Heavy Metal Thunder

I've been tracing back the origins of heavy metal radio shows for years now. Back in 2010 I wrote about early metal radio shows and traced all the "oldest" active shows back to the early 1980s. [LINK] I hypothesized that the earliest metal radio shows would date to the mid-1970s. [LINK] I found that program in Vinyl Edge, on WGTB, and even a few digitized recordings that confirm it's place in the history of metal.

To my surprise, I recently discovered that there was at least one predecessor in the DC metro. There was a radio program on 1500 WINX-AM named "Heavy Metal Thunder". I didn't learn that from any book or any trade magazine or even my own research. It was an anonymous commenter on this very blog. [thanks!] This ties right into the etymology of the words "heavy metal" and might be the big daddy of them all. It's so early that it makes Lester Bangs look late to the party.

So let's review the origin of that phrase. It appears in the lyrics of the classic 1968 Steppenwolf song "Born to be Wild." The songs initial popularity was driven both by airplay and it's appearance in the film "Easy Rider" in 1969. The phrase refers to the roaring sound of a motorcycle engine. This isn't conjecture, that was the explanation from Mr. Mars Bonfire, the songwriter himself. The phrase instantly hooked into some kind of cultural gestalt. This etymology exists in parallel to the Burroughs etymology; beside it, not replacing it.  The phrase appears in the book Goldstein's Greatest Hits: A Book Mostly about Rock 'n' Roll in 1970 (above). By 1978 those three words were appearing in advertisements for Burman amplifiers. I doubt Bonfire got paid.

"Hey, let's make a Peter Fonda movie. It'll have bikes— big steel mothers, with the heavy-metal-thunder understood. And grass— because no one looks as good-looking stoned as Peter Fonda."

By 1973 the phrase was being invoked to describe hard rock and psychedelic blues music. Even that phrase "Heavy Metal Thunder" reads like its the antecedent of Heavy Metal. Richard Goldstein was a writer for the New York times from 1980 to 2007. He was one of the original rock n' roll journalists. That passage (above) also ran in the New York Times, and re-running a collection of their film reviews. Goldstein had a column in the Village Voice starting in 1966 "Pop Eye." He's notable and rarely credited in the etymology and almost certainly one of the earliest musical applications of the phrase. [SOURCE] 

But Goldstein wasn't alone. In February of 1973, in a review by Mark Astolfi in MIT's The Tech [SOURCE] we find a similar metaphorical use of "Heavy Metal Thunder." (He later ran Cozmik Debris.) It does not reference Steppenwolf, but makes the leap to re-use the phrase to describe another band credited as a heavy metal progenitor:

"Deep Purple, progenitors of Third Generation Heavy Metal Thunder long before there was even a Second Generation, are up against that murderous moment which has decimated more than a few of the Big Names in rock — can they follow up the great, the near-perfect record with something close to being as good, if not better?"

Just a few months later in April 1973, The Tech ran a review by Neal Vitale for the somewhat less deserving album "Mothers Pride" by the band Fanny. He was right though, "I Need you to Need Me" was by far the hardest riffing tune on the LP.

"Mothers Pride has a wide variety of different types of songs, from the wistful, acoustic "Long Road Home," to the bitterly sarcastic, autobiographical "Solid Gold" (drummer Alice de Buhr's lead vocals reminds one of a drunk Ray Davies), to the biting, heavy metal thunder of "I Need You Need Me."

That was  a lot of background but lets get back to WINX. Some sources date the start of the show Heavy Metal Thunder to 1969, but that strikes me as dubious. I credit the Washington City Paper [SOURCE] and their 1972 date as more plausible. [SOURCE] It also agrees with Skips later interview material. Skip has had some comments over the years that help us understand the start of the program like this interview with Signaland [LINK]. 

Skip caught the front of a cultural wave. Free form FM was on the airand "progressive" rock playlists were popping up everywhere slowly transmuting into AOR. Later in the 1970s there was not only WHFS and WGTB, but also there was WHMC-AM and WAYE-AM. But nobody was doing what Skip was doing.

