The People's Information Slot

 The book Airwaves of New York makes a passing reference to the Black Panther party having its own radio program on WLIB-AM in 1969, "The People's Information Slot." There are few corroborating references. But WLIB has long been regarded as the ''Voice of Harlem.'' In 1971, WLIB became the city's first black-owned radio station, and the crown jewel of Inner City Broadcasting Corporation. But it's worth noting that it was already using the slogan ''The Voice of the Negro Community.'' in the 1940s, three decades before it was black-owned.  So the claim is apocryphal, but not implausible.

My corroborating source turned out the be the U.S. government document: Black Panther Party: Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security. They held hearings on the Panthers which via the U.S. Government Printing Office produced about 5,00 pages of documents in 1970. Page 2811 has one juicy tidbit. It reads:

"The Panthers announced that they would begin broadcasting their own weekly radio program on July 5, 1969. over the New York radio station WLIB. The 30-minute show was to be aired each Saturday from 8:15 to 9:15 p.m. and would be entitled "People's Information Slot." Although a sponsor was not identified, the announcement stated that "the show would not be unsponsored. Guests scheduled to be on the first program were Don Cox, Field Marshall of the Black Panther party, and Zayed Shakur, a deputy minister of information in New York. " 

The source cited there is The Washington Star Newspaper, July 21st, 1969. [LINK] It's difficult to find any information on this radio show. But the New York Daily News also mentioned the debut of the program on July 5, 1969, repeating much other above but adding that the guests will include attorney Arthur Turco. the wording is so similar they both probably draw form the same press-release. There are no further press mentions of the radio program that I've ever found. These three names are all way have to "box in" the end of the program if indeed it continued past July 5th.

The Black Panther Party (BPP) was founded in October 1966 in Oakland, CA. While none of those three guests was among the founders of the party, they were all of relatively high stature either internally, or publicly.

Don Cox joined the group in 1967, and received the title of "Field Marshal" in 1968. Cox was a natural leader within the organization. In 1970 he was invited to speak to guests at a gathering hosted by Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia at their posh penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side.  The writer Tom Wolfe described the politics of the event as "Radical Chic" in New York magazine. Cox was there to raise funds for the defense Black Panther members who were charged with conspiracy. That same year Cox was charged in the murder of a possible informant named Eugene Anderson in Baltimore. He fled to Algeria and resigned from the BPP in 1971. 

Zayd Shakur is probably better known today as the uncle of rapper Tupac Shakur. He was the deputy minister of information nominally under Eldridge Cleaver. In 1969 the "Panther 21" case arrested many BPP leaders in New York chapters but Shakur was not indicted. (eventually defendants were acquitted) Different articles in the 1970s list him with slightly different titles, but in a 2017 statement Sundiata Acoli referred to him as the Minister of Information for the Bronx, NY BPP chapter. That may have been a later higher rank closer to 1973. Shakur himself was killed in a shoot-out with New Jersey police in 1973.

Arthur Turco Jr. was definitely the guest and not the host. Nonetheless he is known to have defended members of the Black Panther Party in across the country. After Eugene Anderson's skeleton was discovered in Leakin Park in Baltimore, MD in October of 1969, Turco and others were charged with conspiracy to murder. A warrant was issued for Turco's arrest on April 29th, 1970. After a mistrial, Turco plead guilty to misdemeanor assault to avoid a lengthy prison sentence. His co-defendants were not so lucky. More here.

It seems highly likely from the name of the program, "People's Information Slot" that Zayd Shakur was the host of the program. Cox and Turco were probably guests. From his death in 1973 we have a firm latest possible date. But I think that it's more likely the show ended much earlier. In April of 1969 twenty-one Black Panther members were indicted. The BPP couldn't afford bail on so many members simultaneously, so most were stuck at Rikers. The loss of so many members, was probably a strain on the organization. A resource-intensive side project like a radio program, probably had to be sacrificed.

