopold, Todd, “Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio?,” CNN.com, updated May 17, 2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/17/showbiz/hfr-music-radio.

create playlists for their same-formatted stations, even though they may have never heard or seen the stations. So radio stations developed a limited playlist as well as a prescribed amount of time that the disc jockeys could talk. “The “radio personality,” who was really the bridge to the audience, no longer had any kind of authority.”204 Disc jockeys, the link between music and the audience, had effectively been taken out of the equation and it was alleged that payola money was now being funneled to music directors and program directors.205

Summary

The 1950s and 1960s were a time of great growth in the radio industry and

employed the talents of some of the most iconic voices and personalities in the history

of radio. These decades had specific events that shaped them, although many of the

events of the 1950s carried over into the 1960s. Disc jockeys impacted and were

impacted by events taking place in American society, assuming different roles such as

advocate, reporter, and innovator. The Civil Rights Movement was just starting to grab

a foothold in the American conscience in the 1950s, gaining further momentum through

the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. whose 1963 speech in Washington was a

wake-up call for America. King’s assassination in 1968 further fueled the fire for de-

segregation. Television had already established its foothold at the beginning of the

1950s and was working to develop color television which would become standard in the

1960s. The development in the 1950s of a new musical genre known as rock ‘n’ roll

gave teenagers a music to call their own and crossed racial boundaries as the music is

204 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

205 Segrave, Kerry, 1994, Payola in the Music Industry: a History, 1880-1991. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 162, Sklar, Rick, 1984, Rocking America: An Insider's Story : How the All-hit Radio Stations Took Over, New York: St. Martin's Press, 19-20.

considered an evolution of rhythm and blues or “race music.” Some of the first disc jockeys to play this music such as Alan Freed, Hunter Hancock, Jocko Henderson,

George “Hound Dog” Lorenz, and “Dr. Jive” Tommy Smalls etched their names in broadcasting history for their lack of fear in promoting the music they loved and their wish to share it with anyone who would listen. The popularity of rock ‘n’ roll continued to rise through the 1960s as a result of a British invasion led by The Beatles. The popularity of The Beatles in the United States was so overwhelming that radio stations clamored to be the first ones to play their latest release, using the band’s name to promote the radio station as a brand, and some disc jockeys going as far as calling themselves the Fifth Beatle.

Bruce Morrow believes that “music is written by poets” and “poets report on society.”206 Music would also be an influence during the Vietnam War, where many

musicians took to writing songs in protest of the war. Those out in the field of battle

had no other broadcasting link to the rest of the world except for radio. Back home,

many of those protesting the war were also experimenting in psychedelic drugs, promoting the peace and love of Flower Power. Feminism also took a firm hold as women such as Joan Baez joined forces with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a common

goal to eradicate racial and gender discrimination. The payola scandal changed radio

station operation as well as affected the lives and careers of numerous disc jockeys

throughout the country, many of those listed earlier for their contribution to the rise of

rock ‘n’ roll music. All of the events previously discussed, as well as many not covered

such as changes in technology, had a profound effect on the growth of the radio

206 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

industry, the changes in American culture, and the explosion of a new musical genre known as rock ‘n’ roll. At the apex of this growth and change were the disc jockeys, positioning radio as the social recommendation engine for music in American society.

The following chapters will examine the lives and careers of some of those disc jockeys that left their indelible print on radio and the American teenager as well as their influence on the growth of rock ‘n’ roll.

CHAPTER 3 ALAN FREED

Biography

Alan Freed is one of the most iconic personalities in radio history. Freed’s career

epitomizes the title of this study. He is credited with coining the term “rock ‘n’ roll” to

describe a new genre of music that evolved from rhythm and blues that crossed racial

boundaries to find an eager teenage audience. His rapid rise to national fame through

the 1950s as a pioneer in broadcasting this music as well as live concerts featuring the

new artists of this genre ended abruptly at the end of the decade as a result of a

congressional investigation into payola in radio as well as charges in the early 1960s for

tax evasion and commercial bribery stemming from income received through payola.

Freed’s life and career are a cornerstone in this study as an example of the rise and fall

of the rock ‘n’ roll disc jockey.

Freed was born in 1921 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and his family moved to

Salem, Ohio in 1933.1 Freed’s love of music led him to follow his brother’s footsteps in

his high school marching band and orchestra as a trombonist with dreams of leading his

own swing band like his idol Benny Goodman.2 As the editor of his high school yearbook, he decided on a degree in journalism from Ohio State University, which at the time offered free tuition to Ohio residents. Legend has it, however, that after “peering

through the window of WOSU Radio, the university station, Freed realized that “that was

it. I was gone!” The college freshman was fascinated by the sense of urgency and

1 Birth Certificate, The Official Alan Freed Website, http://www.alanfreed.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2010/07/254-Birth-Certfctn-12-20-212.pdf, accessed September 17, 2009.

2 Jackson, John A., 1991, Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll, New York: Schirmer Books, 10-11.

excitement he perceived behind the glass panes. From that moment on, he was hooked on broadcasting.”3

After becoming disillusioned in college after switching his major to mechanical

engineering to please his father, Freed joined the Army in 1940. According to his

brother and first wife, he was medically discharged the following year due to flat feet. He

then took a job as a government ordnance inspector’s assistant in an area near his

home in Salem.4 Still fueled by a passion for broadcasting, Freed attended a broadcasting class at WKBN in Youngstown, OH.5 He landed his first broadcasting job

at WKST in New Castle, PA in 1942 and moved to WIBG in Philadelphia in 1943.6

Freed returned to WKBN to do the news that same year.7 Freed’s career progressed as

he found jobs in bigger cities, moving in June of 1945 to WAKR in Akron, OH, then on to

Cleveland, first at WXEL-TV in April 1950 to play records on television, then at WJW

where he went on the air as “Moondog” in 1951.8 “A microphone to Freed was like

blood to a werewolf. It set him baying at the moon and flailing with his fists on the

Cleveland municipal telephone directory. Teenagers loved it.”9 Freed managed to

3 Ibid, 12-13.

4 Ibid, 12-14.

5 Ibid, 15.

6 1943, "Roundup" Billboard 55, no. 7: 8, Google Books, accessed February 20, 2013.

7 “On The Air Tonight,” New Castle News, New Castle, PA, October 19, 1943, 13, Access Newspaper Archives, accessed February 19, 2013, http://access.newspaperarchive.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/new-castle-news/1943-10- 19/page-13.

8 Offineer, Bee, “Freed Sings and Fans Write,” Akron Beacon Journal, Akron, OH, January 16, 1946, 4, The Official Alan Freed Website, accessed February 10, 2013, http://www.alanfreed.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2010/07/020-Freed-Sings-1-16-461.pdf; “'Moondog' Alan Freed Dead at 43,” The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, January 21, 1965, 1, 9.

9 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 10.

capture an audience in Cleveland with his showmanship and an open microphone while he was playing the music.

Hermie Dressel recalled that Freed “used to carry on like a madman” in the studio, using “animation, excitement, and forcefulness.” Part of Moondog’s act included a cowbell and a telephone book. Besides shouting into the open mike as records played, Freed would ring the cowbell or emphasize the heavy beat by slamming his hand on the telephone book.10

Freed’s popularity continued to grow and a bigger city would come knocking at his

door: New York City. Freed would take his show to WINS in 1954, but this is also

where he would lose the name of his show “Moon-Dog House” in a copyright dispute

with his former employer as well as his nickname “Moondog” in a lawsuit brought

against him by a musician and street beggar named Thomas Louis Hardin. Freed lost

the suit and was forced to pay Hardin $5,000 and was forbidden to use the “Moondog”

nickname or his signature intro “Moondog Symphony”. As a result, Freed changed the

name of his show to “Rock ‘n’ Roll Party”. 11 Freed’s popularity soared even higher,

which he parlayed into other media outlets. He starred in five movies and hosted

several rock ‘n’ roll shows at the Brooklyn Paramount, which included performers B.B.

King, The Moonglows, Little Richard, and a host of others.12 The New York Times

reported that “going to one of Alan Freed’s rock ‘n’ roll musicales has always been

10 Jackson, John A., 1991, Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll, New York: Schirmer Books, 43; Publicity Photo, The Official Alan Freed Website, http://www.alanfreed.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2010/07/Freed-Alan-252.jpg, accessed February 21, 2013; “Moondog Alan Freed Part 1/3,” YouTube video, 9:29, posted by “frankallan1106,” August 10, 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BhIz- xYGCU.

11 1954, "Freed, WINS Can’t Use ‘Moon-Dog House’ Tag, WJW Threatens Litigation" Variety 196, no. 2: 38, Variety Archives, accessed February 21, 2013; Hardin v. Freed, No. 12276-54 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1954), accessed February 26, 2013, http://www.rhythmandbluesuniversity.net/sitebuildingcontent/sitebuilderfiles/Freed.pdf.

12 Jackson, John A., 1991, Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll, New York: Schirmer Books, 91, 389.

something like having an aisle seat for the San Francisico earthquake.”13 These shows were much more organized than the first show he attempted in Cleveland a few years before that resulted in a near riot.14 Freed’s “Moondog Coronation Ball” sold just around

5,000-6,000 tickets before the show in Cleveland, but sold another 8,700 at the Arena,

although the maximum capacity for the venue was around 11,000.15 Police were called

in to disperse a crowd that had “stormed the Arena, knocking down four panel doors,

brushing police away,” and pouring into the arena.16

By 1957, he was syndicating his show to a handful of stations across the land. The music he played, and the message those choices sent, would shape not only radio’s future but that of the young people who were emerging as a cultural force.17

His television show on WABC-TV, Big Beat, lasted only a few weeks as it was cancelled and moved the show to WNEW-TV. Freed would be fired in 1959 by both

ABC radio and WNEW-TV in the wake of accusations of accepting payola.18

Payola

Freed was one of the biggest casualties of the payola investigations. Payola

wasn’t illegal, but there were two driving forces behind the investigation. One was that

the “perks” that the disc jockeys were receiving weren’t being declared as income for

tax purposes and the other was the influence radio was having on the youth of America.

13 "Rock 'n' Roll Pied Piper,” New York Times, May 20, 1960, 62.

14 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 54.

15 “Charge 14,000 Sale for ‘Moondog Ball’,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, March 23, 1952, 12-B.

16 “Moondog Ball is Halted as 6,000 Crash Arena Gate,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, March 21, 1952, 1.

17 Ibid, 55.

18 “Payola Inquiry by Stations Throws DJs Into a Spin,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, November 24, 1959, 7.

Lobbyists for ASCAP had “called for a congressional investigation into the dirty lyrics, payola, and phony songwriting credits that infested rock radio”.19 One of the “perks”

often offered to disc jockeys was songwriting credit for the records that they would

play.20 The recording industry was desperate to access the youth market who was buying the majority of records and the disc jockeys were that conduit to that audience.21

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) threatened to suspend the license of any broadcaster that was involved in the practice of payola, but they never did and no one was sure if they had the authority to do so.22 Since payola was not illegal, the investigations focused more on the presence of bribery.23 New York State had a

law on its books, Penal Law of 1909, which dealt with commercial bribery. Alan Freed

was based in New York and he was the biggest deejay at the time. In 1962, he

“pleaded guilty to two counts of commercial bribery deriving from the payola scandal.

He received a six-month suspended sentence and a fine of $300.”24

As the probe was taking shape, ABC attempted to cover itself by having anyone in

its employ sign an affidavit denying taking money for playing particular music. Besides

19 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 16-17.

20 Walker, Jesse, 2001, Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America, New York: New York University Press, 60.

21 Killmeier, Matthew A., 2001, "Voices Between the Tracks: Disk [sic] Jockeys, Radio, and Popular Music, 1955-60," Journal of Communication Inquiry 25, no. 4: 353-374, America: History & Life, EBSCOhost, accessed September 17, 2009, 360.

22 “Radio and TV Stations Condoning Payola Could Lose Licenses, FCC Official Says,” Wall Street Journal, New York, NY, November 30, 1959, 8.

23 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 82-83.

24 “’Moondogger’ Freed Faces Tax Charges.” The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, March 17, 1964.

Freed, Dick Clark was also one of those employees. Freed refused to sign the affidavit on the grounds that he believed the definition of payola was too broad. He also contended that Clark was given a different affidavit to sign which contained a different definition.25 A little over a week later, Freed was fired from WABC due to his refusal to

sign the affidavit.26

Freed was granted a closed hearing before the House subcommittee and his

testimony was unpublished until requested by author John A. Jackson in his research of

Freed.27 Freed testified that part of the problem with the investigation was defining

payola. As Freed and Dick Clark were two of the biggest names in the investigation,

Freed was asked about the ABC document signed by Clark denying the taking of payola

as compared to the document that other employees of ABC were required to sign. In

Clark’s document, payola was defined as “an agreement to play a particular record in

return for payment of some sort.”28 In Freed’s view, this sounded more like a definition

of bribery and that payola was better defined as “the practice of receiving money and

gifts before plugging a record as well as for the practice of receiving gifts for being a

25 “Clark Was Given ‘Easy’ Affidavit on Payola, Claim,” The Times-News, Hendersonville, NC, May 3, 1960, 7, Google news, accessed March 24, 2013, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=QXobAAAAIBAJ&sjid=QU4EAAAAIBAJ&dq=abc%20affidavit%20payola&p g=6751%2C96870.

26 “Alan Freed, Seven Others Arrested on Payola Charges,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, May 20, 1960, 1; “Payola Inquiry by Stations Throws DJs Into a Spin,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, November 24, 1959, 7.

27 U.S. House of Representatives, 1960, Executive Session-Confidential for Testimony of Alan Freed, Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, “Payola” and Other Deceptive Practices in the Broadcasting Field.

28 Ibid, Jackson, John A., 1991, Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll, New York: Schirmer Books, 279.

“nice guy” after playing a record.”29 While Freed was not granted immunity in exchange for his testimony, he admitted that he would be guilty under his definition of payola.

Freed felt all along that he was being sacrificed by ABC to protect their other

employees such as Clark and Martin Block, both whom signed affidavits for ABC.30

Freed’s contention was that he never received a bribe to play a record, as payola was

defined in Clark’s ABC document. He did admit to accepting gifts as a result of playing

some records but contended that he made the choice to play those records based on

his judgment.31 Freed felt that taking money to play a record would force him to give up control of his program, something he wasn’t inclined to do.32

Freed contended that he accepted money only after choosing on his own to play a tune. But he also bragged to friends that he had received so much from record companies that he should name rooms in his house in their honor. Two weeks after Freed refused to confess, his house was seized by the Internal Revenue Service.33

To the surprise of the subcommittee, Freed admitted to being on the payroll of

several record distribution companies. Freed’s lawyer tried to interject, but realized that

there were too many cancelled checks for Freed to deny the payments. Since Freed

29 U.S. House of Representatives, 1960, Executive Session-Confidential for Testimony of Alan Freed, Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, “Payola” and Other Deceptive Practices in the Broadcasting Field.

30 Ibid, 255, 281; “Detectives Hunting Disk [sic] Jockey,” The Spokesman Review, Spokane, WA, November 26, 1959, 1.

31 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 214; Wilson, Earl, “Alan Freed Gives Wilson Inside Dope,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, November 26, 1959, 50-C; U.S. House of Representatives, 1960, Executive Session-Confidential for Testimony of Alan Freed, Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, “Payola” and Other Deceptive Practices in the Broadcasting Field.

32 Jackson, John A., 1991, Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll, New York: Schirmer Books, 285.

33 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 89.

had not been granted immunity and was scheduled to testify before the New York grand jury in their commercial bribery investigation, the subcommittee didn’t expect Freed to be as candid as he was about the payments he received. While Freed fancied himself as a “record consultant” as justification for the payments, Congressman Bennett managed to get Freed to admit to receiving the money from the record companies to play their records.34

While it was speculated that Freed had become rich through payola, he was

broke. As he revealed in his testimony to the House subcommittee, the contract he signed with WABC-AM in his move from WINS-AM in 1958 required him to “kick back

$30,000 of his approximately $40,000 salary as payment for airplugs for Freed’s stage shows.”35 Freed owned four homes in various locations, but continuing legal and tax

issues forced the sale of all but one.36 Freed’s legal woes continued in 1964 as he was

charged by a federal grand jury for tax evasion “in large part, from the failure to report

the payola as income that he received for pushing records.”37 “The IRS charged Freed

had failed to report fifty-seven thousand dollars in income from 1957 to 1959 and that

34 Jackson, John A., 1991, Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll, New York: Schirmer Books, 282-284; U.S. House of Representatives, 1960, Executive Session-Confidential for Testimony of Alan Freed, Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, “Payola” and Other Deceptive Practices in the Broadcasting Field.

35 U.S. House of Representatives, 1960, Executive Session-Confidential for Testimony of Alan Freed, Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, “Payola” and Other Deceptive Practices in the Broadcasting Field.