"Nobody else was playing heavy metal at the time. There was no DC101 in those days. HFS was playing Grateful Dead, Little Feat, and things of that nature—Bonnie Raitt. So Pentagram were fans of my show and I went over and produced a six song demo by them, and then a year later I put out a 45 by them, and a year after that I put out another 45 by them." 

Groff was born in Waltham, MA but mostly grew up in Washington D.C. Like many of his generation became interested in music when the Beatles hit hard in 1964. He became a DJ at WMUC at the University of Maryland. WMUC was a carrier current station prior to getting an FM license in 1979 for 88.1. He would have been 31 in 1979 so Skip sadly missed that boat. He was first hired at 92.3 WSID (later became WLPL) to work weekends in 1968. In 1977 he opened his own record store Yesterday and Today Records, then in 1978 he was already running his own indie record label: Limp Records. It was the start of something very punk rock.

That timing with WSID is interesting because in 1969 it changed formats. WSID did not flip directly from Soul to Top 40. In early 1969, the station went to AOR, a format it aired for almost a full year before the flip. Skip had a 6:00 PM to midnight show on Saturdays and Sundays. He was a still a U. Maryland student at the time. We don't have playlists, we don't have tapes; but in that Signaland interview he names some sides he was playing then: Vanilla Fudge, Wind, Blue Cheer, Gun, Circus Maximus, and The Seeds... this is a mix of garage rock, kraut rock, and hard psychedelic rock, the precursors of metal. 

Because his show was a success on WSID he was able to cross the street to WINX, though interrupted by a stint in the army. He was there 1969 -1974, then returned in 1976 and stayed to 1977 when he was also working for RCA. In 1981 he started working at WPGC which lasted barely over a year, moving to WAVA in 1982. There he hosted 'Rock of the Nineties.' Skip was interviewed by  DSI records in 2010 creating probably the best source material on him and his various music endeavors:

• Part 1 [LINK]
• Part 2 [LINK]
• Part 3 [LINK]
• Part 4 [LINK]
• Part 5 [LINK]
• Part 6 [LINK]

In part 2 of the interviews he described his "Heavy Metal Thunder" program's playlist: Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Sir Lord Baltimore. It ran 6:00 PM - 10:00 PM at night. This is more metal than his program at WSID. That's how he met the band Pentagram, and got their career started. [LINK] If you make it all the way to part 5 he talks about his current radio show he specifically names the Foo Fighters as a band he'd play today. I never heard his WPGC program but I can imagine it now. More here.

Skip died in 2019, and the storefront closed in 2001. But his wife continues to operate the business online. More here. They donated his papers to his alma mater [LINK]. One can imagine that in that archive might be actual playlists and maybe, just maybe... tapes.

The Rise and Fall of WOOK

1340 WOOK-AM ceased to exist in 1975 following 7 to 0 vote by the FCC commission to shut down the station. It was one of the largest soul radio stations in America at the time and it owned the Washington D.C. market. The station was badass, and it went off air 35 years ago. Things were always tumultuous at the station, but that's what the making of history is always like. The station was essentially done in for blasphemy, Rev. Richard Eaton went down the same way that Lenny Bruce did.

Eaton had troubles form the very beginning. Take for example his antics in 1947. After a few employees were found to be unionizing he fired one and cut the pay of the other, the now famous Hal Jackson. AFRA called it "outrageous anti-union conduct"  and more or less blamed  Richard Eaton, the president of the United Broadcasting Company, owner of WOOK. So they called a strike. Eaton presented an entirely different version where Hal Jackson cut his own hours and the union was striking preemptively to pressure him to unionize his shop. Hal described it differently in his autobiography, The House That Jack Built:

"I tried to pressure Eaton to improve salaries and working conditions for others at the station, he couldn't understand why I bothered, since I was doing OK. My protest work with the NAACP made me more aware of labor unions and the good they could do in bettering conditions for workers. So I joined the AFRA, and got AFRA to start organizing the people at WOOK. When Eaton refused the unions demands, we called a strike... WOOK lost a lot of revenue during the strikeand Eaton eventualy had to give in and allow the union."

