music

’50s Radio Helps the Rock Roll

/ Dave Price / 1 Comment

There were several media that helped drive the success, first of rock & roll and then later the music that eventually came to be known as classic rock. Here is the story of how one such medium – in this case 1950s radio – helped promote the music that it played over the airways.

Around the Dial: Rock & Roll on the Radio

You could say radio made rock & roll, but you would also have to say rock & roll saved radio. Over three decades, rock & roll music prompted three of the biggest changes in the 100-year history of the airwaves medium – the offering of rhythm and blues, then rock & roll to the listening public; the creation of the Top 40 song format, where the top hit singles in a region were repeated over and over again; and the birth of FM underground progressive radio, where the playing of albums replaced the reliance on singles.“Radio and rock and roll needed each other, and it was their good fortune that they intersected at the exact moment when rock and roll was being born and radio was facing death,” says long-time Rolling Stonewriter Ben Fong-Torres. 

Radio was introduced in America in the early 1920s and its popularity with families and the public soared. By 1930, radio entered a true Golden Age. Broadcasts of popular swing bands and comedy, crime, and drama series filled homes across the nation. But, as the 1950s dawned, radio’s domination of home entertainment entered a serious decline as Americans discovered the allure of a new medium – television.

Many feared TV would kill radio. But a new technology and a new type of music arrived in the 50s that revived radio, although instead of a national presence it narrowed to a more local one. With the advent of the tiny transistor, listeners could now take their radios into their bedrooms and anywhere they traveled. Spurred in part by a post-war radio industry campaign slogan “A Radio in Every Room,” by 1954, 70 percent of American households had two or more radios, and about a third had three or more. 

Teenagers, who were growing in numbers and starving for a sound to reflect their own lives, no longer had to sit in living rooms with their parents and younger siblings to hear radio entertainment. And that new sound, first known as black rhythm and blues and by the end of the decade as rock & roll, arrived, brought to teenage listeners by hundreds of disc jockeys, those record-spinning, rapid-jive-speaking hosts who ruled their station’s airwaves for three to four hours at first nightly, and later, around the clock. The disc jockeys became as big, or in many cases bigger, than the artists they played.

            The rock & roll radio revolution started at independent stations – those not affiliated with the national networks – which desperately needed new programming to combat TV. There these DJs, as they came to be known, played a wide range of music geared to both black and white teenagers. “These were the disenfranchised, who felt the popular music of the day spoke more to their parents than to them,” Fong-Torres noted. “What excited them was the music they could hear, usually late at night, coming from stations on the upper end of the radio dial, where signals tended to be weaker. Thus disadvantaged, owners of these stations had to take greater risks and had to offer alternatives to the mainstream programming of their more powerful competitors. It was there that radio met rock & roll and sparked a revolution”.

            Each city had its own radio gurus leading teenage listeners to new music and a new lifestyle. In Memphis, it was Dewey Phillips, who played the first Elvis Presley records ever heard in America. In Cleveland, it was the father of rock & roll Alan Freed. On the West Coast, it was the mysterious Wolfman Jack, whose howls and music selections originated somewhere in the wilds of Mexico. And in my South Jersey area, it was Jerry “The Geator with the Heater”, “the Boss with the Hot Sauce” Blavett, who is still in the music business today as the host of Star Vista’s annual sold-out music cruise Malt Shop Memories and as a record-hop Memories DJ at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City.

            Of course, this new music birthed from R&B was still deeply associated with black culture, an association that did not sit well with much of white America. “One mind-set radio increasingly nourished was young people’s urge to rebel against their elders and desire to conform with their peers,” writes Susan J. Douglas in her book Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination. “Radio – more than films, television, advertising, or magazines in the 1950s – was themedia outlet where cultural and industrial battles over how much effect black culture was going to have on white culture were staged and fought.  During the 1950s, it had become the most integrated mass medium in the country.”