36 Wilson, Earl, “Alan Freed Gives Wilson Inside Dope,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, November 26, 1959, 50-C

37 Jackson, John A., 1991, Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll, New York: Schirmer Books, 318-319; ’Moondogger’ Freed Faces Tax Charges.” The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, March 17, 1964.

he owed back taxes of thirty-eight thousand dollars.”38 After paying his mounting legal

fees, Freed managed to keep one home in Florida. However, Freed never personally

recovered from the onslaught. “Freed drifted to stations in Los Angeles and Miami but

fell deeper into alcoholism and died in 1965. He was forty-three.”39

In 1955, Life magazine called Freed the originator of the rock ‘n’ roll “craze.”40

Alan Freed may not have invented the term “rock ‘n’ roll,” but his use of it to identify a

genre of music has endured for decades. His influence in breaking down racial barriers

through music is undeniable, introducing white teenagers to artists such as Chuck

Berry, Frankie Lymon, and Ritchie Valens to name a few. Freed’s contributions to the

radio industry as well as rock ‘n’ roll music are highlighted by his induction into the

Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1984 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. He

influenced many to follow in his footsteps on the air, such as Scott Muni, Frank Allan,

and “Cousin Brucie” Bruce Morrow. Freed was one of the main casualties in the payola

investigations and ruined his career. Between his promotion of rock ‘n’ roll and his

involvement in the payola scandal, Freed’s career is truly an example of the rise and fall

of the rock ‘n’ roll disc jockey.

38 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 216; ’Moondogger’ Freed Faces Tax Charges.” The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH, March 17, 1964.

39 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 91.

40 1955, “Rock ‘N Roll: A Frenzied Teen-age Music Craze Kicks Up a Big Fuss,” Life 38, no. 16: 166, Google Books, accessed July 25, 2013.

CHAPTER 4 DICK CLARK

While the term “disc jockey” was primarily a reference to radio personalities, Dick

Clark brought rock ‘n’ roll to television. “Basically, Dick Clark brought rock ‘n’ roll to

America’s living rooms.”1 Clark successfully navigated his career through the birth of

rock ‘n’ roll, the payola scandal, record publishing, and changes in music. While his

career is probably the most successful of those profiled in this study, his television

career shifted focus from rock ‘n’ roll to popular music aimed at a teenage audience that

changed year after year. While having to divest himself of music publishing businesses

as a result of the payola investigations, Clark is the highest profile person to get through

those investigations with his career intact. Clark’s career began at the rise of the rock

‘n’ roll disc jockey, but his association with the fall would primarily be from his inclusion

the payola investigations.

For most of his adult life, he was referred to as “America’s Oldest Teenager.”2

Dick Clark is one of America’s most recognized personalities due to his position as the

host of television’s American Bandstand for over 30 years and as the co-host of Dick

Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve up until his sudden death from a massive heart attack

on April 18, 2012. However, the general public is probably unaware that Clark started

his career in radio.

1 Wood, Daniel B. and Glorida Goodale, “Dick Clark: How a Tax-accountant Look-alike changed American Music,” The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, MA, April 19, 2012, 13.

2 Whorf, Matthew, “DJ Celebrates 80th Birthday of America’s Oldest Teenager,” The Patriot Ledger, November 28, 2009, accessed July 27, 2011, http://www.wickedlocal.com/norton/archive/x730412172/DJ-celebrates-80th- birthday-of-America-s-Oldest-Teenager#axzz1i5jsk8ga; Kathan, Julia, and Sheila Marikar, “Dick Clark, Entertainment Icon Nicknamed 'America's Oldest Teenager,' Dies at 82,” ABC News, last modified April 18, 2012, http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/dick-clark-entertainment-icon-nicknamed-americas-oldest- teenager/story?id=16076252#.T7kED8Wzkz4.

Clark’s inclusion in this study is unique in that, although his career began in radio, he is most famous for television. Disc jockey Larry Lujack believes that “all of us in this

(radio) business owe Dick Clark a vote of thanks for helping to make rock radio as big

as it is.”3 The reason for his inclusion is the attention paid to his activities during the

House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight hearings on payola, primarily aimed at

radio personnel but Clark’s status as “America’s only nationally televised disc jockey”

was indicative of his influence on American teenagers.4

Biography

Born Richard Wagstaff Clark on November 30, 1929 in Bronxville, New York,

Clark’s path to a career in radio was easier than most.5 Clark’s father Richard was a sales manager for a cosmetics company and his mother Julia a homemaker. This afforded Clark and his brother Bradley a comfortable childhood. This also allowed them to move to a more affluent neighborhood in Mt. Vernon, New York in 1933.

Clark idolized his older brother Brad and felt abandoned when he joined the Army

Air Corps to train as a pilot.6 One of the most traumatic events that Clark would ever

experience was in 1944 when his family received “news that Brad had been shot down

and killed during the Battle of the Bulge in Germany.”7 Bradley Clark was a popular

athlete as a member of both the swimming and football teams as well as holding the

3 Lujack, Larry, and Daniel A. Jedlicka, 1975, Superjock: the loud, frantic, nonstop world of a rock radio DJ, Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 14.

4 Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, Xii.

5 Ibid, 2-3.

6 Clark, Dick, and Richard Robinson, 1976, Rock, Roll & Remember, New York: Crowell, 15.

7 Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 3.

school’s strength record.8 Unable to live up to his brother’s high school athletics

prowess, Clark found an interest and an escape from the real world in radio.9

Clark first found himself captivated by Martin Block’s “Make-Believe Ballroom” on

WNEW in New York, able to see in his mind’s eye what Block was describing on the

radio.10 Block played to the theater of the mind, creating an image that was far from the

reality of what was taking place on the transmission end of the radio. He was further

encouraged by his parents when they took him to see a live broadcast in New York City.

Clark was still somewhat shy and found his niche in entertainment by joining his high

school drama club. He then found himself doing impressions and magic tricks at

parties. “I became a determined extrovert,” says Clark.11 By the time he graduated

high school, he had been elected senior class president and accepted at Syracuse

University.

Clark got his first big break in radio at WRUN during the summer before he

entered college. His uncle Bradley Barnard had bought the station and convinced

Clark’s father to take over as the sales manager. Clark did start out at the bottom as an

errand boy, but managed to get spot pieces on the air doing the weather and other

station breaks.12 While in college, Clark majored in advertising and minored in radio.

Since his father had built a career in sales, Clark realized the importance of knowing the

business side of radio. While in Syracuse, Clark worked for the campus radio station

8 "Mt. Vernon Athlete Dies Battling German Offensive," New York Times, New York, NY, February 20, 1945, 15.

9 Clark, Dick, and Richard Robinson, 1976, Rock, Roll & Remember, New York: Crowell, 19.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid, 21.

12 Ibid, 22-23.

then secured a job after graduation at WOLF playing country music. Due to his dissatisfaction with both the pay and the playlist at WOLF, he returned to WRUN to work for his father. This arrangement didn’t last long as Clark had bigger aspirations and wanted to avoid accusations of nepotism. Clark then got his first break into

television at WKTV in Utica, New York as newscaster Dick Clay. After a few months,

Clark was ready to move to a bigger market and thanks to his father’s connections,

secured an audition at WFIL-AM-FM-TV in Philadelphia. Since there were no openings at the time on the television station, Clark found himself back on the radio in 1952.13

1952 would also be the year that Clark married his first of three wives, high school

sweetheart Barbara (Bobbie) Mallery. She worked as a school teacher while he worked

a noon to 9:30 p.m. shift at the station.14 WFIL also instituted some changes that year

that would alter Clark’s career and life forever.

WFIL found itself, as many other ABC-affiliated stations, scrambling to create local

programming to generate local advertising revenue as network advertisers migrated to

television. Station management created Dick Clark’s Caravan of Music from 1:45 p.m.

to 6:00 p.m., playing easy listening standards. WFIL regularly lagged behind WPEN-

AM and WIP-AM in Philadelphia. WPEN had a show called the 950 Club which “was

the first radio show on which a studio audience was invited to dance to the records

being broadcast on the air.”15 WIP had Bob Horn’s Bandstand, which had been on

13 Ibid, 22-31; Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 289.

14 Clark, Dick, and Richard Robinson, 1976, Rock, Roll & Remember, New York: Crowell, 34; Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 9.

15 Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 9-10.

WPEN that played the top hits of the day. WFIL created the first television program that featured teenagers dancing called TV-Teen Club, but Clark at that time was relegated to doing commercial spots. WFIL would lure Horn away from WIP and “all of the components necessary for the creation of WFIL’s televised Bandstand were now at hand.”16

Horn got the Bandstand television show he clamored for in 1952 and it was a huge

success in Philadelphia. Along with producer Tony Mammarella, WFIL-TV had the hit

they were looking for. “The success of Grady and Hurst’s “950 Club” was repeated a

hundredfold when the audience could see it as well as hear it.”17 The show started with

Horn and Lee Stewart on the air, but the chemistry wasn’t present and Mammarella was

never convinced that two on-air personalities were needed and Stewart was moved to

his own morning television show. Horn wasn’t especially well liked by those around

him, but Mammarella said, “Horn was a great promoter. He had a very good public

relations sense, and he had a very commercial mind. He knew the kids, what made

them tick, and how to exploit it.”18 Clark’s Caravan of Stars radio show was renamed

Bandstand about a year after the television version established itself, but the two shows

didn’t play the same music and it caused a disconnect with the audience, although Horn

was doing the introductions and the wrap-ups on the radio show. Clark and Horn did

not get along due to the competitive nature of the business, but Clark respected what

Horn did for the industry. “Bob Horn was a rock ‘n’ roll pioneer, and he should take his

16 Ibid, 9-13.

17 Clark, Dick, and Richard Robinson, 1976, Rock, Roll & Remember, New York: Crowell, 42.

18 Ibid, 43.

rightful place with Alan Freed and the other fathers of rock,” says Clark.19 Horn had a

successful formula; teenage dancers who clamored to be on the show, a constant influx

of music stars that would visit to lip-sync their latest hits, and he introduced Rate-A-

Record to the show whereby selected teenagers would give their opinions to the latest

records.20

Horn would host Bandstand for almost four years until he was arrested on charges of drunk driving. The station fired him immediately and searched for a replacement.21

Mammarella filled in during this time and eventually Clark was named as the new host

in the summer of 1956. Clark had challenges ahead of him, particularly in establishing

his credibility and rapport with both the dancers and Mammarella. Both had become

comfortable with Horn and were immensely loyal. In his talks with Mammarella, Clark

revealed that he wasn’t familiar with the music. Mammarella proved to be a valuable

ally and helped Clark program and learn the music. The dancers were another matter.

After Clark’s ascension was announced, the dancers, led by future disc jockey Jerry

Blavat, picketed the station so Clark had to do some immediate damage control.

According to Clark, he went out to talk with the group.

“I’m Dick Clark. I’ve got the job as the new host of ‘Bandstand.’” I stopped. The kids didn’t say anything; they just stared at me.

19 Ibid, 45.

20 Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 18-19; Blavat, Jerry, 2011, You Only Rock Once My Life in Music, Reading, MA: Running Press, 36-46.

21 “Bob Horn Surrenders,” Reading Eagle, Reading, PA, October 25, 1956, 38, Google news, accessed March 25, 2013, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=iQ8rAAAAIBAJ&sjid=I5oFAAAAIBAJ&dq=bob%20horn%20drunk%20drivin g&pg=6890%2C4351119.

“I know how you felt about Bob. But there’s nothing anybody can do about it. I know he was your friend. I hope you don’t dislike me because I was chosen to replace him.”22

Blavat, however, remembers the incident differently. Professing his loyalty to Bob

Horn, Blavat remembers being taken into the WFIL offices by Clark and then-general manager George Koehler and offered an increase in pay to lead the dancers into the studio for the impending broadcast. When Blavat refused, he was arrested and the protesters dispersed. Blavat would no longer dance on Bandstand.23

This would mark the beginning of a 33-year career as the host of Bandstand.

Clark had two objectives within a year as the host: integrate the show and get it on a

national network. Clark did manage to get ABC to agree to carry it on their network

thirteen months after he took over as host, but the network insisted on remodeling the

studio and renaming the show American Bandstand. Clark was cognizant of the state

of racial tension in the U.S. and was “aware that rock ‘n’ roll and “Bandstand” owed their

existence to black music and the black artists who sang it”.24 Clark states that the

show “became integrated in 1957 because I elected to make it so.”25 However, there

were many who believed that blacks were selectively excluded from the audience.26

Weldon McDougall, a black who lived just blocks from the WFIL studios and attended West Philadelphia High, conceded there were always some blacks on the show, “but it was maybe one or two people. It was a clique [of white

22 Clark, Dick, and Richard Robinson, 1976, Rock, Roll & Remember, New York: Crowell, 48-49.

23 Blavat, Jerry, 2011, You Only Rock Once My Life in Music, Reading, MA: Running Press, 59-61.

24 Clark, Dick, and Richard Robinson, 1976, Rock, Roll & Remember, New York: Crowell, 82.

25 Dick, and Richard Robinson, 1976, Rock, Roll & Remember, New York: Crowell, 82.

26 Peters, Art, “Negroes Crack Barrier of Bandstand TV Show,” Philadelphia Tribune, Philadelphia, PA, October 5, 1957, 1.

teenagers] from all over the city, and the biggest crowd was from South Philly.27

McDougall also believed that blacks just weren’t interested in the music that the

show was playing in the beginning. However, as Clark and Mammarella incorporated

more rhythm and blues, McDougall believes that blacks were systematically excluded

by virtue of membership cards which he saw as not being issued very regularly after the

American Bandstand crowds grew.28 Another West Philadelphia teenager, Lee

Andrews, believed that there was always some reason that black teenagers couldn’t get

in to dance on the show and that it was exclusively for white people.29 “Even though

Bandstand originated in Philadelphia, which had a substantial black population, a viewer

of the program was hard pressed to find a black face among the studio kids.”30 There

was never any evidence presented that American Bandstand purposely excluded black

teenagers from its program. American Bandstand started broadcasting on the ABC

network in 1957. A year later, Clark was also given The Dick Clark Saturday Night

Show.31 This show was primarily a vehicle for the hot artists at the time to come on and

lip-sync their latest hit without the dancers as it was on American Bandstand, but was

27 Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 56-57.

28 Peters, Art, “Negroes Crack Barrier of Bandstand TV Show,” Philadelphia Tribune, Philadelphia, PA, October 5, 1957, 1.

29 Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 56-57; South Philadelphia was known for its large Italian American population during this time period.

30 Segrave, Kerry, 1994, Payola in the Music Industry: a History, 1880-1991. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 109.

31 Adams, Val, “Word Game Eyed as new C.B.S. Show,” New York Times, New York, NY, February 4, 1958, 59.

cancelled in 1960 due to programming changes.32 American Bandstand would air with

Clark as the host until 1989, but Clark would find himself in the midst of the largest

scandal to ever hit the radio industry at the end of 1959.33

Payola

Some of the biggest names in radio were pulled into the federal investigation

regarding payola, such as Alan Freed, Hunter Hancock, and Murray “the K” Kaufman.

By the end of 1959, Clark was one of the biggest names of them all, although he was on

television. Clark’s inclusion stemmed from his interests in music publishing. While

others included in this investigation also had interests in music publishing, theirs wasn’t

as extensive as Clark’s. Clark was an admitted capitalist.34 “Clark is on record for stating that ever since his days at Syracuse University he was intrigued by the business aspects of broadcasting more than the announcing aspects.”35 Others targeted in this

investigation seemed to capitalize on their fame as celebrities rather than focusing on

business operations such as Clark did. Bandstand already had a reputation for

introducing local artists in Philadelphia, such as Frankie Avalon, Fabian, and Bobby

Rydell. Radio and television personality John Carlton is quoted as saying, “Bandstand was really the center of the music business on the east coast. Everybody had stopped

32 “Ousted by ‘Roaring 20s’,” The Press-Courier, Oxnard, CA, August 22, 1960, 10, Google news, accessed March 25, 2013, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=0UteAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4mANAAAAIBAJ&dq=the%20dick%20clark%20satur day%20night%20show&pg=7007%2C4879618.

33 “Clark Leaving ‘Bandstand’,” Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee, WI, March 22, 1989, 2A.

34 Clark, Dick, and Richard Robinson, 1976, Rock, Roll & Remember, New York: Crowell, 124.

35 Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 60.

there. All of the stars of the time, the recording artists of the time, made it a stop.”36

While some claim that Clark was offered the publishing rights to a particular song, others claimed that he made it a requirement.37 Artie Singer, co-author of the Danny

and the Juniors hit “At the Hop,” claims that he was told by his distributor Harry Rosen

that “Dick won’t play the record unless you give him 50 percent of the publishing,”

although Clark claims that he was offered 50 percent of the copyright unsolicited.38 As

referenced earlier, Alan Freed received songwriting credits on Chuck Berry’s hit

“Maybelline” and continued to receive royalties as a result.39 The problem with this

arrangement was that Clark had already been invested in music publishing companies

such as Click Corporation, Jamie Records, Sea-Lark Publishing, and Swan Records to

name a few, and gave the appearance of a conflict of interest.40 Besides being

36 Swords, Shawn, Conrad Zimmer, and Character Driven Productions (Firm), 2008, The wage$ of $pin, [Coatsville, PA]: Character Driven Productions.