Black Radio Timeline

There are 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week and 168 hours in a week. For a local radio station that's a lot of programming. (It's no wonder they turned early on to syndication.) For a 24 hours station to dedicate even half their programming to a single demographic group was 84 hours of programming. If you want to quibble about daytimers, in the winter they need 9 hours of programming per day, that's 63 hours of programing.  [SOURCE] In the year 1943 only four stations in the whole of the United States were marketing any of their programming specifically for black listeners. Ten years later that total had jumped to 260.

For clarity I will be omitting single performance appearances as these are difficult to corroborate and don't connote a commitment to programming. Omitted would be any one-off appearances like Ruth Dennis's famous lecture on WGBS, Marion Anderson's national broadcast from the Washington monument in 1939, Bessie Smith's live broadcasts in 1924...etc. I also exclude white DJs broadcasting R&B.  I would maintain that is a whole different list.  Some events have uncertain dates. These are marked with an asterisk. These were pivotal years culturally: the end of WWI, the civil rights movement, the baby boom. Change was afoot. Let us review only the highlights.

*1924 - Isaac "Satchel" McVea begins hosting Optimistic Do-Nut Hour on KNX (San Francisco)
*1925 - Jack Cooper write and stars on his vaudeville program on WCAP
*1926 - Henry Starr debuts on Edna Fischer Show KFRC (San Francisco)
*1927 - The Pittsburgh Courier sponsors a string of Black oriented programs on WGBS (Pittsburgh)
*1928 - The Pittsburgh Courier moves their program to WGCU (Pittsburgh)
*1929 - The Harlem Broadcasting Company begins leasing time from WRNY (NewYork)
           - Jack Cooper's "All Negro Hour " debuts on WSBC (Chicago)
1930 - Sherman "Jocko" Maxwell debuts on WRNV (New York)
         - Lightfoot Solomon Michaux debuts on WJSV (Washington D.C.)
1931 - The Jackson Southernaires start a weekly syndicated NBC program
1932 - N/A
1933 - Bass Harris debuts on KRSC (Seattle)
         - CBS airs "John Henry Black River Boat Giant"
1934 - Benny Goodman's interracial band on "The Camel Hour"
1935 - First all-black radio show cast "A Harlem Family" WMCA-AM
         - Howard D. Morison debuts on WJLB (Detroit)
         - WJTL (Atlanta) debuts a 15-minute black community newscast
1936 - WMCA (New York) begins broadcasting "Amateur Night in Harlem"
         - Duke Ellington's debut series on WMCA (New York)
1937 - Joe Bostic Sr. begins hosting "Tales From Harlem" on WMCA-AM
          - WNEW (New York) begins broadcasting the program "Harlem Amateur Night"
          - Nat D. Williams debuts on WHBQ (Memphis)
1939 - Hal Jackson debuts on WINX (Washington D.C.)
1940 - American Negro Theatre debuts on WNEW (New York)
         - Richard Huey's "Sheep & Goats Club" debuts on WOL (Washington D.C.)
         - The Golden Gate Quartet starts a sustaining on CBS
1941 - Cab Calloway's "Quizzicale" debuts on NBC Blue
         - The National Urban League and CBS debut "the Negro and National Defense"
1942 - Dixiana a "Negro Variety show" debuts on WCAU (Philadelphia)
         - Billboard Magazine launches "Harlem Hit Parade" chart
1943 - "Heroines in Bronze" a program on black women airs on CBS
         - CBS airs a NAACP connected radio documentary "The Negro In The War"
         - CBS airs the commentary "An Open Statement on Race Hatred" 
1944 - Roi Ottley developed the WMCA (New York) radio series "New World a Comin"
         - AFRS debuts all-black variety program "Jubilee" 
         - "The Interracial Goodwill Hour" debuts on WJLB (Detroit)
1945 - Al Benson debuts on WGES (Chicago)
         - Ramon Bruce debuts on WHAT (Philadelphia)
         - Thelma Carpenter becomes a regular on Eddie Cantor's variety program.
1946 - Early Wright debuts on WROX (Clarksdale)
         - Willie Bryant hosts WCBS (New York) network radio program, "Night Life"
         - "National Negro Newspaper Week" airs on CBS
         - Joe Adams and "Golden Grooves" debuts on KMPC (Los Angeles)
1947 - Actress Hattie McDaniel took over the lead role on "Beulah" on NBC
         - Bill Cook starts spinning jazz on WAAT (Newark)
         - Jessie "Spider" Burks debuts on KXLW (St. Louis)
         - Jack Gibson debuts on WCFL (Chicago)
         - Eddie Honesty debuts on WJOB (Hammond)
         - Emerson Parker debuts on WQQW (Washington D.C.)
         - Norfley Whitted WDNC (Durham)
         - Dan Burley debuts the Skiffle Club on WWRL (New York)
         - Woody Woodard debuts on WLIB (New York)
         - Lavada Durst debuts on KVET (Austin)
1948 - "Destination Freedom" debuts on WMAQ (Chicago)
         -WDIA becomes the first radio station programmed entirely for African Americans
         - Ebony magazine lists the only 16 black DJs in America
         - First female black DJ, Mary Dee Dudley debuts on WHOD (Pittsburgh) 
         - WOOK (Washington D.C.)  programs R&B music full-time
         - Bill Hawkins debuts on WHK (Cleveland)
         - Holmes "Daddy-O" Daylie debuts on WMAQ (Chicago)
1949 - First black radio station owner Jesse B. Blayton Sr. at WERD (Atlanta)
         - Second black radio station owner Andrew "Skip" Carter buys KPRS (Kansas City)
         - Maurice "Hot Rod" Hulbert debuts on WDIA (Memphis)
         - Albert "Acey Boy" Wilson debuts on WKGN (Knoxville)
1950 - WMRY (New Orleans) has all-black radio staff
         - Vernon Winslow early Black Announcer on WMJR (New Orleans)
1951 - WANT (Richmond) has all-black radio staff
1952 - WEFC (Miami) Primarily black programming
1953 - WCIN (Cincinnati) Primarily black programming
1954 - WNJR (Newark) and WLIB (New York City) primarily black programming
         - National Negro Network launched by Leonard Evans