Hal had broken the color line as a black broadcaster on 1600 WINX-AM in 1937. He was one of the first black American DJs ever. But that is the story of the rise. This is the story of the fall. The unionization of WOOK cost Hal his job there. He and Eaton were unable to work together after Hal won out.

Things never really let up for WOOK. In 1966 they were fined$7,500 for "code violations." Then in 1969 WOOK first had their license challenged. The charge was that their gospel programming wasn't exactly by the book. Jet Magazine described it thus in 1975:

"The station had been litigating for more than six years since it was accused of permitting preachers to use numerical designations for chapters and verses in the bible as tips for listeners who played the D.C. numbers racket."

Now let's be clear, gambling is not illegal. By modern standards those antics border on comic, not criminal. That the gambling wasn't above board seems trivial. The "numerous" civic organizations were other religious groups competing for the license. They essentially accused WOOK of blasphemy, not obscenity or indecency. [Not that any of that was codified yet] But 1969 was a comic year. That year a college student, Bruce Willis of Howard University pulled the stunt of a lifetime at WOOK. He got naked and climbed their 339-foot tall radio tower. he'd had an altercation with Fred "Soul Finger" Correy and been ejected from the facility. In protest he dropped trou and sat at the top cross-legged. He was forcibly removed by an army helicopter after an hour.

In 1973, Judge McClenning found that United Broadcasting was unqualified for it's license and that WOOK aided and encouraged illegal gambling activity through its religious programing. He recommended the FCC grant of WCSC (now WYCB) the mutually exclusive application for 1340. Docket number 18562 was all bad news for Eaton.  Eaton fought the order all the way to the February 28th appeals deadline in 1976. He lost it all. Just a decade earlier  United Broadcasting had erected a new $150,000 WOOK radio station building. That same year the Advertising Club of Metropolitan Washington awarded Eaton an "Award of Achievement." It had been a long way down. In the end the Supreme Court gave the WOOK license to a religious group called "Community Broadcasting" that founded WYCB-AM in April 1977. Eaton died defeated at the age of 81 four years later.

Hal Jackson makes WINX blink

Although by the fifties there had been several influential black DJs, it hadn't been easy for their forebears to gain employment. Civil rights was still an optimistic largely academic discussion. The media owners of the day were as bigoted as the street sweeper. Today we have a black man running for president. But in 1939, people obstructed the success of even talented educated blacks. Hal Jackson was just damn determined.

He was born in 1915 and grew up in Washington. He attended Howard University, then an all-black school. It as a good school though. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall attended as well. (It's often referred to as "the black Harvard" by condescending white ingrates.) It was there that he would later become the first African-American radio sports announcer, broadcasting American Negro Baseball League games over 1340 WOOK-AM. (Today we only know Howard for WHUR-FM) WOOK-AM eventually became WYCB-AM a reputable gospel outlet. WOOK had been founded by Richard Eaton as a "Negro" radio station playing R&B.

Hal first started broadcasting in 1939 with on a program called The Bronze Review, a nightly interview program on 1600 WINX-AM He was not received warmly at first. Actually he was first told "No nigger is ever going on the air in Washington," by an unnamed manager at WINX.
So Hal bought time on the station through Erlich & Merrick an advertising agency that cared more about the color green. His program did very well. Eventually he forced his way in. By the end of the year he was on other stations including WUST, WOOK-AM, WSID-AM, and WANN-AM. So he lapped the D.C. area daily doing shows in baltimore, Annapolis and Washington D.C.

He went on to New York where he worked at WLIB, WMCA, WPIX WNJR, WWRL, and syndicated programs for both ABC and NBC throughout the 1950s and 60s. More here. In 1971 Jackson was part of the group that bought out WLIB-AM, the first black owned and operated station in NYC. Today, Jackson is on the board at Inner City Broadcasting. Today he's on air at WBLS hosting Morning classics sixty years later. He was inducted into the radio hall of fame in 1995. In 2001 he penned an autobiography, The house that Jack Built... a book worth reading.