37 Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 61; Lewis, Anthony, Special to The New York Times. "Dick Clark Denies Receiving Payola; Panel Skeptical," New York Times (1923-Current File), Apr 30, 1960, 1, 47. http://search.proquest.com/docview/115003441?accountid=10920; Jerry Blavat in Swords, Shawn, Conrad Zimmer, and Character Driven Productions (Firm), 2008, The wage$ of $pin. [Coatsville, PA]: Character Driven Productions.

38 Swords, Shawn, Conrad Zimmer, and Character Driven Productions (Firm), 2008, The wage$ of $pin, [Coatsville, PA]: Character Driven Productions; U.S. House of Representatives, 1960, Responsibilities of Broadcast Licensees and Station Personnel: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 86th Congress. 2d Session on Payola and Other Deceptive Practices in the Broadcasting Field, Part II: January 27, 28, 29, May 2, 3, August 30, 31, 1960, Washington D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960, retrieved from LexisNexis Congressional Hearings Digital Collection July 2, 2010, 1178.

39 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 80; Hardeman, Simon, “Blue heaven: music mogul Marshall Chess,” The Independent May 27, 2008, accessed February 11, 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/blue- heaven-music-mogul-marshall-chess-834540.html.

questioned about playing records in which he had a financial interest on American

Bandstand, there were also questions regarding records produced by companies in which the ABC network had a financial stake in as well.41 “Clark was particularly

vulnerable to payola’s double-edged sword, for at the same time his lofty Bandstand

position caused people to suspect him of receiving payoffs, some of those companies

Clark held an interest in did business as usual distributing payola.”42

As the investigation intensified, ABC believed it needed to be proactive in its

approach to payola as the FCC controlled its license renewal. The network lawyers drafted a statement that all ABC on-air personnel were required to sign stating that they

“had never taken gifts or money to promote records.”43 Additionally, the network

implemented “a new policy under which performers and others who selected and played

records had to divest themselves of all financial interests in labels, publishing, and allied

fields” or leave ABC.44 While Clark was making a substantial income from his music

40 Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 61, 96; U.S. House of Representatives, 1960, Responsibilities of Broadcast Licensees and Station Personnel: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 86th Congress. 2d Session on Payola and Other Deceptive Practices in the Broadcasting Field, Part II: January 27, 28, 29, May 2, 3, August 30, 31, 1960, Washington D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960, retrieved from LexisNexis Congressional Hearings Digital Collection July 2, 2010, 741-763.

41 Blair, William M., Special to The New York Times, 1960, “Inquiry Queries Dick Clark Policy: Raises Point of His Playing Records on A.B.C. Put Out by Network Subsidiary,” New York Times (1923-Current file), February 19, http://www.proquest.com/, accessed July 27, 2011, 55.

42 Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 144; Lewis, Anthony, Special to The New York Times. "Dick Clark Denies Receiving Payola; Panel Skeptical," New York Times (1923-Current File), Apr 30, 1960, 1, 47. http://search.proquest.com/docview/115003441?accountid=10920.

43 Segrave, Kerry, 1994, Payola in the Music Industry: a History, 1880-1991. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 110; Hall, Mildred, "Payola Hearings Finale Prefaces Fast Solon Action." Billboard 72, no. 19: 1, 27. Google Books (Accessed April 8, 2013).

business ventures, he complied with the policy and “the ABC network concluded that

‘Dick Clark has neither solicited nor accepted any personal consideration – money or otherwise – to have any performer appear or to play any record on any of his programs…We have concluded our investigation with renewed faith and confidence in

Dick Clark’s integrity.’”45 There were others that didn’t share ABC’s support of Clark.

Alan Freed, who had declined to sign the affidavit and was eventually fired, felt as

others that Clark had received preferential treatment from the network as he was

provided a differently worded affidavit to sign than Freed.46

“Dick Clark’s fate, as well as the future of American Bandstand, hinged on the outcome of the House subcommittee’s payola investigation.”47 Had the investigation

found any proof that Clark showed “favoritism in programming records in which he had

a financial interest,” American Bandstand would have most likely been cancelled and

Clark fired from ABC.48 The subcommittee spent considerable time and resources

44 Ibid, 109; “House Group Plans Check on Teen Idol Dick Clark,” Lewiston Morning Tribune, Lewiston, ID, November 18, 1959, 11, Google news, accessed March 25, 2013, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=IrJeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=zi8MAAAAIBAJ&dq=abc%20policy%20for%20perform ers&pg=5466%2C2594070.

45 Ibid, 110; Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 143-144; U.S. House of Representatives, 1960, Responsibilities of Broadcast Licensees and Station Personnel: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 86th Congress. 2d Session on Payola and Other Deceptive Practices in the Broadcasting Field, Part II: January 27, 28, 29, May 2, 3, August 30, 31, 1960, Washington D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960, retrieved from LexisNexis Congressional Hearings Digital Collection July 2, 2010, 741-763.

46 Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 166; Peter Altschuler (Son of Murray "the K" Kaufmann), interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview January 09, 2012; “Clark Was Given ‘Easy’ Affidavit on Payola, Claim,” The Times-News, Hendersonville, NC, May 3, 1960, 7, Google news, accessed March 24, 2013, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=QXobAAAAIBAJ&sjid=QU4EAAAAIBAJ&dq=abc%20affidavit%20payola&p g=6751%2C96870.

47 Jackson, John A., 1997, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, New York: Oxford University Press, 168.

48 Ibid.

reviewing tax records, particularly those of Anthony Mammarella, Clark’s former producer and partner in several music publishing and distribution companies as well as

Bernard Lowe and Harry Chipetz who were business partners in various music production and distribution companies. While Mammarella did admit to receiving payments from various record companies such as Chess, his stance was that it was for consultation and vehemently denied any pay-for-play arrangement.49

By November 19, 1959, Clark had ownership in 17 companies involved in music

production or manufacturing. He also owned one other company, Drexel Television

Productions, Inc.50 Clark submitted a sworn affidavit to the subcommittee informing

them of his intent to divest his interests (although all the companies listed in the letter

from his lawyer weren’t listed in his affidavit) as well as deny any improprieties

connected with his involvement with American Bandstand. Clark did admit to accepting

some gifts that he claims were of a personal nature, only to find out later that the source

of those gifts had claimed them as a business expense.51 The affidavit wasn’t enough

for the investigating subcommittee and Clark faced the subcommittee on April 29, 1960.

In a prepared statement for the subcommittee, Clark explained that he felt that he was

“convicted, condemned, and denounced,” particularly by the press, before he had an

49 U.S. House of Representatives, 1960, Responsibilities of Broadcast Licensees and Station Personnel: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 86th Congress. 2d Session on Payola and Other Deceptive Practices in the Broadcasting Field, Part II: January 27, 28, 29, May 2, 3, August 30, 31, 1960, Washington D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960, retrieved from LexisNexis Congressional Hearings Digital Collection July 2, 2010, 741-763.

50 Ibid, 810-811.

51 Ibid, 812-815, Oldenburg, Ann, and Gary Levin, “Curtain Falls on Dick Clark, But Not His Legacy,” USA Today, Last modified April 19, 2012, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/people/obit/story/2012-04-18/dick-clark-dies-at- 82/54390716/1.

opportunity to explain his position.52 “I want to make it clear, immediately, that I have

never taken payola. In brief, I have never agreed to play a record or have an artist

perform on a radio or television program in return for payment in cash or any other

consideration,” said Clark in a statement to the House subcommittee.53

Clark outlined his rise in the industry as well as his interests in 33 companies and

their purpose. His statement encompasses approximately 17 pages of the hearing’s

transcripts, which the subcommittee was quick to point out as well as inform Clark that

he was not singled out in their investigation.54 However, besides questioning Clark on

his business arrangements with Lowe, Chipetz, and Mammarella, the subcommittee

focused on the records Clark played and their frequency, particularly those in which he

had a financial interest. The subcommittee attempted to imply that those artists that

Clark had a financial interest received more airplay which resulted in increased record

sales as indicated on Billboard’s charts.55 Clark was however able to point out that

several successful artists, such as Connie Francis, Frankie Avalon, Bobby Darin, had

no financial arrangement with Clark and he did not receive any income from their

success.56

After two days of testimony Chairman Oren Harris of Arkansas excused Clark with

the statement that he was “a fine young man” and that he was “attractive to young

people,” therefore increasing his responsibilities due to his influence on a younger

52 Ibid, 1168.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid, 1186.

55 Ibid, 1203.

56 Ibid, 1202-1205.

generation. Harris went on to say that Clark didn’t invent the system, but was “the

product that has taken advantage of a unique opportunity” in how the music industry

and television work.57 In a press conference during his testimony, Clark felt it necessary to provide some clarification. At one point during his testimony it was revealed that one of his record companies had paid out payola. Clark said, “It was implied that I approved of the giving of payola and condemned the taking of it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I never made such a statement.”58

The district attorney in Philadelphia filed a bill in equity in order to “take action

against 11 record distributers and 28 Philly jockeys who, he charges, were involved in a

$400,000 payola scheme.”59 Victor H. Blanc said he was taking this action “in civil

proceedings rather than criminal indictments because of the refusal of the principals to

testify.”60 Additionally, the district attorney “stated that Clark himself is innocent of

payola.”61 However, Clark “lost more than $8 million” as a result of having to divest all

of his financial interests.62

Like many disc jockeys during the 1950s, Clark produced and was the MC for a

travelling concert made up of various stars. His was the “Caravan of Stars” which he

started in 1959 and went well into the 1960s. Many of the artists that appeared on his

57 Ibid, 1350-1351.

58 Clark, Dick, 1960, Press conference, Global Image Works, accessed July 27, 2011, http://www.footagefinders.com/clip-dick-clark-payola-hearing-stock-footage- 3282_055?id=7881&search_string=payola&submit_y=5&search_type=all&startrow=0

59 "Clark Heads D.J. Payola Police Group," Billboard 72, no. 35: 1, Google Books, accessed April 8, 2013.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.

62 Clark, Dick, and Richard Robinson, 1976, Rock, Roll & Remember, New York: Crowell, 225.

100

show as well as new artists were moving to California. He then decided that if he was

going to keep American Bandstand relevant and up-to-date, he needed to move his

operations to California as well. In 1964 Clark moved his company to Los Angeles and

on the suggestion of a friend, named his company dick clark productions.63

American Bandstand lasted for over 30 years with Clark as the host.64 During that

time, Clark’s company also produced the American Music Awards, the Golden Globe

Awards, the Academy of Country Music Awards, The $25,000 Pyramid, and Dick

Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in which he served as the host up until a stroke kept

him from appearing in 2004. He returned the following year as a co-host with his

protégé Ryan Seacrest and continued until his death due to a heart attack in 2012.

Seacrest cites Clark as one of the greatest influences in his life. “I idolized him from the

start, and I was graced early on in my career with his generous advice and counsel,"

said Seacrest after learning of Clark’s death.65

“While Clark's behind-the-scenes business acumen had much to do with the

fortune he amassed, he was better known for the charming on-air personality and

ageless looks that allowed him to remain one of television's most popular hosts and

pitchmen.”66 The importance of American Bandstand and Dick Clark on the careers of many music artists is extraordinary. “Singer Janet Jackson said that ‘Dick Clark

63 Ibid, 253; The name of his company was all lowercase letters. Many sources indicate that dick clark productions started in 1957, including the company website found at http://www.dickclark.com/corporate, but there was no mention of this company in Clark’s testimony during the payola hearings. This study has concluded that it must have been the re-naming of Clark’s Click Corporation that evolved into dick clark productions.

64 “‘America’s Oldest Teen’ Dances Into The Sunset”, 1989, Deseret News (Salt Lake City, UT), March 22, 1989, A3; “Clark Leaving ‘Bandstand’”, 1989, The Milwaukee Journal, March 22, 1989, 2A; “Switching Off: Dick Clark Jumps Off Bandstand,” 1989, The Pittsburgh Press, March 22, 1989, A2.

65 “Dick Clark,” Biography.com, http://www.biography.com/people/dick-clark-9249296, accessed May 02, 2012.

66 Ibid.

101

changed the face of musical television. He was wonderful to many artists including our

family.’”67 Before MTV, American Bandstand was the social recommendation engine for

music on television, paving the way for more airplay on radio. Artists through three

decades, such as Chubby Checker, Frankie Avalon, Madonna, Autograph, The Village

People, The Jackson 5, Jerry Lee Lewis, and a host of others can point to American

Bandstand and Dick Clark as an influence on their success. American Bandstand is an

important part of media history in America, helping to bring new music genres into the

living rooms of America. While other hosts were brought on towards the end of

American Bandstand’s run on television, none had the charisma of Dick Clark and it’s

possible that the show may not have succeeded in the way it did without him. Many of

the dancers on Bandstand considered Clark a father-like figure who kept spare

bandages and safety pins on hand. Clark found the secret to connecting to the

audience at an early age while listening to Arthur Godfrey. “He was the first to realize

that a radio announcer does not talk to “those of you out there in radio land”; a radio

announcer talks to me as an individual. Godfrey knew that people listened to the radio

one to one, so that was the way he treated his listeners.”68 Lyn Acebo, a dancer on the

show along with her sister in the late 1970s, considered Clark a father-like figure and

cites the dancers as creating the dance moves for The Village People’s YMCA.69 Clark made rock ‘n’ roll safe in the eyes of parents in the 1950s. His clean-cut good looks and always dressed in a suit, Clark gave rock ‘n’ roll credibility among adults in an era where

67 Ibid.

68 Clark, Dick, and Richard Robinson, 1976, Rock, Roll & Remember, New York: Crowell. 19-20.

69 McCoy, Blake, “Fremont Street Experience Pays Tribute to Dick Clark,” Channel 13 Action News, created April 18, 2012, http://www.ktnv.com/news/local/148051905.html.

102

discrimination was still wide-spread and fears of the music’s influence on America’s teens were rampant. As the first disc jockey on national television, Dick Clark’s influence on music spanned decades and garnered an audience that had a profound effect on record sales during the airing of American Bandstand.

103

CHAPTER 5 BRUCE MORROW

Bruce Morrow’s career is intertwined with two other disc jockeys profiled in

this study. He grew up as a fan of Alan Freed’s and considers him a major

influence on his career and went head-to-head with Wolfman Jack in competition

for the listening audience in New York. His career began just as the payola

scandal was about to unfold and at the rise of rock ‘n’ roll. While the only

remaing disc jockey profiled in this study still living and still enjoying a career in

the audio industry, his career still rode the wave of the rise and fall of the rock ‘n’

roll disc jockey. Morrow still remembers the event that changed his career.

After I closed the mike and the light went off, she asked, “Do you believe all people are related?” “Yes, I do. I really do,” I said. I really did, despite my stick-with-your-own-kind upbringing and the Mrs. Larsens of the world. “Well, cousin, can you give me fifty cents please? I want to get home to the Bronx.” I gave her two quarters and she left.1

Since that meeting in 1959, he’s been known simply as Cousin Brucie, but despite

objections over his on-air name change from his program director Mel Leeds at the

time, Bruce Morrow built a Hall of Fame career in radio as everyone’s cousin.2 “Radio

was always my calling,” says Morrow.3 Born in 1935 as Bruce Meyerowitz4, young

Brucie realized at an early age that radio was the window to the world, bringing him

1 Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 67.

2 Ibid, 67-68.

3 Ibid, 21.

4 Several sources list him as being born in 1937, but gave his date of birth as October 13, 1935 in Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

104

entertainment such as the Uncle Don show and news such as the events of World War

II and the death of President Franklin Roosevelt.5

Morrow’s childhood wasn’t much different than other Jewish kids growing up in

Brooklyn in the 1940’s; going to the movies to watch Fred Astaire or John Wayne,

roaming the street with his friends, “the Invincible East Twenty-sixth Street Kids,” or running errands for his mother and grandmother.6 His mother Mina was a stay-at-home mom and his dad the owner of the M and W Hat Company. Brown bag lunches often consisted of sandwiches made of cream cheese and jelly on white bread.7 Morrow

realized the power of radio when he was nine years old on his way home from school.

As he approached his home, he noticed that his mom and some of the other

neighborhood women were outside listening to the radio. “And these women, as I got

closer, I noticed were crying. My mother was hysterical. Mrs. Bloom was hysterical.