Alan Freed, Dick Clark, and the DJ Payola Scandal

Of all the DJs in the country, none was more important than Alan Freed. Freed, who began in career in Cleveland, has been credited with coining the term rock & roll (he didn’t) and popularizing the music given that name (he did.) He also staged the Moondog Coronation Ball on March 21, 1952, an event which is heralded as the first rock & roll concert ever staged, although it had to be aborted when a riot broke out because 25,000 tickets had been sold for a venue that only held 10,000.

Alan Freed in Cleveland with his fans.

            Freed was a tireless and enthusiastic advocate of the music he played. He would only play original songs by the black artists who made them, not the white artists who produced toned-down versions of the R&B tunes. He also enjoyed the friendship of the black artists and hung out with them, a move that disturbed Southern segregationists and many older Americans who weren’t yet ready for integration in any form. 

            After conquering Cleveland, Freed took his wildly popular show to radio station WINS in New York City in 1954. His WINS show became syndicated so it was heard in most major American cities. In 1955, Billboardmagazine called Freed “the undisputed king of radio programming”.  

            But in 1959 Freed became embroiled as a central figure in the strong calls for Congress to launch an investigation into the new music industry, specifically looking at disc jockeys who were being accused of taking large bribes to play records on their stations.

            The ensuing Congressional investigation, which involved hundreds of disc jockeys across the country but came to focus on the two most influential –  Freed and American Bandstandhost Dick Clark of Philadelphia – was labeled the Payola Scandal. And, by the end of the investigation, one DJ would emerge relatively unscathed to become perhaps the most well-known, important non-performer in the record business, while the other would be destroyed and die alone in disgrace.

            The payola investigation resulted from a convergence of several factors, but, as so often is the case in America, three of the biggest were money, power, and race. In the 1950s, individual disc jockeys, not record executives, station managers, or program directors decided which records would be played on the air. The small labels quickly recognized the power of the DJs, which like their nationwide numbers, was rapidly expanding. For example, in 1950 there were only 250 DJs playing music. Seven years later, that number had grown to more than 5,000. These DJs had so much clout with young listeners that Timemagazine called them “the poo-bahs of musical fashion” and “the pillars of low and middle brow culture”. 

            Each week, these DJs sorted through all the newly released records, deciding which few they wanted to play on their shows. The labels realized how much these popular DJs could influence sales, so they began offering incentives to make sure these trend-setters would at least listen to their records, and, even better, introduce them to their listeners. 

            Most DJs, who were notoriously low-paid at the local stations where they worked, could receive as much as $50 a week in cash to ensure that they would give a single record they liked a minimum amount of spins on their program. The more influential jocks, like Freed and Clark, could command percentages from local concerts, lavish trips, free records by the boxful which they could resell, and even have their name listed as cowriter on certain popular tunes, which would allow them to receive royalties, or hold financial interest in record companies themselves. 

            The big record companies were convinced it was these bribes that drove the success of rock & roll, not the fact that teenagers were completely rejecting the old sounds these companies offered in favor of the new sounds of the smaller labels. These large companies were joined in their opposition by leaders of the song-writers’ protection agency ASCAP, the organization that represented almost all of the older performers. Virtually all the rock and rollers, however, had signed with ASCAP’s only competitor, BMI. The long-established ASCAP was irate that the fledgling BMI was handling the young artists who now were bringing in most of the money on record sales.

            With their combined power, the big record companies and ASCAP, joined by other groups opposed on all types of grounds to rock & roll, lobbied for a national investigation. And Congress, which had already in the 1950s engaged in probes of alleged communists, organized crime, and fixed TV quiz shows, quickly agreed to assume the task in 1960. 

            Almost immediately, the probe came to focus on Freed and Clark, who in fundamental ways were complete opposites. An alcoholic and insomniac, Freed truly loved the music he was promoting, talked jive, smoked constantly, was argumentative to power, and would only play rock & roll from genuine performers, most of them black artists whom he liked and hung out with. Clark, on the other hand, appeared squeakily “Bryl-creamed” clean, handsome, and polite. Realizing that the nation was not yet ready for integration (Frankie Lymon of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers had his popular television show abruptly cancelled when he dared to dance with a white girl on the air), Clark didn’t include any black dancers on Bandstand, and often favored remakes of black artists’ songs by white artists like Pat Boone over the originals, although he did allow some black artists to perform to keep the ratings up. 