Bebop Hits The Radio

I like Jazz, but I have a particular soft spot for Bebop. As a genre, it was short-lived starting with Coleman Hawkins highlights in the early 1940s and petering out into novel but less atonal work by Sonny Stitt and his peers. Around 1948, at the relative peak of the genre it made the leap to radio— in all it's atonal improvisational glory.

In the book Why Jazz Happened  author Marc Myers quotes Walter Gil Fuller describing how not just jazz but Bebop specially made it into the popular culture.

"The first promoters to successfully present 'bop' were Monte Kay, who produced the nightly concerts here at the Royal Roost, and Symphony Sid, the WMCA all-night disc jockey. In 1945 they sponsored the concert debut of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie at Town Hall and since then have been active in presentation and promotion of be-bop in New York.  Several other disc jockeys have been instrumental in bringing the music to a wider audience: Fred Robbins and Bill Williams of WOV, Leonard Feather of WHN, Willie Bryant and Ray Carroll of WHOM, Jerry Roberts and Bill Cook of WAAT, Woody Woodard of WLIB, and Dan Burley and Fred Barr of WWRL..."

This is your short list of makers and shakers in jazz circa 1950. I've written about a few of them before, namely Symphony Sid, Willie Bryant and Ray Carroll, and Fred Robbins. Those are certainly the bigger of the few names on that short list. Leonard Feather is also famed but more for his jazz writing at this date.Those other names you don't recognizance are all still worth knowing. Bill Cook was actually mentioned in Philip Roth's book, American Pastoral.

"...Bill Cook, the smooth late-night Negro disc jockey of the Jersey station WAAT. Musical Caravan, Bill Cook's show, I ordinarily listened to in my darkened bedroom on Saturday nights. The opening theme was Ellington's "Caravan," very exotic, very sophisticated, Afro-Oriental rhythms, a belly-dancing beat..."