They were all crying, these very strong Brooklyn women who should have been home

preparing the dinner.”8 As he got closer, he could hear the announcer on the radio declare that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was dead. Morrow remembers that “I realized then and there that this little brown bako-like box had such power over these

5 Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 22-23; Huff, W. A. Kelly, 2004, "Morrow, Bruce "Cousin Brucie" 1937–," Museum Of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia Of Radio 2, 959-960, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost, accessed January 6, 2012.

6 Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 29-32.

7 Ibid.

8 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

105

strong women, these strong people, that I had to find out what the heck that was all

about.”9

Morrow had seen and felt the power of radio through incidents such as this. Other

news, such as the events of World War II, preempted regular programming through

bulletins. Morrow decided then he wanted to be on the radio, but had to overcome his shyness first. He remembers that it was his English teacher at James Madison High

School in Brooklyn, New York that recognized a talent within him and convinced him to

audition for a school play about hygiene where he won the part of a tooth cavity.

While I was on the stage and was dressed in my cavity – picture me in a big tooth with a black spot in the middle – something happened. I felt the warmth and the communication from the audience. It went back and forth, and I realized that at a very young age. And I loved the feeling.

Well…I haven’t stopped talking since that day. And that’s it. That’s how it started.10

After high school, Morrow enrolled in Brooklyn College, but found out quickly that

college was harder than he expected and flunked out. However, he found that New

York University had a Communication Arts program that fit into his vision of working in

radio. After his experience of being on the air in high school with the All City Radio

Workshop, he immersed himself in learning the technological aspects of radio and

started NYU’s first radio station, albeit a carrier-current apparatus initially transmitting to

only one room on campus.11

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 38-42; Huff, W. A. Kelly, 2004, "Morrow, Bruce "Cousin Brucie" 1937–," Museum Of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia Of Radio 2, 959-960, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost accessed January 6, 2012.

106

Morrow parlayed that experience to gain his first professional on-air position at

ZBM radio in Hamilton, Bermuda. Filled with images of fun and sun on the beaches of

Bermuda, Morrow didn’t expect to be confronted face-to-face with anti-Semitism from the owner of the boardinghouse that he was calling home.12 As a result, Morrow’s time

in Bermuda was brief and he was anxious to get back home to New York. Morrow was

highly influenced growing up by other disc jockeys such as Martin Block and his Make

Believe Ballroom at WNEW, Peter Tripp, “the curly-headed kid in the third row,” at

WMGM, and Alan “Moondog” Freed who had made the transition from Cleveland and

brought his Rock ‘n’ Roll Party to WINS in New York City.13 Morrow instantly became a

fan.

I started listening to him. I never heard anybody sound like this. He was the very first person I ever heard that sounded like the music. He used to pound on telephone books, he used to take the Bronx or the Queens or the New York Manhattan telephone book and pound on it while he was playing records. His voice and his staccato followed in his tone of everything. It followed the music, and I loved it.

Enthralled by Freed’s show, Morrow decided one day to go to the studio to

watch him on the air. Watching through a glass window, Morrow watched Freed

perform his show at least once a week until “until one day this hero of mine –

motioned to me with his hand to come in. He invited me into the studio. And I

sat with him there a couple times, and as far as I was concerned he was like my

12 Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 48-52.

13 Ibid, 60.

107

mentor. I love what he did. I love what he did. I love that he sounded – I loved

his energy and his spirit on the air.”14

Although Freed had moved to WABC, Morrow was still enthralled over the

opportunity to work at WINS and accepted a position as a producer in 1958. About six

months after he started working there, the American Federation of Television and Radio

Artists (AFTRA) went on strike.15 As part of management, Morrow was given the 2:00

p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on-air shift to fill in for the striking announcers. While he didn’t think

about it at the time, he reflected years later that this time probably didn’t help his

reputation among radio announcers if he “had been willing to be a scab to get on the

air.”16 However, this proved to be Morrow’s big break in the largest radio market in the

country. The strike only lasted a few weeks and he was fired as a producer and

immediately hired as an announcer, assigned the 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. shift that once

belonged to Alan Freed.17

Once Morrow’s transformation to Cousin Brucie was complete, his popularity

soared. Fan mail came into WINS addressed to Cousin Brucie and people all over New

York instantly recognized his voice when he moved about town.18 He was one of them:

their cousin. With this increase in Morrow’s popularity, WINS now had two disc jockeys

that connected with the audience and increased WINS’ listenership: Morrow and Murray

14 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

15 Adams, Val, "Fund Asking A.B.C. to use Lodge Talk," New York Times, New York, NY, Jun 17, 1958, 59.

16 Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 60-63.

17 Ibid, 64-66.

18 Ibid, 68-70.

108

the K Kaufman. Kaufman was on the graveyard shift and according to Morrow,

Kaufman wasn’t happy with the pecking order and wanted the earlier shift held by

Morrow. Morrow believed that Kaufman did something underhanded to gain his

timeslot, going as far as to suggest payola was involved which was a hot button of

controversy as the congressional hearings on the subject had concluded earlier in the

year, but witnesses at the time believed that Kaufman was a better promoter of both the

station and himself.19 While this study found no evidence of how the events truly

unfolded, Kaufman was given the 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. slot and rather than move to

the overnight position, Morrow left WINS.

Morrow would once again find himself headed south, this time to Miami at WINZ to

replace Bob Green who had retired from radio to manage the career of his wife Anita

Bryant.20 WINZ took out a half-page ad in The Miami News to announce the arrival of

Cousin Brucie.21 Morrow had signed a one-year contract and immediately felt the difference between Miami and New York City. In addition to the weather (he wasn’t a fan of Christmas lights on palm trees), he noticed a definite shift in his audience during

his live remote broadcasts.22 “The kids were teenagers, just as the New York live

audiences had been, but they were shyer, less sassy with me—into an almost private

dating ritual of a radio dance party, rather than seizing the chance to perform in front of

19 Ibid, 70-73; Peter Altschuler (Son of Murray "the K" Kaufmann), interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview January 09, 2012.

20 Bundy, June, "Vox Jox," The Billboard 72, no. 43: 32, Google Books, accessed April 1, 2012.

21 WINZ Advertisement, The Miami News, Miami, FL, October 26, 1960, 26, Google news, accessed April 1, 2012.

22 Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 78, 98.

109

a microphone the way the New York kids had.”23 Morrow found however that he had a

more enthusiastic audience in Jamaica, where the station was heard at night due to the

properties of AM radio. After securing a sponsorship with Pepsi-Cola, Morrow did his live remote broadcasts every other weekend from Kingston, Jamaica.24 While he

enjoyed his time there, he was still a Brooklyn kid at heart and looked for an opportunity

to return to the Big Apple. That opportunity came from WABC and after a year in Miami,

Morrow returned to New York to compete with his old employer, WINS.

Competition in New York radio was fierce in the early 1960s. By 1963, WINS had

Murray the K, “Mad Daddy” Pete Myers, and Johnny Holiday; WMCA had B. Mitch Reed

and WABC boasted Morrow, Scott Muni, and Dan Ingram.25 WABC, looking to capture

the teenage audience, put Cousin Brucie in the 10:00 p.m. – midnight slot where the

teenage audience was believed to be the largest. Morrow was ecstatic to be back in

New York, stating, “My cousins remembered me.”26 Morrow felt that the timeslot was

perfect for him and his audience.

ABC was going after teen power and yours truly was in the late-night teen slot…10 to midnight is a punchy time, especially after a full day of acting basically like an adult…by the time I went on the air, I was usually starting to get into that flaky state you feel when you’re a kid and you’re up past your bedtime.27

23 Ibid, 78.

24 1961, Pepsi-Cola Advertisement, Daily Gleaner, Kingston, Jamiaca, June 26, 1961, 6.

25 Fong-Torres, Ben, 1998, The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 radio, San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 139.

26 Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 110.

27 Ibid, 111.

110

WABC had a history of big name personalities on its payroll in the 1950s and was looking to recapture that prominence and challenge cross-town rival WINS for the teenage audience. Comedian Ernie Kovacs, Martin Block with his “Make Believe

Ballroom,” and Alan Freed had all broadcast their shows on WABC.28 WABC also

seemed to have an advantage with the geographical reach of their broadcast.

It did seem like you could hear WABC everywhere. During the day you could receive the station two hundred miles away without any problem. At night, it covered over thirty-eight states like a blanket.29

Morrow’s biggest competition was his old co-worker Murray the K at WINS. Both

had garnered a strong following playing song requests and really connecting with their

listeners. Both were also hosting live rock ‘n’ roll shows like Freed had done a few

years before, Murray the K at the Paramount Fox Theater and Morrow at Palisades

Park.30 “Doing a remote record show from Palisades Amusement Park is one of the

greatest ways I know to get out and meet my audience.”31 Morrow’s advantage was

that his shows were every weekend for six months of the year, providing him with more

exposure and an intimate connection with his audience. So intimate was Morrow’s

connection with his audience that he went live on the air with his wife’s obstetrician

when Morrow’s first son was delivered in 1964, naming him Dana Jon or D.J. for short.

28 “Disc Jockey, ABC Sign Big Contract,” Youngstown Vindicator, Youngstown, OH, March 17, 1953, 13, Google news, accessed April 1, 2012; 1955, WABC Advertisement, Broadcasting-Telecasting, May 30, 1955, 13, http://www.erniekovacs.net/images/radio.jpg, accessed April 7, 2012; Jackson, John A., 1991, Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll, New York: Schirmer Books, 207-209.

29 Fong-Torres, Ben, 1998, The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 radio, San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 141.

30 Peter Altschuler, (Son of Murray "the K" Kaufmann), interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview January 09, 2012; Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: my life in rock 'n' roll radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 119.

31 1962, "Programming Panel" Billboard 74, no. 34: 26, Google Books, accessed January 30, 2013.

111

“The fans felt like he was theirs. Thirty thousand cards, letters, and gifts came to the

studio, the hospital, the house.”32 Morrow hadn’t planned this broadcast, but his

connection with his audience and his penchant for entertainment led to the ultimate

result. “Accessibility is what personality radio meant to me. You touched the fans and

they touched you. The birth of a child is the ultimate family event. WABC radio was

nothing if it wasn’t a real part of the family.”33

Contests and promotions were a large part of getting Cousin Brucie and the

WABC brand in the minds of everyone in the New York listening area. Morrow

remembers contests such as Principal of the Year, the Great WABC Kite Contest, and a

Mona Lisa painting contest judged by Salvador Dali being huge hits with the listening

audience.34 The next big wave to hit the New York airwaves would be The Beatles in

1964.

Not to be outdone by WINS’s pursuit of The Beatles, WABC re-branded

themselves as W-A-Beatles-C.35 They had a chance to break the band in the U.S. in

1963, but the disc jockeys at the time turned down the opportunity to put “I Want to Hold

Your Hand” on the air. Cross-town station WMCA did air the song in December of

1963, but got no reaction from listeners and their records were not selling in the United

32 Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 131.

33 Ibid, 132.

34 Ibid, 138-141; Phillips, McCandlish, "Ballots, Ballots Flood Into WABC: Student Votes by Millions to Pick Principal of Year," New York Times, New York, NY, March 28, 1965, 42; Trow, George W.S., “Button, Button, Who’s Got the WABC $25,000 Promotion Button?” New York Times, New York, NY, July 28, 1974, 89.

35 Ibid, 147; WABC Aircheck, accessed April 9, 2013, http://www.musicradio77.com/images/misc64.mp3.

112

States.36 It wasn’t until The Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February

9, 1964 did they get the notice of the American teenagers. “Within a week, the Beatles

had four songs in the Billboard Top 100, and that meant four songs in constant rotation

on Top 40 stations.”37 Morrow originally felt that the Beatles were just going to be

another fad, but well into 1965 Beatlemania was still going strong and Morrow couldn’t

deny the British Invasion and the effect the band was having on the American youth.

Morrow used to get regular requests on his show, such as one from Joey in the Bronx.

“And Joey will say, “Hey, Brucie. Will you do me a favor Cousin; play a record for me

and my goil [sic], Margaret? Margaret and I love your show. Please play Jerry Lee

Lewis for me, will ya?”38 But Morrow said that “the same kid calls me two weeks after the Beatles arrive,” and adopting a British accent, said “Hello. This is His Lordship,

Joey from Bronxshire. Would you mind playing a record for me and me bird?”39

Morrow said that the Beatles had far reaching effects on American society.

They adopted the King’s English, the accent. They wore the clothing, the hairstyle, spoke like them, played their music and loved them… But everybody started speaking the King’s English. So they affected not only the music, which we needed desperately, but they affected us sociologically. They affected just about everything we did. You couldn’t go any place without seeing or hearing about a Beatle, wearing a Beatle, seeing somebody look like a Beatle. So they really garnered and they stimulated our imaginations 100%. This had never happened before in music, ever. Presley was probably the closest.40

36 Ibid; Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 93; Phillips, McCandlish, "Publicitywise," New York Times, New York, NY, February 17, 1964, 1.

37 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 93.

38 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

113

Morrow’s connection with the Beatles would begin when he interviewed them

before their show at Carnegie Hall in 1964. He solidified his relationship with the band

again in 1965 during their stay at the Warwick Hotel where WABC had secured a suite

of rooms directly above the band and was the MC at their show at Shea Stadium.

Morrow still speaks to the remaining members of the Beatles today.41

By the end of the 1960s, there were many changes taking place in both the radio

industry and in rock ‘n’ roll that would impact disc jockeys. FM was growing in

popularity and with a ruling from the FCC that radio station owners could no longer

program their FM stations with their AM broadcasts, owners were scrambling to

program their FM properties. The recording industry in markets throughout the world

was also starting to see album sales eclipsing those of “singles,” a staple of AM radio.42

Owners believed that there was a different audience for FM. “AM stations knew the wisdom of sticking to Top Forty singles, but maybe album cuts would work on the FM side since only serious, sophisticated, or spaced-out types listened to it.”43

Morrow believes that around 1967, the music starting changing. It started being more politically charged as the poets (as Morrow calls them) starting writing music in protest of the war in Vietnam and music associated with the hippie movement became more popular as well.44 Morrow says, ''What happened about '68, '69, the feeling of

radio left. The friend left. The computer came in, and so did something attached to it –

41 Ibid; Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 147-161.

42 1971, "Report on a Booming Market," Billboard 83, no. 42: WG-1, Google Books, accessed April 9, 2013.

43 Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 175.

44 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

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the consultant. You had consultants from Denver programming New York stations, consultants from New York programming St. Louis stations. Radio became pasteurized.''45 Payola played a big part as well. Disc jockeys were no longer allowed to pick the songs they played on the air and Morrow says it had a negative impact on radio. “Most of us were pretty good at hearing what was going to be a commercial record, maybe not a classic, but a commercial record. The radio personality, who was really the bridge to the audience, no longer had any kind of authority, power. And the audience knew this.”46 As a result, Morrow says, radio became boring. Radio programmers “who lived 1,000, 2,000 miles away from a market would be telling the radio programmer of that particular local station how to program and what to say and how much to say on a radio station when he’d never even been to the market.”47

Morrow stayed with WABC until 1974 and signed with cross-town rival WNBC. In

1973 WNBC had brought in Wolfman Jack to compete against Morrow. Prior to his on- air debut, WNBC set their promotional wheels into high gear, declaring Wolfman was going to bury Morrow, taking out newspaper ads declaring that “Cousin Brucie’s days are numbered” and leaving tombstones all over town predicting Morrow’s demise at the hands of Wolfman Jack.48 Morrow remembers this campaign as one of the best promotions he has ever had.

45 Freedman, Samuel G., "Cousin Brucie’s Up for the Countdown," New York Times 12 Sept. 1985, Gale U.S. History In Context, Web, accessed January 19, 2012.

46 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

47 Ibid.

115

When WNBC brought him in to face Cousin Brucie, they put out a huge, huge campaign, a newspaper, television and ad campaign about how Cousin Brucie’s days were numbered. Wolfman Jack is on the prowl, and I had about 9 days left. And they kept doing this, and they had skywriting, newspapers, subway posters, television. They gave me the best publicity of my career. I’ve never had anything, to this day I’ve never had anything like that.49

WNBC delivered a tombstone to the studios of WABC in the summer of

1973, declaring that “Wolfman Jack was on the prowl” and creating a huge rivalry

between two of the top disc jockeys in New York and possibly the country.50

Rather than see the competition as a threat, Morrow saw it as a positive

experience. “It was great rivalry at that time. It was great. It was stimulating for radio and the music world.”51

By 1974, Morrow was ready to leave WABC due to changes in the pay structure

and he was approached by WNBC to replace his rival Wolfman Jack who was leaving to

go back to the west coast. While Wolfman had his spin on those events, Morrow came

out on top in the ratings and he moved first into the 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm slot, then into

the midday shift at WNBC.52 Morrow’s stint at WNBC would only last three years and

48 1973, WNBC Advertisement, New York Times, New York, NY, July 31, 1973, retrieved from http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=124635610917580&set=a.124635327584275.11960.12410097097104 4&type=3&theater, April 17, 2012; Rockwell, John, 1974, Wolfman Vs Cousin Brucie, The Palm Beach Post- Times,West Palm Beach, FL, January 13, 1974, G3; Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 281-282.