            Clark hired a high-priced public relations firm to help him with his testimony. Prior to appearing before the House Oversight Committee, he had divested himself of all the incriminating evidence which included part ownership of seven indie record labels, six publishing companies, three record distributors, and two talent agencies. Clark escaped with a minor slap on the wrist and was deemed “a fine young man” in the committee’s findings.

            Freed’s outcome was much different. His coarse style and immense ego offended many of the House members. It didn’t help his cause when he attacked disc jockeys who played white versions of black songs. “They’re anti-Negro. If it isn’t that what is it?” Freed charged. “Oh, they can always excuse it on the grounds that the covers are better quality, but I defy anyone to show me that the quality of the original ‘Tweedle Dee’ (by LaVern Baker) or ‘Seven Days’ (by Clyde McPhatter) is poor”.

            During the hearings, Freed remained contentious and refused “on principle” to sign an affidavit saying he’d never accepted payola. The committee charged him with 26 counts of commercial bribery. He escaped with fines and a suspended jail sentence, but his career was ruined. He was fired from his high-profile New York City radio job and struggled to find work. He died of uremic poisoning just five years later at age 43 in Texas,

            Matt Dorff, who adapted the bookThe Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock and Rollfor a two-hour television drama in 1999, talked to Bernard Weinraub of the New York Timesabout his view of Freed and his legacy. “This obsession with youth culture we see now is a direct result legacy of Alan Freed,” Dorff said. “He believed that teenagers needed a culture of their own, and he gave them the kind of music that they could claim as theirs alone. He was also color-blind – he loved the beat, he loved the people who made the music, and the fact that they were black made no difference to him”. (NYT, “The Man Who Knew It Wasn’t Only Rock ‘n’ Roll)

But Freed’s downfall didn’t stop the rock. “With rock and roll broadcasts over car radios and transistors, it was the mobility of the music, not its fidelity that mattered,” Douglas maintains. “By the mid-1960s Top 40 radio was deeply interwoven into teenage life and daily practices. It summoned up teens as a distinct social group, apart from their parents yet united across geographic boundaries and differences. It accompanied driving around, making out, doing homework, working summer jobs, and going to sleep. 

            The classic movie American Graffiti, set in California on a single night in 1962, clearly shows the power of AM radio over young people. “American Graffiti captured the exhilaration of bombing around in your car with the radio turned up, living absolutely in the present and using that radio to announce and cement a group identity at odds with and hostile to official, grown-up America,” explained Douglas.

            Until the last part of the 60s, the Top-40 formula continued the success established by the independent DJs. But by 1967, the lack of song freedom, changing times, changing music, changing tastes, and a changing youth culture began to show the inherent weaknesses in Top-40 radio. Once again, it was time for something new.

A Rooftop Celebration for DC’s Own Marvin Gaye on What Would Have Been His 75th Birthday

/ Dave Price / 1 Comment

This article 1st appeared in The Price’s Do DC – 4.2.2014

For the 7th year in a row on his birth date, DC fans of Washington native soul singer Marvin Gaye packed the rooftop bar of the restaurant off U Street that bears his name to celebrate his legacy by listening to his music and hearing words from some of those who knew him well.

Gaye was born in DC on April 2, 1939 and attended Cardozo High School before finding fame as one of the giant stars of Motown. He was tragically shot dead by his father on April 1, 1984. Had he lived, today would have been his 75th birthday.

In a fitting tribute, all the proceeds from the benefit bash at Marvin’s went to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a charity chosen by the Gaye family.

Throughout the late afternoon and evening, musicians and singers from all over the DC-area performed hits made famous by Gaye. Those performers included Gaye’s musical director Gordon “Guitar” Banks and members of his old band the Marquees.

After a particularly stirring version of Gaye’s “Makes Me Want to Holler” by Maimouna Youssef and John Bibb, Cecil Jenkins, who described himself “as the last protege of Marvin Gaye” took the microphone.