That's all true actually.  William B. Helmreich even re-quotes some of the same passage in his book, The Enduring Community: The Jews of Newark and MetroWest, making the connection between a major Jewish population center and black culture. Cook was actually popular enough he later had a program on WATV-TV called Stairway to Stardom. He started on WAAT-AM in 1947, in 1951 just 3 years later The New York age magazine was claiming that Cook had been the first black DJ in the New York metro. Around the same time in 1948 Jerry Roberts was doing a new midnight show at WAAT titled Top Flight Time. But they were both jazz men on the same station, Roberts often filled in for Cook when he was out. Though Cook was more popular, Roberts has been on WAAT since 1942 hosting his own program Swing Shift.

In 1948 Ebony magazine listed off what they claimed were the only 16 black DJs in America. (This website claims they missed one) On that list was Woody Woodard of WLIB-AM.  But Ebony also claimed in 1986 that Woodard was New York's only Black DJ in 1946!  That certainly predates Cook. In 1947 radio guides show him on a 7:00 AM news program on WLIB so I'll call it at least plausible. Above you can see a picture of two Girl Scouts present an award to Woody Woodard at WLIB in 1947.

Dan Burley wasn't just a DJ, he literally wrote the book on hipsterdom, the Original Handbook of Harlem Jive, published in 1944. He wrote for the Amsterdam News, New York Age, Jet Magazine, and Ebony. It was news when WWRL hired him to do a radio program, the Skiffle Club, in 1947. Then in 1948 he crossed the street to WLIB. But he was out of radio and back to writing by 1949. Also interesting to note he helped propel the Skiffle craze in the UK with his band "Dan Burley and his Skiffle Boys."

PD Fred Bar and SM Edith Dick ran WWRL, they wooed Hal Jackson to the station which is notable enough. But they also brought in Tommy Smalls aka Dr., Jive and many others. In 1946 after Fred returned from WWI and a 31 months at AFRS he started moving in some jazz programming. But he himself was never a jazz DJ.  Fred Barr hosted Gospel Time on WWRL from about 1958 through at least 1964. His connection to bebop was more like Monte Kay's. Without jazz men on both sides of the equation— both events and media, bebop wouldn't have prospered as it did.

The Night Call Experiment

I was at a junk shop thumbing a book titled In Black America. Since it had an index I checked it for radio. There was one entry on page 315 and it regarded the program Night Calls on 106.7 WRVR-FM. There were only two relating sentences... but one was was a brutal run-on.(editors please!) Little did I know how big a deal this was. More here.

"Stations found that ghetto residents were willing to express their opinions on every issue concerning them, oftentimes most eloquently, and subsequently many stations started audience participation shows in which callers could express their grievances over the air. One of the most successful of such shows is Night Call, broadcast over WRVR-FM in New York and syndicated to more than twenty-eight other stations throughout the nation."

The program was hosted by Dell Shields and ran Monday through Friday. The program was released in co-operation with the Television Radio and Film Commission (TRAFCO), National Council of Churches, and the National Catholic Office for Radio and television.Kind of an odd cabal in the production room there for a call in show that in 1969 was taking live calls about the plight of "10 million colonial Mexican American people" in Texas, New Mexico and California. The same program aired an interview with Huey Newton, once leader of the Black Panthers. An issue of Cue Magazine described it in brief. "...nationwide show gives Negros and whites a chance to communicate with one another on the air. Anyone may take part by phoning "Night Call" collect from anywhere in the country..."

A number of radio publications make passing references to it. A 1968 issue of Billboard states that the program has 20 affiliates as of June 3rd. Those stations included: KUOW, KLIQ, WLIB, WERE, WBUR, WOSU, KSJR, WSRC, WAMO, WRUN and KERI. Listeners called in collect, a big difference from today. It ran for only 20 months based out of the Riverside Church in Manhattan. An issue of Educational Broadcasting Review wrote that it was terminated because there was no proper equipment yet invented to handle a nationally syndicated call-in program. It seems dubious to me, and as I often do in these types of situations, I suspect a racial motivation. Del Shields was a lightning rod for that exact kind of situation too. He was the executive secretary of NATRA, the National Association of Radio and Television Announcers.