49 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

50 “Musicradio WABC Pictures of the Week for August, 2010,” accessed April 9, 2013, http://www.musicradio77.com/pix10/augpix10.html.

51 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

52 Ibid; Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 199-200.

116

he was told “it was time to make room for the younger guys.” Morrow resigned and

made the move into radio ownership.53

Morrow cites WALL in Middletown, New York, a station he owned at the end of the

1970s, as his favorite place to work.54 For Morrow, it was about having the freedom to

choose the music he played for his listeners as he did earlier in his career. After various

stints at other radio stations in the last three decades, Morrow has again found that

freedom in 2012. “Now, I’ve probably got more freedom than I’ve ever had in my life

from the satellite, Sirius XM. I have complete freedom of creativity. And whatever I

want to do and say is up to me.”55

Morrow’s career is one of the few that survived the rise and fall of the rock ‘n’ roll

disc jockey. Disc Jockey Pete Fornatale said that Morrow is “one of the last great radio

personas. He is from an era in which you created a character and played that character

on the air.”56 To truly understand the development of radio and rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s

and 1960s, media historians must examine the radio personalities that played such a

vital role in those developments. Morrow was doing the same thing as other disc

jockeys throughout the country, connecting his audience with rock ‘n’ roll and

connecting with them on a personal level. He just did it better than most. By

53 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 200; Huff, W. A. Kelly, 2004, "Morrow, Bruce "Cousin Brucie" 1937–," Museum Of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia Of Radio 2, 959-960, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost, accessed January 6, 2012; Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo, 1987, Cousin Brucie!: My Life in Rock 'n' Roll Radio, New York: Beech Tree Books, 243; Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 282-283.

54 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

55 Ibid.

56 Sisario, Ben, “After Decades on the Dial, Cousin Brucie Falls Victim to a Changing Media World,” New York Times, New York, NY, June 6, 2005, B1.

117

developing his Cousin Brucie persona, he created a connection with his audience by becoming part of their extended family. Radio is an intimate medium and during the time period examined by this study, disc jockeys such as Cousin Brucie were often a beacon of light in the dead of the night. Listeners could call at 2 a.m. and talk to the person they were hearing on the radio, something that is missing in radio today. The disc jockey was a friend, not just someone who played music and delivered the news.

Bruce Morrow’s career was built on being a friend to his audience and a vital component to the development of radio.

118

CHAPTER 6 WOLFMAN JACK

Wolfman Jack is easily one of the most recognized voices and personalities in the

history of radio. Through his broadcasts from Mexican superstations, the howl of the

Wolfman could be heard on radios throughout a majority of the United States in the

1960s. No study of early rock ‘n’ roll disc jockeys is complete without including the

career of Wolfman Jack. He continued the tradition of personality radio started by his

predecessors and influences such as Alan Freed as well as sharing their affinity for

black music. His career illustrates that the rise and fall of the rock ‘n’ roll disc jockey

could not only be the result of a major event such as the payola scandal, but of a

change in audience listening habits and tastes as well.

Early Life

Robert Weston Smith was born in 1938 in New York.1 His family started off well-

to-do, but the stock market crash in 1929 left them broke by the time Smith entered the

world. His dad became a workaholic trying to regain his fortune which eventually

caused his parents to divorce and remarry other spouses. Smith describes conflicts

with his step-parents that led to his identification as a “juvenile delinquent” growing up.

Smith respected his father, adored his mother, and was very close to his sister Joan.

“No question, I wouldn’t have made it through without having her in my corner” he says of Joan.2

1 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 10-11; Herszenhorn, David M., 1995, Wolfman Jack, 57, Raspy Voice of Rock-and-Roll on the Radio. New York Times, July 3, Late Edition (East Coast), http://www.proquest.com/, accessed February 10, 2010.

2 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 13.

119

Smith got his first real taste at what it was like to be a disc jockey at the tender age

of ten. His father had converted the garage into a sort of pseudo dance hall for his

sister and Smith was in charge of selecting the music on the jukebox for his sister and

friends to dance to.

I loved watching the teenagers dance and have fun, so I figured out which tunes really got them moving and punched those ones up just to see the energy level in the room rise. I saw that I could build a mood slowly, through a good sequence of songs, and eventually bring the whole room to a real dynamic peak.3

Being a disc jockey in the days before automated playlists was considered an art

form. Disc jockeys had that connection to the music and were able to create their own

playlists to create a mood. These disc jockeys were using albums and actually having

to cue-up a song at the beginning of the album track.4 Some were more adept at it than

others. While talking about his mentor John Richbourg, known as John R., Wolfman

Jack said:

I remember I was sitting there and he was talking to me and he wasn’t cueing up records. He was just dropping the needle on them and his timing was perfect. To a deejay, that is wild to see somebody do that.5

There would be many events throughout Smith’s life that would shape his career.

He felt his showmanship came from his father, who often entertained as a magician

called Kandu performing at church carnivals.6 Smith’s gang involvement during his

youth wasn’t all negative as he would become friends with people that helped increase

3 Ibid, 16.

4 Personal experience of this study’s author.

5 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 254.

6 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 17.

120

his rhythm and blues record collection as well as share his affinity to the disc jockeys

that would inspire his career.7

Smith found growing up on the streets of New York in the 1950s a little easier by

making friends with a guy named Lenny and joining his gang, The Tigers.8 By Smith’s

own admission he wasn’t really a violent person and looking for trouble, but like most

adolescents that get involved in gangs, he was looking for a place where he felt

accepted and a sense of family.9 While a member of The Tigers, he became close

friends with a couple of the other members, particularly one they had nicknamed Klepto.

Smith said:

Klepto had a very big impact on my career as a DJ. Thanks to the very talents that earned him his nickname, I acquired a library of the hippest records of the early 1950s. Klepto laid the foundation of my collection. I eventually carried those sides with me to every corner of the United States, and parts of Mexico, and broadcast them worldwide.10

What Klepto would do, Smith said, was visit the records store every so often when

they got a new shipment in, take a stack to the listening booth, and slide some of them

under a “cheap oversize grey wool jacket that smelled like a collie dog whenever it got

rained on.”11 Author Wes Smith paints a little different picture of Smith’s first entourage.

He claims that the gang was called the Taggers Club with three core members including

Smith, Richie, and Klepto who were street hooligans and Smith no more than a street

7 Ibid, 31-39.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid; Esbensen, Finn-Aage, Elizabeth Piper Deschenes, and L. Thomas Winfree, 1999, "Differences Between Gang Girls and Gang Boys: Results from a Multisite Survey," Youth and Society 31, no. 1: 27-53, http://yas.sagepub.com/content/31/1/27 (accessed April 18, 2013).

10 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 37.

11 Ibid, 37-38.

121

hustler.12 Smith’s experiences on the streets of New York City may hold some insight

into his ability to take advantage of situations he would face while building his radio

career.

The records that Klepto would procure ended up in the hands of Smith because he

was the only one who had a record player. Along with a transoceanic radio from his

father, Smith and his friends would sit in the basement coal bin they had cleaned out

and listen to the records and the disc jockeys they could pick up on the radio.13 Many of the disc jockeys they listened to had names like Jocko Henderson, Dr. Jive, Hound Dog

Lorenz and the aforementioned John R. Many of these disc jockeys were located in different parts of the United States, including Nashville, Tennessee and Cleveland, Ohio as well as picking up stations on their radio from around the world at night when the AM signal bounces off the atmosphere to unpredictable areas.14 Those days of listening to the radio in the basement impacted Smith more than any of his other friends, although they all wanted to be like the disc jockeys they listened to.15

All the disc jockeys had different styles and Smith would memorize some of the

things they would say on the air.16 The following is just a sample of their on-air chatter:

12 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 249-250.

13 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 38; Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 250.

14 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 40-45; Fong-Torres, Ben, 1998, The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 radio, San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 22-24; Bakshi, U.A., and A.P. Godse, 2008, Communication Engineering, Maharashtra, India: Technical Publications Pune, 301-307.

15 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 38-39.

16 Ibid, 39.

122

Hunter Hancock, KGFJ, Los Angeles: They don’t call me Old HH for nothin’…Sixteen candles would only fill up one side of my cake!...But I can tell you one thing. Old Hunter Hancock has had his fun, he-he-he- he…Those were the Crests singing ‘Sixteen Candles.’17

John Richbourg, WLAC, Nashville: Yeah! It’s the big John R., the blues man. Whoa! Have mercy, honey, have mercy, have mercy. John R., ‘way down south in the middle of Dixie. I’m gonna spread a little joy. You stand still now and take it like a man, you hear me?18

Jocko Henderson, WHAT, WDAS, Philadelphia: Hey Mommio, hey Daddio, this is your spaceman—Jocko! Three, two, one—blast-off time!19

Pete “Mad Daddy” Myers, WHK, Cleveland: Bumpa dumpa jing jing, On we go. This is Mad Daddy on my final show. But don’t tune out ‘cause we’re not through yet. We haven’t done my alphabet! Here we go, let’s scare them to death. From A to Z all in one big breath!20

Porky Chedwick, WAMO, Pittsburgh: This is your daddio of the raddio, the platter-pushing papa, Pork the tork, the boss man, porkolating and getting you porkified with my groove porkology!21

Alan Freed, WJW, Cleveland: Atta boy, old hound. Hello everybody. How y’all? This is Alan Freed, the old King of the Moondoggers. Good old Aaron Brew, formula Ten-Oh-Two, northern Ohio’s largest-selling beer, makes it possible for us to be here. Howdy everybody, and welcome to the big Moondog Rock ‘n’ Roll Party.22

17 Fong-Torres, Ben, 1998, The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 radio, San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 23.

18 Ibid, 22; Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 41.

19 The quote is from Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 40. However, Wolfman Jack identifies the station as WDIA, which is in Memphis, Tennessee. According to a short biography on Henderson found at http://www.broadcastpioneers.com/jocko1.html, the stations in Philadelphia are where he built his career.

20 As quoted in Olszewski, Mike, and Max V. Grubb, 2010, From Aviating to Zoomerating: The Curious Life and Death of Radio’s ‘Mad Daddy’, Presented at the Broadcast Education Association 2010 Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, April 16, 2010.

21 Fong-Torres, Ben, 1998, The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 radio, San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 20.

22 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 48.

123

One disc jockey that particularly caught Smith’s attention was a guy broadcasting

on a station in Cleveland, Ohio. Alan Freed’s broadcast bounced off the atmosphere

and into the radio of the teenaged Smith. Freed’s quick chatter and phonebook banging

spurred the imagination of Smith.23 Freed eventually moved to WINS in New York and was putting on a show with Jackie Wilson and other popular musical acts at the time and Smith knew this was for him. Smith said:

As soon as he came to New York, The Alan Freed Show just tore the town up. Everybody went nuts, especially me. That’s when I told myself, “I don’t care what. I’m gonna definitely be part of this.” I didn’t know how, I just believed there was a somehow.24

Smith said he got the chance to meet Freed and right away asked for a job, willing to do anything to be involved with what was happening at one of Freed’s live shows.

Unfortunately, he said that Freed brushed him aside. Instead of getting discouraged,

Smith was persistent in getting involved in show business by doing odd jobs for he

backstage workers. Another unfortunate turn of events was that his parents found out

that he was sneaking off to get involved in that “rock ‘n’ roll music” and grounded him,

which led him to spend his free time instead with his friend Richie, working at the

garage and learning to hot-wire cars. Practicing this newly learned talent would get

them arrested and land Smith in a strict boarding school.25

Smith left the school after only completing ten years of formal education and after

a brief vacation in Key West with his sister Joan and her family, he moved in with his

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid, 49-51.

124

father and step-mother where they sent him to trade school to be an electrician.26

Smith knew that electricity wasn’t his calling and instead of going to school when he left

the house, he headed to WNJR in Newark, New Jersey, to start learning the radio

industry. This continued display of rebellion was more than his step-mother would deal

with and Smith was eventually sent out into the world on his own with $300 from his

dad.27

Birth of The Wolfman

The Wolfman is everywhere…Rock on Babe! We gonna do it right here! Rock and roll yourself to death! Oh mercy, give me some more!28

The howl of the Wolfman was more of an idea at first, something he would do while playing with his nieces and nephews.29 Smith would go through several identities

and transformations before looking for an avenue to unleash the Wolfman on the world.

He would start as a door-to-door salesman: first with encyclopedias, then on to a more

lucrative job with the Fuller Brush Company.30 It’s quite possible that this experience in

sales helped Smith later on in building his career in radio, although Wes Smith would

characterize him as a hustler which, during a large part of his early radio career, this

was a fairly accurate description.31

26 Ibid, 52-53.

27 Ibid, 53-57.

28 Wolfman Jack in Lucas, George, Francis Ford Coppola, Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, and Mackenzie Phillips, 1985, American Graffiti, Universal City, CA: MCA Home Video.

29 Ibid, 63.

30 Ibid, 64-65.

31 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 268.

125

Smith finally came to a crossroad in his life and enrolled at the National Academy

of Broadcasting in Alexandria, Virginia, near Washington D. C. Upon graduation, Smith

would begin the 1960s with his first radio gig in nearby Newport News, Virginia at

WYOU.32 This first stop in his illustrious career almost seemed ordained. He got the

job on an introduction to the owner by the president of the school.33 Smith said, “It was

a great twist of fate for me to get hooked up with the guy.”34 The owner, Richard Eaton,

owned stations which targeted the African-American demographic. Kloosterman and

Quispel concluded that “due to the increased purchasing power of blacks, a consumer

market had formed which often could only be reached through advertising in black

music radio programmes [sic].”35 Eaton realized that this was an untapped market and an opportunity to make a lot of money by buying stations with a weak signal or

substandard facilities. Evaluating Eaton, Smith said:

He was a tough, tough operator. He didn’t pay too much. But he was important to the evolution of radio in America. Eaton was the first guy to prove that you could take a marginal station, program it for a specific audience like an ethnic group, and build it into an empire.36

Smith was the type of person Eaton was looking for to work at his new station.

Smith had created his first radio identity while a student, which given his proclivity for

32 “Whaddyaknow,” Daily Press, Newport News, VA, September 7, 2006, accessed April 23, 2013, http://articles.dailypress.com/2006-09-07/news/0609070206_1_wolfman-jack-robert-weston-smith-dj.

33 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 74.

34 Ibid, 75.

35 Kloosterman, Robert C., and Chris Quispel, 1990, "Not Just the Same Old Show on My Radio: An Analysis of the Role of Radio Diffusion of Black Music Among Whites in the South of the United States, 1920 to 1960," Popular music 9, no. 2: 151, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, EBSCOhost, accessed February 10, 2010, 163.

36 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 74.

126

rhythm and blues music, was a perfect fit for Eaton and WYOU. “I created a jive-talking

character called Daddy Jules—which was a play on “the family jewels”—and put

together a whole sample show of hard-cooking tunes.”37 WYOU was not only the place

where Smith honed his on-air skills, but also where he learned the business side of the

industry and how much “hustling” was involved. “It didn’t take me long to figure out that

hustling on the side was gonna be my lifeblood,” Smith would remember.38 Smith

worked with Tex Gathings, a large black man who Smith describes as having “the

diction of a Harvard professor.”39 The only two disc jockeys at the station, Tex was a

black man that sounded white while Smith was a white man who could sound black.

While John R. may have been Smith’s mentor in grooming his on-air chops, Tex would be the one to help him with his diction to fit in on an African-American station and its audience. Smith remembered this about Tex Gathings:

Even though Tex’s accustomed style of speech was sort of Ivy League- inflected, he gave me an invaluable straightening out on the finer points of black diction. The first time he heard me do a set, he took me aside right afterward and said, “Hey listen, man, I know you’re not trying to be Amos and Andy. But if you’re gonna make these people really believe, you want to do this thing right.” He coached me on pronunciation until it got real, real authentic. Because few things sound more lame than a white guy getting an African-American [sic] accent wrong. There are lots of subtleties to black diction.40

These lessons would remain imbedded in the style Smith used to create Wolfman

Jack and perpetuate his mysterious persona. Once Smith became Wolfman Jack,

37 Ibid, 74; Stark, Phyllis, "Wolfman Dies ‘On Cusp of Greatness’," Billboard 107, No. 28: 4, Google Books, accessed April 25, 2013.

38 Ibid, 78.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid, 80.

127

speculation about him was rampant. It wasn’t until he was revealed in George Lucas’

American Graffiti that the world would find out exactly what Wolfman Jack looked like.