“I think it is a wonderful thing you are doing by embracing Marvin Gaye and what he stood for,” Jenkins, who was Gaye’s lead dancer said. “Thank you DC for remembering Marvin.”

As did a handful of the others in the crowd who knew or worked with Marvin, Jenkins shared a few memories of the man he called his surrogate father.

“You remember the dance the rock?” he asked “Michael Jackson made it famous, but you should have seen Marvin do the rock.”

Unfortunately, a gun fired by Gaye’s own father 30 years ago made certain that no one would ever see that  again.

I Like to Be in America: ‘West Side Story’ Still Relevant After All These Years

/ Dave Price / 2 Comments

Mention the names of lovers Tony and Maria or the song titles “Somewhere” or “I Like to Be in America” to just about any Baby Boomer and they’ll immediately know you’re talking about one of the greatest defining American musicals of their era, West Side Story.

For more than six decades now, Leonard Bernstein’s compelling, tragic reworking of the classic Romeo and Juliet tale set in New York City in the 1950s has been captivating hearts and minds of audiences around the world. But in today’s America, given our bitter battling over immigration and fear of the outsider, the acclaimed musical has been given renewed significance and is just as powerful in production as it was when it debuted on Broadway 1957 and won the Academy Award for best picture in 1961.

If he were alive, famed composer and conductor Bernstein would be 100 and to celebrate his centennial legacy The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. is offering a series of his of his works, including having the National Symphony Orchestra and a talented young cast from New York recently perform a special West Side Story in Concert.

“Today, it seems incredible that Leonard Bernstein could have written West Side Story, an up-to-the-minute commentary on gang warfare then in New York City,” says Fransesco Zambello, artistic director of Washington Orchestra. “But it is timeless in that it struggles with the ideals that are at the heart of the American project: the idea that we are all created equal, and with a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“In West Side Story, discord between native-born Americans and recent immigrants leads to tragedy, but its most famous song is an anthem to true optimism, a belief in a world “Somewhere” where each person has a place, each person has a home,” Zambello added.

Zambello contends that while we should enjoy Bernstein’s music, we should never neglect his message. “If we simply enjoy the tunes we are missing the point,” he says. “Bernstein devoted his life not only to art, but also to advocacy, education, and the responsibilities of citizenship. May his legacy always inspire us to do the same.”

National Symphony Orchestra Principal Pops Conductor Steven Reineke, who led the musicians and even changed costume to portray the infamous Officer Kruppke in one scene, has often contemplated why West Side Storyis so enduring.

Reineke acknowledges that part of the musical’s popularity comes from Bernstein’s infectious melodies, complex rhythms, and jazz-infused harmonies. But it is the fact Bernstein’s music and Stephen Sonheim’s sometimes witty, sometimes heart-breaking lyrics, touches so many of us so deeply, he contends, that gives West Side Storyits staying power.

“It shines a mirror on each and every one of us to make us think about how we treat each other as fellow human beings. It exposes our prejudices and preconceived ideas about one race or one class versus another,” Reineke said. “Somehow, someday, somewhere – that was the issue Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim contemplated decades ago. To honor Bernstein’s centennial, I implore each of us as individuals to begin answering ‘Here, now, and compassionately.’”

10 Facts About West Side Story You May Not Have Known, But Will Now Thanks to Mental Floss and Writer Mark Mancini

1. IT WAS ORIGINALLY GOING TO BE ABOUT A CATHOLIC BOY & A JEWISH GIRL.

Religion and national identity would’ve driven the drama of East Side Story, which is what choreographer Jerome Robbins & composer Leonard Bernstein called the project they started working on in 1949. But eventually they decided that “the whole Jewish-Catholic premise [was] not very fresh” when they were having a poolside meeting in Beverly Hills six years later. Under the California sun, they decided to instead focus on—in Bernstein’s words — “two teenage gangs … one of them newly-arrived Puerto Ricans, the other self-styled ‘Americans.’” Because Manhattan’s eastern neighborhoods had been largely gentrified by then, their production was soon given its present title.