It was not Del Shields only attempt at a black-oriented talk program. In 1961, Del actually was the host of the first television talk show hosted by an African American. It debuted on WRCV-TV in Philadelphia and was canceled in just a few weeks. It had been sponsored by a brewery and in Del's own words "It only took 50 letters saying 'Get that nigger off your show or we'll stop drinking your beer' to make the sponsor drop the program..." Previous to that he had worked as a radio disc jockey starting in the late 1950s. His time had included airtime at WLIB and WDAS.

In 1970, he resigned, then was retroactively fired by NATRA in a highly combative departure. He'd been very vocal in fighting for racial equality in broadcasting, something we take for granted today. In 1968 only 8 radio stations were owned by African Americans, and three of them belonged to James Brown. As Del put it "We are not begging the record companies for anything, but they will have to make us a part of it if they wish to stay in business." In response to his hot buttered rhetoric, the FCC investigated the organization. After their parting both NATRA and Del Shields fell from the public eye. Del went to work for Bill Cosby in 1970. NATRA lasted about another 5 years.

WLIB gets soul

Long before WLIB-AM was the Air America flagship station, long before i even carried the call letters WLIB. Back in 1926 it signed on as 1030 WBKN-AM.  the station was owned by and built by engineer Arthur Faske and his brother Dr. Leo Faske. It's first studio was at 1525 Pitkin Ave. in Brooklyn. the building is there but it's been chopped up into retail space and offices. In 1927 the FRC ordered them to move to 1210 to share time with WBMS, WIBI, WWRL, and WJBI.  It was about as much fun as sharing bunk beds in a closet. It was inauspicious, but it was the beginning of what was probably the most important black radio station in America.  More here.  In the 1940s the problem was still rolling. Time magazine mentioned the clusterfuck in an article in March of 1941:

"Promptly the trio began to squabble, resorting to any device to make their chunk of time more profitable than their rivals'. Jam-packed with advertising, loaded with corny stuff, their programs brought little pleasure to the listening public"

In 1928 they moved the station out to Long Island, probably trying to tap into a different set of local advertisers with the new call letters WCLB.  It must not have gone so well because they let their license lapse and had to go get it back from the FRC in 1930. they promptly moved back to Pitkin avenue under the call letters WMIL on the new frequency of 1500. Then in 1933 WMIL changed call letters to WCNW. But this was yet another share time arrangement. On that frequency they were now sharing with WMBQ, WLBX and WWRL. It would all be sort of sorted out by 1941.

In 1936 The FCC improved the situation a bit (FCC superseded the FRC in 1934).  It was in that year that WMBQ fell into receivership. the ugly share-time on 1500 Mhz got it's attention.  Without WMBQ the share could be between only two stations, but who would get the newly available airtime?  In it's ruminations the FCC found that WCNW could barely mange it's own operation.  It's transmitter was wandering off its center frequency.  The FCC granted WWRL sole right to the frequency; deleting both WMBQ and WCNW.

This event defined WCNW. It had been a really varied station over the years with a loose focus on ethnic programming.  The New York Post went on a rampage defending the legacy of the now deleted WCNW. They assessed the decision as political.  WWRL had been airing the seminal right wing nutter Father Coughlin and WCNW has been airing Chinese and black oriented programs. WCNW may or may not have been political before, but it was now. Exploiting the pressure, Faske filed an appeal and the station was reinstated still sharing with WWRL on 1600. that share continued until N.A.R.B.A. (North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement)  reshuffled all frequencies in 1941 and WCNW was granted a frequency of 1490.  it was a year later they finally became WLIB.