He’s black, some said. He’s Mexican, others maintained. He’s seven feet tall and covered with hair, the more imaginative thought. Wolfman maintained this uncertainty by never appearing in public and by claiming he was Wolfman’s manager whenever he had to negotiate a business deal.41

Segregation and racism was still a huge problem in the United States, particularly

in the South. Some point to rock ‘n’ roll as having an influence in changing the attitudes in America. Kloosterman and Quispel posit that music seemed to be a proving ground for desegregation.

Whereas the social distance between whites and blacks appeared impossible to overcome from almost any other point of view, young white artists in the south of the USA explicitly adopted this form of black music…After 1955 ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ for white and black performers dominated the popular music scene.42

Smith would use other lessons he picked up in listening to his favorite disc jockeys

as a kid as well as the ones learned while trying to sell advertising time on WYOU.

Hustling to make money as a salesman and a disc jockey consumed all of Smith’s time.

While selling advertising for the station, Smith would make deals with the advertisers for

suits and his car. During one of these sales pitches, Smith was offered a chance to

make some extra money delivering packages for one of his advertisers. This was his

first introduction to marijuana.43 Ever the entrepreneur, Smith got to know the local

41 Brown, Christine, 1977, Here's Legendary Wolfman Jack, Comin' atcha, Chronicle-Telegram, September 8, 1977, E-5.

42 Kloosterman, Robert C., and Chris Quispel, 1990, "Not Just the Same Old Show on My Radio: An Analysis of the Role of Radio Diffusion of Black Music Among Whites in the South of the United States, 1920 to 1960," Popular music 9, no. 2: 151, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, EBSCOhost, accessed February 10, 2010, 152.

43 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 82-84.

128

musicians and eventually had a side business going managing some of these

musicians, getting them jobs at the local clubs. He also dabbled as a pimp, coordinating

trysts between broke or lonely housewives and visitors in town for the evening.44

Smith called upon his resources and memories once again, first with a local

version of American Bandstand in the WYOU studio called The Daddy Jules Dance

Party. Smith used his local popularity to open up a pseudo-nightclub he called the Tub.

It wasn’t a legitimate club as they didn’t have a liquor license, but they found ways to

work around it. It would be around this same time that Smith would meet his wife and

life would change.45

Lou Elizabeth Lamb didn’t exactly trust Smith upon their first meeting. Lamb grew

up in the rural areas of North Carolina and she viewed Smith as a slick, fast-talking

Yankee who was just another guy chasing her.46 Although they were both white, she

had not been exposed in her upbringing to blacks and whites mixing on any social level

the way Smith related to blacks, so this was a new experience for her. Smith eventually

won her over and she agreed to marry him in 1961.47 “He would not give up. He got

my phone number and started calling day and night,” she said. “Once you got past all

that hip shit, he was a nice guy and you had to like him.”48 While Lamb eventually fell in

love and married Smith, she wasn’t always happy with some of his choices in life.

44 Ibid, 84-85.

45 Ibid, 86-96.

46 Ibid, 87-90.

47 Ibid; Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 258.

48 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 258.

129

Years later while Smith was working in New York, the partying lifestyle had taken over

his life, and his wife didn’t want to deal with it anymore. She eventually returned, but

not after Smith made some changes in his life. Smith said:

It was overwhelming. Free booze, free drugs, women throwing themselves at me. It got really weird, and sort of swept me away . . . Then Lou finally got fed up enough from my playing around to leave me. She hightailed it to North Carolina.49

Eaton decided at some point around 1961-1962 that it was time to sell and he sold

the station to Max Resnick, who decided to change the station’s music format and the

call letters to WTID. Daddy Jules became Roger Gordon playing “beautiful music.”

This didn’t sit well with Smith and the voice he spent so much time training to fit in with

the rhythm and blues audience didn’t resonate with the sounds of Frank Sinatra and Nat

“King” Cole.50 Smith said:

I lived for rhythm-and-blues, and I liked black people and identified with them. Their attitude was real to me. I got along with them better than white people because I understood what was going down with them…I was attracted to black music, and I tried to be somebody black people approved of. That’s why I kept my identity a secret for so long as a deejay. There’s nothing worse than a square white person playing black music.51

Resnick made more changes to the station. He got rid of Tex Gathings, who

would be reunited with Richard Eaton by moving to WOK in Washington D.C. to host

“Jazz After Midnight,” and hired Mo Burton to take over advertising sales.52 Gathings

would move to WOOK-TV in 1963, a station also owned by Eaton, to produce

49 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 254-255.

50 Ibid, 97.

51 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 260.

52 Hall, Mildred, “Dealers Swing With Jazz,” Billboard 74, No. 17: 14, Google Books, accessed April 25, 2013.

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Washington DC’s first black teen dance show, Teenarama Dance Party53. Smith and

Burton hit it off right away thanks to Smith’s pimp side-job and helping Burton get his

needs taken care of when he arrived in Newport News, Virginia. They also had similar

tastes in music and would spend evenings listening to distant stations like John R. on

WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee and Mexican border station XERF.54 Burton quickly

tired of Resnick and made a deal to purchase KCIJ-AM in Louisiana, so Burton, along with Smith and his new bride, packed up and headed to Shreveport.55

Once in Shreveport, Burton would take on a partner in Lawrence Brandon.

Brandon is important in that he was instrumental in getting Wolfman Jack on the air.

Once in Shreveport, Smith had developed the Wolfman Jack character, but Burton saw

it as a distraction from Smith running KCIJ, where Smith served as manager and disc

jockey for the all-country and gospel station.56 Brandon wanted to help Smith get the

Wolfman heard and he knew the best place to try would be across the border in Mexico

on one of the most powerful stations in North America, XERF.57

Border Radio

Terrestrial radio in Mexico was much different than their counterparts in the United

States. More power, less regulation, and corrupt local government allowed

53 “Dramatis Felidae,” 1998, Ellingtonia 6, No. 3: 4, accessed May 1, 2013, http://www.depanorama.net/desociety/199803.pdf; Dance Party: The Teenarama Story, http://www.dancepartytheteenaramastory.com/Emmy_Pictures.html, accessed May 1, 2013.

54 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 97-102.

55 Ibid, 103-106; Herszenhorn, David M., 1995, Wolfman Jack, 57, Raspy Voice of Rock-and-Roll on the Radio, New York Times, July 3, Late Edition (East Coast), http://www.proquest.com/ , accessed February 10, 2010.

56 Sachs, Bill, “With the Country Jocks,” Billboard 75, No. 46: 14, Google Books, accessed April 25, 2013.

57 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 118-119.

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questionable material to reach a larger audience than any radio station in America could

hope to obtain. These stations are referred to as border stations or border radio as the

transmitters were located just inside Mexico near its border with the United States.

These stations were actually located on two borders: The border between Mexico and

Texas and the border between California and Baja Mexico. Some border stations had

transmitters capable of broadcasting up to one million watts. These stations were able

reach audiences throughout the world due to the inherent properties of AM radio.58

Fowler and Crawford explained:

The sky-wave or ozone-skip effect enabled the signals of these superpowered stations to travel incredible distances. AM radio waves bounce or skip off the atmosphere surrounding the globe in much the same way as a rock skips across a smooth pond. Because of the sky-wave phenomenon, listeners in Dallas, San Francisco, and even New Zealand could tune in to the border stations, oftentimes with astonishing clarity. Thus, over the years, border radio developed an international reputation…59

Power wasn’t the only thing that earned border radio an international reputation.

Programming not found in the United States could be heard on border radio. Late-night

preachers and hucksters of all types of remedies could be found on the Mexican

airwaves. “Listeners to border radio stations could find a solution to almost any

ailment—physical or spiritual—that could possibly be imagined.”60 One of the most famous of these charlatans and pioneers in border radio was Dr. John R. Brinkley.

Brinkley owned KFKB in Milford, Kansas and his programming would be the blueprint for border radio. He became famous by touting and supposedly performing goat gland

58 Fowler, Gene and Bill Crawford, 1987, Border Radio, Austin: Texas Monthly Press Austin, United States, 9; Bakshi, U.A., and A.P. Godse, 2008, Communication Engineering, Maharashtra, India: Technical Publications Pune, 301- 307.

59 Fowler, Gene and Bill Crawford, 1987, Border Radio, Austin: Texas Monthly Press Austin, United States, 9.

60 Ibid, 10.

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transplants on men to cure impotence on American airwaves in Kansas during the early

1920s.61 After the American Medical Association investigated and revoked his medical license and the Federal Radio Commission revoked his station license as they determined that he wasn’t operating in the interest of the public, Brinkley crossed the border into Mexico and managed to get authorization in 1931 to build a station and tower in Villa Acuña, later renamed Ciudad Acuña, just across the border from Del Rio,

Texas. 62 His station, XER, would send 75,000 watts into the United States and reach as far as Chicago, Illinois.63

Other stations would materialize over the years and XER, which would become

XERA in 1935, would fall into the hands of the Mexican government.64 Two of

Brinkley’s associates decided to revive the station and with the help of a Mexican lawyer who had also worked with Brinkley in the past, brought XERF to life in 1947 with a

50,000 watt transmitter. XERF would be the station Smith would be listening to on his way to Louisiana and eventually realize the perfect outlet for Wolfman Jack.

When the sun went down I locked the car’s radio on XERF, the high- powered Mexican border station that had captured my fancy since back

61 Shelby, Maurice E., 1978, “John R. Brinkley and the Kansas City Star,” Journal of Broadcasting 22, No. 1: 33-45; Clark, Carroll D., and Noel P. Gist, 1966, “Dr. John R. Brinkley: A Case Study in Collective Behavior,” The Kansas Journal of Sociology 2, No. 2: 52-58.

62 Fowler, Gene and Bill Crawford, 1987, Border Radio, Austin: Texas Monthly Press Austin, United States, 15-27; McLemee, Scott, 2002, “Grift, Goats, and Gonads: Historians Ponder the Colorful Career of John Brinkley, American Quack,” The Chronicle of Higher Education 49, No. 16, U.S. History in Context, http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/uhic/AcademicJournalsDetailsPage/AcademicJournalsDetailsWindow?failOverType=&q uery=&prodId=UHIC&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Journals&limiter =&currPage=&disableHighlighting=false&displayGroups=&sortBy=&source=&search_within_results=&action=e&ca tId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CA147121054&userGroupName=gain40375&jsid=69ed99afc06 862505161ed10705eb1fb, accessed April 26, 2013.

63 Fowler, Gene and Bill Crawford, 1987, Border Radio, Austin: Texas Monthly Press Austin, United States, 29-36.

64 Ibid, 44, 230.

133

when I lived in Brooklyn. The crazy preachers, wild music, and off-the-wall advertisements seemed just as amazing as they had when I was a kid.65

“Daddy Jules” would become “Big Smith with the Records” on KCIJ in Shreveport,

playing primarily country music. The format would switch to Top 40 when Burton and

Brandon joined forces, but it still didn’t fit Smith’s style. He made a demo of his

Wolfman Jack character and played it for Burton, who hated it and saw it as a

distraction from Smith running his station. Still determined, Smith and Brandon headed

to XERF to see if they could get it played on the air there.66

Once in Mexico, they found some problems between the people working at the

station and the government-assigned receiver charged with collecting back taxes.

Smith used his considerable negotiating skills and installed himself as the U.S.

representative to deal with the preachers that aired on the station. The preachers made up a majority of the station’s income and vice versa. Smith said that “XERF was the preachers’ lifeblood, probably 95 percent of their incomes.”67 Preachers who used

XERF to spread their word collected a considerable amount of donations from their

listeners, so when Smith increased their fees to air their shows, they balked but they

paid. Smith also found a home for the Wolfman and a place to sell his own wares

during his broadcasts where he received a 50 percent commission on rock ‘n’ roll

65 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 107.

66 Ibid, 117-119.

67 Ibid, 132.

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records rather than a regular salary.68. Smith said they used to sell all sorts of things on the station.

Of all the mail-order stuff we used to pitch, maybe the craziest was the baby chicks. My rap went like this: Friends and neighbors…If you’re not raising your own little chicken farm in your backyard, then you’re not takin’ advantage of a real opportunity!...All it takes to get your chicken farm started is a measly three dollars and ninety-five cents. Cash, check, or money order. But that’s not ALL I’m puttin’ in the offer. Send in your order today and I’ll send you ABSOLUTELY FREE a life-sized, autographed picture of me that glows in the dark!69

Paul Kallinger, a country western announcer for XERF from 1949 to 1963, said

that they sold the baby chicks for $2.98 for 100 as well as d-Con rat poison and ball- point pens.70 Smith detailed the dangers of operating a radio station in Mexico in his

autobiography. Smith described one instance where he and the employees of the

station were involved in a shootout with bandits after Smith heard the attack being

broadcast over XERF when one of the staff opened the microphone over one of the

Wolfman’s taped shows.71 While Smith’s wife confirmed the account, Arturo Gonzalez, a Mexican lawyer who ran the station for a time, had no memory of any such events.72

However, the station was off the air for a time in 1963 “when vandals shot out the

68 Germani, Clara, “’Border Blasters’ Blitz US Airwaves from Mexico,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 7, 1983, accessed April 26, 2013, http://www.csmonitor.com/1983/0707/070759.html.

69 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 160.

70 Germani, Clara, “’Border Blasters’ Blitz US Airwaves from Mexico,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 7, 1983, accessed April 26, 2013, http://www.csmonitor.com/1983/0707/070759.html; Sachs, Bill, 1963, “Country Music Corner,” Billboard 75, no. 32: 20, Google Books, accessed April 25, 2013.

71 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 150-154.

72 MacCormack, John, “Remembering Wolfman Jack,” San Antonio Express-News, San Antonio, TX, December 2, 2002, 1A.

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transmitter.”73 The Wolfman would continue to be broadcast for quite awhile on XERF, but once Smith had the station finances in order, he turned control back over to the rightful person and moved to Minneapolis to run KUXL.74 Wolfman Jack was still taping

his shows for XERF, but wasn’t on the air in Minnesota and yearned to perform live

again. Smith said:

Lou and I loved Minneapolis a whole bunch. I missed performing though. Tape-recording my shows for XERF didn’t give me that great sensation of connecting with an audience, the kind of feeling you get when you know people are hearing you at the same instant you speak.75

Big Breaks

In 1966, Smith met with the American representative for XERB, which broadcast out of Tijuana, Baja Mexico. XERB wasn’t as powerful as XERF, but it was able to reach the major markets in California such as Los Angeles and San Francisco and would program rhythm and blues in direct competition with KGFJ.76 Smith persuaded the administration to allow him to program the station and the Wolfman’s career was well on its way.

This is Wolfman Jack, skinny-dippin in the oil of joy down here on XERB, the tower of flower power! FIFTY thousand watts of soul power! We gonna rock you soul with a steady roll and pay our dues with the BLUES! I got

73 Sachs, Bill, 1963, “Country Music Corner,” Billboard 75, no. 32: 20, Google Books, accessed April 25, 2013.

74 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 164-165; “Stations by Format,” Billboard 77, No. 28: 38, Google Books, accessed April 26, 2013, list the general manager as Roger W. Smith which this study believes to be a combination of Wolfman Jack’s real name, Robert W. Smith, and Roger Gordon, a pseudonym he used at WTID.

75 Ibid, 166

76 Tiegel, Eliot, 1966, "KGFJ Puts R&B on Service Map," Billboard 78, no. 33: 56, Google Books, accessed April 26, 2013.

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‘em all for you…Baby, I got so much rhythm and blues up my sleeve today, I had to staple my elbow to my armpit! Aa-WOOOOOO!77

Smith had been with the station for about a year as a partner in B & L Advertising

as well as the station’s general manager, but the identity of Wolfman Jack was kept

secret. The idea was “to create an aura of “curiosity”,” said Paul Anthony, the national

sales manager at the time.78 The ratings didn’t skyrocket right away. In 1967, XERB

was the second-ranked rhythm and blues station in the Los Angeles market behind

KGFJ who had Jim Randolph by almost a 3-1 margin as well as battling the top disc

jockeys on the pop music stations with legends such as The Real Don Steele on KHJ

along with Casey Kasem and Dick Biondi on KRLA.79

Wolfman Jack eventually garnered a following that led to endorsement deals such

as one for Carpeteria that took out a full page newspaper advertisement that not only

touted the product, but also included Wolfman Jack’s entire on-air schedule.80 By 1968,

Wolfman Jack would be the leading influence of R&B record sales of all disc jockeys,

even though rival station KGFJ was the dominant station to influence those sales.81

1971 was a pivotal year for Wolfman Jack as the Mexican authorities changed the

rules that would leave XERB with limited advertising income and forced the Wolfman

out. Almost bankrupt, he managed to get the 7:00 pm to midnight slot on KDAY in

77 Fong-Torres, Ben, 1998, The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 radio, San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 133.

78 Tiegel, Eliot, 1967, "XERB Sharpens R&B Format," Billboard 79, no. 4: 24, Google Books, accessed April 27, 2010.

79 1967, "Radio Response Rating, Top Disk Jockeys" Billboard 79, no. 12: 28, Google Books, accessed April 27, 2010.