2. THE DIRECTOR INSISTED ON AN UNUSUALLY LONG REHEARSAL PERIOD.

Before opening night, your average 1957 musical cast was only given four or five weeks’ worth of practice. Robbins (who also sat in the director’s chair) demanded eight. “We had a lot of work to do,” he recalled, with the show’s intricate dance sequences requiring extra attention.

3. THE JETS & THE SHARKS WERE PROHIBITED FROM INTERACTING OFFSTAGE.

Robbins tried generating real hostility between these fictitious gangs. According to producer Hal Prince, the Broadway veteran kept both groups of actors as far away from each other as possible. “They were not allowed to socialize out of the theater, [and] they were not allowed to take their lunches together.” Obviously, this was an extreme approach. But over time, it started working.

4. FOUR-LETTER WORDS WERE REPLACED WITH INOFFENSIVE JIBBERISH.

Through West Side Story, lyricist Stephen Sondheim wanted the F-bomb to make its musical theater debut. Initially, this choice word appeared in “Gee, Officer Krupke,” but Columbia Records (which released their original cast recording) noted that using such language would violate obscenity laws and—hence—prevent the show from touring across state lines. Defeated, they went with “Krup you!” instead.

5. SPOILER ALERT: MARIA HAD A DELETED DEATH SCENE.

Shakespeare may have killed off both title characters in Romeo & Juliet, but one of West Side Story’s star-crossed lovers lives to see the final curtain drop. Things almost ended much differently. Maria’s untimely suicide was part of an early draft—until composer Richard Rodgers (of Rodgers and Hammerstein fame) offered his two cents. “She’s dead already, after this all happens to her,” he told Robbins.

6. BERNSTEIN PLUCKED “ONE HAND, ONE HEART” FROM A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MUSICAL.

At the time, he was scoring West Side Story and Candide—which was based on Voltaire’s 1759 novella of the same name—simultaneously. Though Bernstein crafted “One Hand, One Heart” for that production, he repurposed it as a romantic duet between Tony and Maria. In exchange, “O Happy We,” which was originally a duet for West Side Story, moved to the first act of Candide.

7. “SOMETHING’S COMING” WAS WRITTEN LAST-MINUTE.

Just 12 days before West Side Story premiered in D.C. (it’d debut in New York later), Bernstein and Sondheim wrote Tony’s hopeful ballad. Their inspiration came from a piece of dialogue that the character was to deliver during his first scene. The line, as penned by playwright Arthur Laurents, went like this: “Something’s coming, it may be around the corner, whistling down the river, twitching at the dance—who knows?” When asked if he’d mind letting the sentence get turned into a number, he enthusiastically replied “Yes, take it, take it, make it a song.” This late arrival had to be re-orchestrated several times, making it a bit of a headache for the pit band.

8. AUDREY HEPBURN WAS TAPPED TO PLAY MARIA FOR THE FILM VERSION.

In 1959, the screen legend was pregnant—and because she’d already suffered two miscarriages, Hepburn wasn’t about to over-exert herself this time. So, when she was offered the lead role in what would arguably become the most celebrated movie musical ever shot, she declined. Rebel Without a Cause star Natalie Wood got the part instead, with Marni Nixon dubbing over her singing voice.

9. WEST SIDE STORY’S 1961 CINEMATIC ADAPTATION SET AN ACADEMY AWARDS RECORD.

Seven months after its release, the flick brought home 10 Oscars, including Best Director, Best Cinematography, and even Best Picture. Thus, it won more than any other musical ever had in Academy Award history. As of this writing, the distinction still stands.

10. A BILINGUAL REVIVAL OPENED ON BROADWAY IN 2009.

Laurents joined forces with producers Kevin McCollum, Jeffrey Seller, and James L. Nederlander to retell the story he’d helped craft over 50 years earlier. This time, he leveled the playing field. “I thought it would be terrific if we could equalize the gangs somehow,” he explained. By letting the Sharks speak and sing in their native language during large chunks of the musical, Laurents hoped to do exactly that. Like the original, after a run in Washington, D.C. the show moved to New York, where it ran for 748 performances.