Faske sold the station to Elias Godofsky in 1941. They rapidly became a more ethnic radio station. By 1949 they'd dropped their classical programming and beefed up on Jewish and black oriented programs. At the time there were only 3 all black radio stations in the US: WERD, WEDR, and WMFS. if that gives you some context.

Johannes Steel radio commentator

Johannes Steel, a newspaperman and radio commentator whose career was marked by controversy. He was pro-labor, and some called him a communist. Ironically, he self-identified as an Eisenhower republican. He is an interesting newscaster in WWI so interesting in fact you'll see marked differences between his listing on the German Wikipedia page and the English one. To American history he was a crank. A commie, a pro-union loud-mouth. To the Germans he was a Jew, a socialist that fled Germany when the Nazis took power to fling stones at them from afar.

In 1940 Sam Romer wrote a memo to Sidney Hertzberg about anti-war network commentators. Johannes Steel was listed as an "anti-interventionist." His commentary was listed as 7:45 PM daily on WMCA. Of course in Romers thoroughness most of the WMCA staff was listed including: Burnett Hershey, Sidney Mosley and Bruce Oliver were all listed as well. The inclusion is dubious as steel was notoriously anti-Nazi. His 15 minute program was sponsored by the Monarch Wine Company and Simon Akerman clothes.

It was programming like that which put WMCA on the chopping block with the FCC. they fell on the wrong side of the fairness doctrine. I find it interesting that conservatives rail against it today in hyperbole, but in the past they used it to railroad liberals. In 1939 they were even accused of treason. More here.

"Last week station WMCA, New York City, was asked to show cause why its license should not be revoked for violations of the federal communications act of 1934. The Manhattan station allegedly picked up, decoded and broadcast messages by German and British governments to their respective forces. Officials of the station denied the charge but will have to prove the denial in a public hearing in Washington..."

Steel escaped Germany knowing that his membership in the SPD could have led to his demise. He went to France and eventually America where he later became a citizen. He became the foreign editor of The New York Post and a columnist for the Daily Compass. He did news commentary on the Mutual Radio Network. In 1939 he began on air commentaries at WMCA. Sometimes this is listed in his biographies at WHN, but the WHN calls only came into use in 1962. In 1948 he was fired, probably because the Red Channels report tied 34 commie connections to him; more than any other broadcaster. He attribute the firing to pressure from the Catholic Church. In 1949 he took a job commenting for WLIB.

Later in his life he wrote a syndicated financial column in The Waterbury Republican-American newspaper. He died in 1988, at 80 years old.

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.

Transcription mystery

This is what I like to find in the middle of a stack of 78s. It's a transcription disc with the call letters WLIB-AM. the year and date are clearly marked April 22nd 1950. That's the year after the New York Post sold it to the New Broadcasting Company under Morris Novik. The transcription blank has an address in the same city as the station. It's also in playable condition. Nice.

The contents were a tad more mysterious than the label let on. If you listen you'll hear a very young boy sing "Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy." The tune was written by Harry Stone and Jack Stapp in 1950. The reason we know this is that Stapp was from WSM-AM in Nashville and his history is pretty well recorded. But point being, this boy sang on this recording probably within a couple months of Red Foley recording it, and probably only weeks after the printing of the sheet music. It charted on the Hit Parade that year at #1 for 9 weeks. It's appearance in the film "Indiana territory" probably helped.

But despite the call letters I can find no connection to 1190 WLIB-AM. At the end of the recording a man says "...Everything is jumping, we're all jumping but Monday, Tuesday Wednesday, Thursday or Friday things are always jumping at the Wally Jackson studio..." The recording ends there and the mystery begins.

There was no Wally Jackson at WLIB. There was Hal Jackson, possibly a relation. More interesting is a single online reference to the studio. "Very few of his followers know the fact that Charlie started in music as a violinist. He learned to play the violin in an academy called Wally Jackson Studio in New York, where he grew up." So the studio existed and was in the correct city. But at the time the station had relocated to harlem, and had retooled itself for a black audience. This recording would have have aired at that time. Anyone have my missing puzzle piece?