80 1969, Carpeteria Advertisement, Press-Telegram, Long Beach, CA, July 24, 1969, 71.

81 1968, "KHJ Votes Singles King in Los Angeles" Billboard 80, no. 18: 42, Google Books, accessed April 27, 2010.

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1972.82 Wolfman Jack came up with the idea with his manager to syndicate his old

XERB tapes to other stations across the country. “Up to that time, disc jockeys were

just local guys, well-known wherever the station’s signal went, but anonymous

everywhere else.”83 This may have been true for a majority of disc jockeys, but the properties of AM radio allowed for a station’s signal to travel much further than the local area, giving national prominence to disc jockeys like Wolfman Jack. This increased

exposure also caught the attention of a young filmmaker named George Lucas. Smith

said:

George told me that when he was in high school, he and his friends used to cruise the streets, listening to my broadcasts on XERB, and sometimes the signal would go in and out, which gave it a kind of mystical, ethereal quality. Some of the kids thought I was flying around in a plane while I did the show, just staying out of reach of the authorities.84

The movie would be American Graffiti, showing Wolfman Jack without any

costume or fangs, just Bob Smith working in a little studio on the outskirts of town who

truly cared about his listeners. Smith received a percentage of the profits from the

movie and the income generated from the royalties paid off his debts as well as

provided a steady income for the rest of his life.85 Shortly after the movie was released,

Smith was asked to host a new show called The Midnight Special, a television show

82 1972, “Wolfman Jack to KDAY; Sets New Syndie Network,” Billboard 84, no. 17: 14, Google Books, accessed April 26, 2013.

83 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 214.

84 Ibid, 222.

85 Ibid, 229-230; Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 280.

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which featured live performances by popular bands and singers.86 The early ‘70s

continued to be a boon for Smith as he was offered and accepted a position at WNBC in

New York to compete against “Cousin Brucie” Bruce Morrow, who was at WABC. As mentioned in Chapter 5, WNBC highly promoted the coming of Wolfman Jack and predicting the fall of Cousin Brucie. “Not surprisingly, in a battle of Gotham egos, the

Wolfman and Cousin Brucie portray the outcome of their fracas quite differently.”87

Smith continued to work at a high pace, flying to California to do The Midnight Special

then returning to New York for his daily radio show. According to Smith, his desire to

return to the West Coast hinged on this hectic schedule as well as a desire to do a tour

with The Guess Who, but Morrow believes that it was because he beat Smith in the

ratings war and WNBC wanted to let him go. Smith also states that he convinced

WNBC to hire Morrow away from WABC to replace him, but Morrow denies that claim.88

Smith continued to make special appearances and work in radio through the 1990s

such as a syndicated show on Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS),

which broadcasted to American troops overseas, and a weekend show at WXTR in

Washington, D.C.89 However, Smith saw a drop-off in opportunities through the ‘80s

86 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 280; “Inside Track,” 1973, Billboard 85, no. 18:70, Google Books, accessed April 29, 2013.

87 Ibid, 281.

88 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 257-260; Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 199-200; Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

89 “AFRTS Aircheck of the Wolfman Jack Show,” YouTube video, 8:01, posted by “Thewolfmanjack,” October 9, 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z50g-83_Go.

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and ‘90s.90 He was involved in an attempted revival of Radio Caroline, a pirate radio

station originally broadcasting from a ship off the coast of Great Britain. He taped

several shows to be broadcast and was set to be heard on October 3, 1981, but due to

delays the shows never aired.91 Smith published his autobiography in 1995 and had just returned home from a 20-day book tour when he died of a heart attack at the age of

57.92

Wolfman Jack is easily one of the most recognized voices and personalities in the

history of radio. He was able to parlay that recognition into careers in other media, such

as film and television, as well as writing an autobiography and as a spokesperson for

late-night infomercials selling the music that he loved. No study of early rock ‘n’ roll disc jockeys is complete without including the career of Wolfman Jack. He continued the tradition of personality radio started by his predecessors and influences such as Alan

Freed as well as sharing their affinity for black music. By the time Wolfman Jack gained radio fame, the popularity of rock ‘n’ roll was firmly established with teenagers in the

United States. Much of his popularity before his appearance in American Graffiti, however, hinged on the mystique that no one knew what he looked like. One listener said that “I thought he was a black man. Most people did, and he kind of perpetuated that.”93 His persona and the music that he played resonated with the teenage audience,

90 Wolfman Jack, and Byron Laursen, 1995, Have Mercy!: Confessions of the Original Rock 'n' Roll Animal, New York: Warner Books, 325, 351-352.

91 "Vox Jox," 1981, Billboard 93, no. 42: 31, Google Books, accessed April 29, 2013.

92 “Wolfman History,” The Wolfman Jack Online Museum, accessed May 19, 2012, http://www.wolfmanjack.org/wolfhistory.htm.

93 MacCormack, John, “Remembering Wolfman Jack,” San Antonio Express-News, San Antonio, TX, December 2, 2002, 1A.

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providing them with a different experience than anything else that was on the radio at

the time.

His reputation was recognized throughout the industry and the mutual admiration

was evident when being interviewed by Dick Clark on American Bandstand.94 Wolfman

Jack had a true love for being on the air and playing music that he loved. As rock ‘n’ roll

continued to evolve into subgenres, Wolfman Jack continued to stay rooted in the music

popular in his heyday, particularly rhythm and blues although he admitted to liking new

artists.95 Michael Maiden, a sculptor who was commissioned to do a statue of the disc

jockey, said that Wolfman Jack “was one of the DJs that made black music popular.”96

Wolfman Jack believed that computers were removing the human element and disc

jockeys should have more input into song and artist selection.97 His career is indicative

of the rise and fall of the rock ‘n’ roll disc jockey as a result of changes in technology,

programming, and audience tastes in music.

94 “Dick Clark Interviews Wolfman Jack – American Bandstand 1976,” YouTube video, 4:22, posted by “AwardsShowNetwork,” September 17, 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdaiukjvzmA.

95 “Wolfman Jack – Interview – What Is Wrong With Radio?” YouTube video, 7:02, posted by “Joel Samuel,” November 4, 2006, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOasL9PqK_M.

96 MacCormack, John, “Remembering Wolfman Jack,” San Antonio Express-News, San Antonio, TX, December 2, 2002, 1A.

97 “Wolfman Jack – Interview – What Is Wrong With Radio?” YouTube video, 7:02, posted by “Joel Samuel,” November 4, 2006, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOasL9PqK_M.

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CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The role of the disc jockey in the development of radio and rock ‘n’ roll music as well as their importance and impact on American society cannot be understated. Disc jockeys are the connection between the music and the listeners. These people influenced generations of listeners and musicians, often playing music on their radio shows that was not being aired anywhere else. Their ability to connect to the listeners helped them achieve a popularity and a persona recognizable beyond the medium of radio. Disc jockeys during this time period also had a profound effect on race relations in the United States. Their audiences came from various races and could be seen in the live shows that they promoted as well as the slow integration of black dancers on

American Bandstand. As mentioned earlier, there were disc jockeys that were using coded messages on the air to take an active part in the Civil Rights Movement. Due to the music the disc jockeys were playing, their teenage audience was more concerned with the quality of the music than the color of the artist’s skin. Many disc jockeys, such as Wolfman Jack, made an effort to sound black on the radio in an effort to both identify with the music as well as his audience. While many disc jockeys kept their political views to themselves, the music they played often showed their support for social issues such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. The study of radio history has largely neglected to explicate the role of the disc jockey during this time period and their role in the development radio as a social recommendation engine for rock ‘n’ roll music.

Four personalities were selected for this study for close examination: Alan Freed, Dick

Clark, Cousin Bruce Morrow, and Wolfman Jack. They are just a smattering of the pioneers that popularized radio as a social recommendation engine for music in radio’s

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response to the popularity and programming of television in the 1950s and proved that

the entertainment value of disc jockeys were vital in the success of the radio stations

that employed them. These men were selected for their popularity, their impact on the

radio industry, their impact on society, and their direct and indirect impact on one other.

There were many more throughout the country that could have been included such as

“The Real’ Don Steele, Jocko Henderson, “Dr. Jive” Tommy Smalls, George “Hound

Dog” Lorenz, John Richbourg, Dick Biondi, Martha Jean “The Queen” Steinberg, “The

Cool Gent” Herb Kent, Howard Miller, Jerry Blavat, Hunter Hancock, Casey Kasem, and

Porky Chedwick to name just a few. No discussion about the development of rock ‘n’

roll music can be complete without including the role of the disc jockey. The job title, be

it disc jockey, on-air personality, or radio announcer, is a matter of personal

preference.1 The examination of their lives provides historians with an understanding of

the evolutionary process disc jockeys went through when deciding on a career in radio,

their selection of rock ‘n’ roll music as the genre they were most interested in promoting,

and the persona they assumed that led to their rise in the radio industry and popularity

amongst their audience.

The rise of the disc jockey was influenced by several factors – primarily a change

in audience tastes, a change in music, and finally, a change in the disc jockey, all of

which came together almost simultaneously in the 1950s. Teenagers were looking for a

music they could call their own as a means of group identification and they found it in

rock ‘n’ roll.2 Disc jockeys who shared the passion for the music that was capturing the

1 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012; Hunter and Barry Michaels, interview by Edward Salsberry, interview January 16, 2012.

2 Altschuler, Glenn C., 2003, All Shook Up: How Rock 'n' Roll Changed America, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 6.

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interest of the American youth were the personalities that also captured the interest of

the teenage audience. Technology gave a new audience freedom of choice in the

music they listened to. Transistor and car radios allowed the teenage demographic the

ability to listen to music of their choice without the censorship of their parents.3 Radio

was the vehicle and disc jockeys were the drivers. In an interview by Lou Orfanella,

Bruce Morrow described radio as a reflector of society.4 The music that they were

playing reflected the tastes of their teenage audience and the disc jockeys themselves

became an integral part of their listeners lives.

Gordon McLendon, a pioneer in creating format radio and perfecting the Top 40

format, was quoted as saying, “The music and news format we use is much like soap.

We all can buy the same records, play them on the same type of turntable, and we can

hire someone to talk. The difference in radio is like the difference in soap—it depends

on who puts on the best wrapper.”5 The “wrapper” in the 1950s and 1960s was the disc

jockey. Disc jockeys evolved from radio announcers, inflecting their style and

personality into their broadcasts and creating a bond with the listener. Disc jockeys had

the freedom to promote the music they wanted as well as promoting themselves which

in turn gave the radio stations the much sought after publicity they desired to attract

advertisers. In many instances, the disc jockeys were as popular if not more so than

the artists whose music they were playing. As seen in the Appendix, many had their

own fan clubs. Taking a cue from the travelling concerts on the chitlin’ circuit that were

3 O’Toole, Dan, 2007, 1000 Events That Shaped the World. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 353; Snow, Robert P., 1987, “Youth, Rock 'N' Roll, and Electronic Media,” Youth and Society 18 no. 4, 329-330.

4 Orfanella, Lou, 1998, “Radio: The Intimate Medium,” The English Journal 87, no. 1, 53.

5 “Zany Stunts Put Radio Chain in Clover,” Business Week, September 9, 1961, 124; “Gordon McLendon, ” National Radio Hall of Fame, Accessed September 30, 2014, http://www.radiohof.org/gordon_mclendon.htm.

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developed in the 1930’s, many of the disc jockeys also produced travelling rock ‘n’ roll

shows, such as Dick Clark’s “Caravan of Stars,” Cousin Brucie’s Palisades Park

concerts, and Alan Freed’s “Big Beat,” “Christmas Jubilee”, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Show,” and

“Moondog Coronation Ball.” While increasing their personal income from organizing

and appearing at these shows, it only served to further boost their visibility with their

audience, thereby increasing their popularity.

Disc jockeys in the 1950s and through the 1960s possessed several traits that

contributed to their popularity. First and foremost would what would be considered their

“patter,” their vocal delivery on the air. Each of them had unique styles. Murray the K

created his own language of sorts and had a chant of “Ah, Bey, ah bey, koowi zowa

zowa” as well as being known to broadcast from bizarre locations such as an Air Force

jet flying over Manhattan or from a subway station in New York. Alan Freed was well

known for leaving his microphone on while the music was playing and listeners could

hear him banging to the beat on a telephone book. Bruce Morrow was everyone’s

cousin. Wolfman Jack howled throughout the night. As Barry Michaels, morning

personality at WNDD-FM, explained it, “he was doing something on the radio that

nobody else was doing, and it set him apart. He was screaming, he was yelling, and

you could tell this guy loved his music. I mean, he loved what he was doing.”6 Snow

identifies three things that the successful disc jockeys did well. “First, they were

knowledgeable about the music and appeared to be bona fide members of the music scene. Second, disc jockeys of this caliber were credited for the ‘musicality’ of their

6 Hunter and Barry Michaels, interview by Edward Salsberry, interview January 16, 2012.

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programs, which translates as orchestrating a good or bad flow in the program.”7 The third thing was the disc jockey’s “ability to encourage and validate the current youth lifestyle. As role models and legitimizers [sic], the DJs were significant others to listeners, and their radio demeanor matched their audiences’ style.”8

The music they played was one of the biggest changes to American radio. Much

of the music they played was considered “race records,” meaning that the performers were African American and was generally considered rhythm and blues. Alan Freed is given credit by most sources as the one coining the term ‘rock and roll” in describing the type of music he was playing. This term was a well established euphemism for sex in

many rhythm and blues songs and this fact was not lost on the parents of the 1950s.

However, according to Freed’s son Lance, Freed “came to call the music rock 'n' roll "as

a way to put a new face on the stigma of music created largely by black artists.”9 Freed

wasn’t the first to play this music as his exposure came from listening to WLAC, but

giving it a new name and in relaying his passion for the music to his audience he was

able to bridge the racial gap and rise quickly to the top of American radio. Many of the

white disc jockeys that were playing rhythm and blues, such as Hoss Allen and John R

at WLAC, were assumed to be black as listeners thought they sounded black.10

7 Snow, Robert P., 1987, “Youth, Rock 'N' Roll, and Electronic Media,” Youth and Society 18 no. 4, 330-331.

8 Ibid, 331.

9 Fong-Torres, Ben, “Alan Freed, DJ Who Staged 1st Rock Concert,” SFGate, created March 18, 2012, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/15/PKNE1NGPS6.DTL&ao=all.

10 Barlow, William, 1999, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 162- 163.

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Wolfman Jack continued that practice in his broadcasts, both by sounding black and

playing rock ‘n’ roll as well as rhythm and blues.11

Peter Aultschuler, son of Murray the K, believes that “black performers just

happened to be better. They had a whole new form of music; it had a vibrancy. It was

hip tunes to a post-war generation of kids who wanted something different than their

parents had had who had money to spend and time to spare and it all worked out

12 well.” This music appealed to a new generation that had tired of listening to their

parent’s music. Bruce Morrow says that “we didn’t really have any music, ‘we’ being the

younger generation. We didn’t have the right to any kind of our own music. There was

no rock n’ roll. We were listening to Sinatra, Doris Day, Vic Damone, Mario Lanza,

people like this. And it was really our parents’ stuff and it really wasn’t dedicated to

youth.”13

While radio was bringing rock ‘n’ roll to cars and transistor radios, Dick Clark was

bringing it into the living rooms of America on American Bandstand. Clark’s personality

not only resonated with the teenagers in the same way as his radio counterparts, but his

clean-cut good looks gave him credibility with the adults as well, allowing for the slow

integration of races that reflected the music and changing social climate. Teenagers

weren’t concerned with the race of the artists they were hearing on the radio as their

parents were. It had a beat and they could dance to it. Clark was aware “that rock ‘n’

roll and Bandstand owed their existences to black music and the black artists who sang

11 MacCormack, John, “Remembering Wolfman Jack,” San Antonio Express-News, San Antonio, TX, December 2, 2002, 1A.

12 Peter Altschuler (Son of Murray "the K" Kaufmann), interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview January 09, 2012.

13 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

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it.”14 There was still a large majority of rock ‘n’ roll being produced by white artists, such

as Bill Haley and the Comets, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis, but there was no

denying the rhythm and blues influence. This study found no evidence to support that

the development of rock ‘n’ roll created a generation gap, but the music definitely helped

widen it. The disc jockeys were there for rock ‘n’ roll’s development and helped it to

grow when rock ‘n’ roll needed it most.

“Music was the strongest link between teens and their disc jockeys, but it was not

the only link. The jocks served as their advocates, too, in a society that had not yet

learned to bend and listen to its increasingly sophisticated young adults.”15 Where the

traditional definition of a mass medium is generally one-way communication, disc

jockeys became the friends of their listeners by creating an avenue of two-way

communication. The disc jockey was their friend, defining radio as a truly intimate

medium. “You felt like you knew them, and they knew you,” said George Dennis, a

member of the Cousin Brucie Fan Club.16 The disc jockey was the one that teenagers called when they needed someone to listen that wouldn’t be judgmental. They would take the listeners requests and dedications, announcing them on the air and creating a bond. As mentioned earlier, Dick Clark credits Arthur Godfrey with his own success at connecting to an audience. “He was the first to realize that a radio announcer does not talk to “those of you out there in radio land”; a radio announcer talks to me as an individual. Godfrey knew that people listened to the radio one to one, so that was the

14 Clark, Dick, and Richard Robinson, 1976, Rock, Roll & Remember, New York: Crowell. 48-49.

15 Smith, Wes, 1989, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s, Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 24.

16 Fisher, Marc, 2007, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation, New York: Random House, 61.

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way he treated his listeners.”17 Many other disc jockeys developed that connection in the same way, talking to each person individually.

It was a combination of all these factors that made and kept these disc jockeys popular. The importance of the disc jockey to the listeners was highlighted during the

Vietnam War. One listener remembered that “they always tried to keep everything upbeat.”18 The entertainment they provided, the caring and sincere advice they occasionally dispensed, and their connection to the music that placed them in the unique and powerful position as the primary social recommendation engine for rock ‘n’ roll. The role, functions, responsibilities, and style of the disc jockey would change in the coming decades, forcing many of the pioneers out of the industry.

The fall of the disc jockey is a reflection of the changes that took place in the radio industry, radio listening preferences, and musical changes that affected disc jockeys throughout the country. The very beginnings of the fall of the disc jockey can be traced to the payola hearings in 1960. While it would be some time before the influence, entertainment style, and importance of the disc jockey would wane, the effects of those hearings had a permanent effect on the radio industry and the role of the disc jockey in the future of the radio industry.

Disc jockeys in the 1950s found that there were few restrictions on what they could do on the air and what music they could play. Clark was a little more restricted than his radio counterparts as he had to be cognizant of the racial bias that permeated the country which is why racial integration on American Bandstand was a calculated risk

17 Clark, Dick, and Richard Robinson, 1976, Rock, Roll & Remember, New York: Crowell. 19-20.

18 “Radio Voices: Fighting for the Hearts and Minds of the American Soldier,” All Things Considered, National Public Radio, November 11, 1987.

149

that took awhile to implement. After the conclusion of the payola hearings, radio stations were so fearful of their staff being accused of payola that could ultimately affect their license renewal that disc jockeys were no longer allowed to program their own music. Bruce Morrow remembers attending music meetings after the payola scandal where the program director would allow the disc jockeys to listen to songs and vote yes or no as to whether they would be played. They were not allowed to suggest any music to be programmed on the station. According to Morrow, this effectively killed the radio industry.19 Wolfman Jack had fewer limitations than that of his counterparts as he was broadcasting at 250,000 watts from Mexico compared to American stations that were limited to 50,000 watts and didn’t have to comply with U.S. regulations. However, this took the most important connection between the music and the listener out of the equation, the disc jockey. No one was more in tune with what the listeners wanted to hear and was the best gauge of what songs would be commercial successes.

However, rock ‘n’ roll was changing and radio stations were scrambling to find programming for their FM frequencies after the FCC changed the rules in 1963, disallowing simulcasting of AM programming on FM stations, although it would take several years to finalize the rules and implement enforcement.20 This provided disc jockey “Big Daddy” Tom Donahue with a unique opportunity. Donahue, as the program director of KMPX-FM in San Francisco, had written a 1967 article in Rolling Stone magazine titled, "A Rotting Corpse, Stinking Up the Airwaves…," in which he describes the change in Top 40 radio, the lifeblood of AM radio, due to corporate playlists and a

19 Bruce Morrow, interview by Edward Salsberry, phone interview February 24, 2012.

20 Smith, F. Leslie, John W. Wright, and David H. Ostroff, 1998, Perspectives on Radio and Television: Telecommunication in the United States, Mahwah, N.J.: L, Erlbaum Associates, 63.

150

decline in interest in the AM disc jockeys.21 Snow postulates that “the form of youth

culture is largely based on the form of rock ‘n’ roll music, and most of the changes in

youth culture correlate with changes in the form of rock music.”22 By the end of the

1960s more music was reflective of society, particularly in protest to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In his course on radio programming and production at the

University of Delaware, Chuck Tarver offered the following synopsis to his students:

College and high school students were involved in civil rights and anti-war protests. This audience which had grown up on rock 'n' roll top 40 was developing more sophisticated tastes. They were now buying albums 33 1/3rpm and listening to artists like Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Joan Baez and Judy Collins. These artists were producing the protest music which served as the "anthems" for this coming-of-age generation.

Top 40 AM radio stations would not touch this music. Programmers considered the cuts "too long" and the subjects "too controversial" to fit into the format. The music soon became known as "underground" because it was not touched by radio.23

As a new generation matured, there was once again a new audience for new

forms or subsets of rock ‘n’ roll. Folk rock, psychedelic rock, hard rock were just a few

that didn’t fit the doo-wop or what would now be called adult contemporary formats of

AM radio. The British invasion that took place in the mid-1960s was also an example of

the diversity of the rock ‘n’ roll genre. Groups like the Beatles appealed more to the Top

40 listeners of AM while groups like the Rolling Stones provided FM listeners with a

harder rock ‘n’ roll sound. A second wave of British bands such as The Who and Led

Zeppelin solidified rock ‘n’ roll’s place on FM. FM radio was more focused on the music

21 Donohue, Tom, 1967, “A Rotting Corpse, Stinking Up the Airwaves…” Rolling Stone 1, no. 2: 14-15.

22 Snow, Robert P., 1987, “Youth, Rock 'N' Roll, and Electronic Media,” Youth and Society 18 no. 4, 334.

23 Tarver,Chuck, “AOR/Classic Rock,” COM 418 Radio Programming and Production, accessed May 5, 2012, http://www.udel.edu/nero/Radio/readings/AOR.html

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than the disc jockeys, although morning shows differed from the rest of the day parts as

there was more focus on entertainment. Instead of the frenetic energy of the disc

jockeys on AM radio, the FM morning shows focused more on comedy as they still do

today.

Listeners were also discovering the superior sound quality in FM over AM. Edwin

Armstrong died before seeing his invention become the dominating medium. Armstrong

had invented FM in the late-1920s/early-1930s, but lacked industry support from

powerful media leaders such as David Sarnoff who was focused on the development of

television. While FM has the advantage over AM in sound quality and lack of static, it is

a line-of-sight signal which made it limited in range, is subject to interference by

geographical contours, and it is unable to take advantage of skywave propagation that

carries AM waves over a greater distance. As FM receivers became more readily

available in vehicles and eventually standard in new models, audiophiles gravitated

towards FM and its stereo sound which took advantage of new recording techniques in

the music industry.

Present Day

Terrestrial radio in the United States has looked for ways to increase efficiency

and profitability since the 1950s.24 Radio has also faced an onslaught of technological

developments that have threatened their viability such as television, satellite radio, and

the Internet. Radio has seen a decrease in advertising revenue both from these

24 McCourt, Tom, and Eric W. Rothenbuhler, 2004, "Burnishing the Brand: Todd Storz and the Total Station Sound." Radio Journal: International Studies In Broadcast & Audio Media 2, no. 1: 3-14, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost, accessed January 27, 2009.

152

developments as well as economic struggles of their advertisers. In an effort to cut

costs many radio stations have decreased their staff, primarily their on-air disc jockeys.

Disc jockeys in the early days of radio had opportunities to hone their craft on the

overnight shifts when listenership was the lowest. Due to advancements in technology

and a lack of advertising revenue during those hours, those opportunities rarely exist as

radio stations now rely on automation to play music, commercials, and radio station

announcements. Radio stations are often unmanned during the overnight hours and if

there is a voice providing information about the songs being played, it has been pre-

recorded as part of an industry-wide practice known as voice-tracking. Even weekend

broadcasts are often voice-tracked to prevent the necessity of hiring more disc jockeys

in an effort to reduce labor costs. One of the problems facing the profession is a lack of

development in new talent. According to Hunter, program director at WNDD-FM in

Ocala, Florida, “We are not training the next generation of radio jocks.”25 Steve Harris,

Operations Manager for Radio One in Cincinnati, Ohio, adds that radio has “done a

poor job of coaching and developing talent.”26 College radio stations are still an option,

but if they are a commercial entity, they are more focused on profits and may not

employ students as disc jockeys. Conversely, if the college is a smaller institution, they

may not have the budget to hire a faculty member with the experience to mentor this

next generation of radio professionals.

Budget cuts have also affected radio morning shows throughout the country. As

mentioned earlier in this study, a large portion of morning shows have eschewed music

25 Hunter and Barry Michaels, interview by Edward Salsberry, interview January 16, 2012.

26 Harris, Steve, 2013, “The State of the Radio Industry 2013,” panel discussion at the annual Broadcast Education Association Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, April 7, 2013.

153

as part of their show in favor of comedy routines. This has led to these personnel truly

being “air personalities” rather than “disc jockeys.” Arguably the most famous of these

personalities is Howard Stern who began his radio career playing music and eventually

migrated to the all talk/entertainment format of his show as it is today. Radio stations, in

another cost-cutting effort, often air syndicated morning shows rather than hire

permanent employees. Many of them are teams, such as Matt and Ramona, Bob and

Sheri, Bob and Tom, John Boy and Billy, and Lex and Terry, who have become very

successful and have the national recognition that early disc jockeys enjoyed but do not

play music on their shows.27 Others are solo personalities, such as Mancow, Elvis

Duran, and Rickey Smiley, who employ a team to do comedy skits.28 One of the few syndicated disc jockeys that does play music on their show is Delilah whose target audience is women age 25-54, taking phone calls from listeners and playing love songs to coincide with their stories and dedications.29 Where pioneering disc jockeys

balanced their shows between entertainment and music, the emphasis now is placed on

entertainment, eliminating music thereby creating more jobs for comedians and less for

true disc jockeys.

Longevity is rare in the career of a disc jockey. Barry Michaels says he has had

18 jobs in 39 years, but there are disc jockeys like Mike Arlo at WAFX-FM that have

27 The Matt and Ramona Show, accessed May 2, 2013, http://www.1079thelink.com/mattandramona/index.aspx; Bob and Sheri, accessed May 2, 2013, http://www.bobandsheri.com/bobandsheri/index.aspx; The Bob and Tom Show, accessed May 2, 2013, http://www.bobandtom.com/; The Big Show, accessed May 2, 1013, http://www.thebigshow.com/; Lex and Terry, accessed May 2, 2013, http://www.lexandterry.com/.

28 Mancow, accessed May 2, 2013, http://www.mancow.com; Elvis Duran and the Morning Show, accessed May 2, 2013, http://www.elvisduran.com/main.html; Rickey Smiley, accessed May 2, 2013, http://www.rickeysmiley.com/.

29 Delilah’s Facebook page, accessed May 2, 2013, https://www.facebook.com/Delilah.

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been playing rock ‘n’ roll in some form in the Hampton Roads, Virginia market for over

35 years.30 Much of the impetus behind personnel changes is ratings. Particularly with

large corporation owners of radio stations, there seems to be a “grass-is-always- greener” mentality in replacing disc jockeys, looking for someone else who they believe can increase the radio station’s ratings. Many of the disc jockeys of AM radio that didn’t lose their jobs due to the payola scandal were eventually replaced either due to format changes or AM radio’s attempt survive the growth of FM. Some of those disc jockeys have survived such as Rick Dees and “Cousin Brucie” Bruce Morrow, but both have done so as a result of embracing technological advancements with Dees on the Internet and Morrow on satellite radio.

Discussion

Radio’s fight to remain a relevant medium as a social recommendation engine for music involves two main ingredients: localism and the disc jockey. "Radio's biggest differentiation from all of the other music platforms available today is community. No other medium captures the depth of radio’s relationships with its fans and the sense of community it builds."31 Due to relaxation of ownership rules that have moved radio station ownership primarily to large corporations, corporate management is often distant from the radio stations it owns, both geographically and metaphorically.32 Corporate

playlists based on national surveys, syndicated radio shows, and corporate

30 Michaels, Barry, interview by Edward Salsberry, interview January 16, 2012; “Arlo,” WAFX, accessed May 2, 2013, http://1069thefox.com/arlo/.

31 “Lori Lewis Previews The Worldwide Radio Summit Panel, 'Community As Crucial As Content',” All Access Music Group, last modified April 25, 2012, http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/105207/lori-lewis- previews-the-worldwide-radio-summit-pan?ref=mail_recap

32 Kirwin, JC, WKTK-FM, interview by Edward Salsberry, interview July 6, 2009; United States, 1996, Telecommunications Act of 1996, Washington D.C.: U.S. G.P.O.

155

programming does not and cannot be reflective of every community in which they own

radio stations. While many radio stations are active in their local communities

regardless of ownership, their limited on-air staff limits their philanthropy. Many

scholars at the 2012 and 2013 Broadcast Education Association Conferences agreed

that being local is one of the most important things a radio station can do to remain

viable, relevant, and maintain that connection with their community.33 According to

Dennis Lyle of the Illinois Broadcasters Association, “localism is the key to survival of

the medium.”34 In order to continue that bond between the community and the radio

station, local disc jockeys are the link in that bond. The disc jockey possesses a unique

role in both creating a connection with the audience as well as being the connection

between the audience and the music. Listeners are more likely to relate to disc jockey

and the radio station if they know that they have an opportunity to interact with that disc

jockey on a personal level at live remote broadcasts or even accidentally in the grocery

store. Knowing that the disc jockey is also a member of their community creates a

kinship that gives the disc jockey both celebrity status and credibility in that they

experience the same things as their listeners.

More and more listeners are turning to the Internet for music. They are getting

their music recommendations from friends and web sites rather than radio. Some radio

stations are embracing new media and finding ways to use the Internet as a marketing

tool as well as make their broadcasts available to listeners that may be outside their

33 Cantrell-Williams, Glenda, “A Local Voice: Women and Terrestrial Radio,” presented at the annual Broadcast Education Association Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, April 7, 2013.

34 Lyle, Dennis, 2013, “The State of the Radio Industry 2013,” panel discussion at the annual Broadcast Education Association Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, April 7, 2013.

156

broadcast radius. One of the problems however is that listeners are tuning in to terrestrial radio less because they aren’t hearing what they want to hear, either with music or with local air personalities. Listener surveys need to be conducted and kept at the local level where they would be the most applicable instead of trying to create a one-size-fits-all programming strategy that ultimately alienates the audience. Creating playlists based on local input, via song requests or surveys will attract the local audience because it’s what they want to hear and they know that the radio station is listening to them. Bringing back live, local disc jockeys to all day parts, instead of automated jukeboxes that play throughout the night and all weekend, not only creates more jobs but creates the potential for increased listenership. The person who can’t sleep at 3:00 am can turn on the radio and know they aren’t alone. They can call the station to request a song or just talk to another human being if they are alone. The disc jockey has always been the listener’s friend, but radio audiences are finding that they have fewer friends than they used to. Radio may no longer have disc jockeys with national recognition, but that’s not what radio or disc jockeys need in the current state of the radio industry. Radio needs to capitalize on what makes it a unique mobile medium: being local with local disc jockeys.

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APPENDIX EXAMPLES OF DJ FAN CLUB CARDS

Alan Freed* Jocko Henderson*

Dan Ingram* Jerry Blavat*

Bandstand (pre-Dick Clark)* Murray the K Kaufman*

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Pete “Mad Daddy” Myers* Swingin’ Slim Rose*

George “Hound Dog” Lorenz** “Cousin Brucie” Bruce Morrow***

*Reprinted by permission from Marvin Goldberg, http://www.uncamarvy.com/FanClubCards/fanclubcards.html

**Reprinted by permission from Jeff Surdej, http://www.georgelorenz.com/memorabilia.php

***Reproduced from Morrow, Cousin Bruce, and Laura Baudo. 1987. Cousin Brucie!: my life in rock 'n' roll radio. New York: Beech Tree Books.

159

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Edward G. Salsberry earned a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication with a concentration in Journalism from Virginia Wesleyan College in 1997, a Master of Arts degree in Media and Communications with a concentration in Broadcast Administration from Norfolk State University in 2003, and a Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the

University of Florida in 2014. His professional background includes over 21 years on active duty with the United States Navy where he hosted several radio shows while deployed overseas. As an undergraduate student radio station manager, he reorganized and revitalized the campus radio station without the benefit of a faculty advisor and trained several peers in broadcast delivery and administration, many which went on to successful careers in the radio and voice-over industry. Salsberry has been a contributing writer for the award-winning student newspaper at Virginia Wesleyan

College and received an award for his radio show at the same college. Salsberry volunteered for several years with the University of Florida’s Radio Reading Service, reading newspaper articles over the air for the visually impaired. His research interests include broadcast history, media and society, new media usage and adoption, and social media effects on traditional media.

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