La Colpa De Ella Radio

In 1497 Giovanni Cabotto sailed to North America. He was sponsored by the English who refer to him in their text books as John Cabot. He was probably the first Italian in America. Subsequently around 5.5 million Italians immigrated to the U.S. from 1820 to 2004. By 1880 Italian-language newspapers began circulating in New England cities with large Italian-American populations, like New York. 40 years later the process repeated itself with radio.

The period following that has been called the golden age of Italian-language radio. From 1920 to 1950, it was possible at almost any hour to find some kind of Italian radio broadcast. New York City for example,  had four stations (WHOM-AM, WOV-AM, WEVD-AM, and WBNX-AM) which carried significant Italian programing. Other smaller markets with population densities also had their own local outlets.In Philadelphia Italian radio programs aired on Philadelphia’s 10-watt WABY-AM, which is not to ignore the programs on  WPEN-AM in Philadelphia and WAAB-AM in Boston

In New York, Italian-language radio began in 1916. That year WGL-AM was bought by John Iraci, a Sicilian-born importer. Iraci changed the call sign to WOV-AM.  The last movement in that era was probably the flip at WHOM. In 1946 two Italian newspapermen purchased WHOM and converted the programming to Italian. In between those two bookends it's important to note that there was political suspicion of Italian-language programming because of Mussolini's fascism, and role in WWII. In 1935, at the height of WWII, Italy nationalized Radio Bari and Radio Roma, putting them under the direct control the Ministry of Press and Propaganda. They began airing anti-British messages. Signs were put up in US Cities "Don't Speak the Enemy's Language."  It didn't just mean German and Japanese, it also meant Italian. Under the Sedition act, U.S. agents rounded up Italian nationals suspected of disloyalty.

Only when the pope threw his weight behind the allies did that American prejudice finally fade. (Not that there weren't pro-fascist broadcasts in English, ex. Father Coughlin) but race played a notable role in that era.) Over the subsequent decades,studies by Churchhill (1940) and Roche(1982) found a huge change in the listening habits of ethnic and particularly Italian-American citizens. They sampled groups in New Jersey, New York and Providence and found that successive generations were markedly less likely to listen to ethnic programming. They essentially proved that their cultural Americanization was a rapid process.

In the early 1950s Italian radio was in decline. Even WOV began to change. Programs like La Rosa, La Famiglia Rinaldi, Buon Pranzo, La Colpa E' Della Radio, and Donna Billonia faded away. The few FM stations carrying Italian-language programming gave hours to the Italian programs while AM stations began to take aim at Hispanic markets.  In New York WHBI-FM and in Philly’s WDAS-FM took on Italian-language programs. But As FM rose in prominence over AM, those hours dried up as well. Ethnic programming migrated back to AM, but the decline was terminal.

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.

Hot Rod Hulbert

Anyone who has read much of this blog probably know about my long-standing hip-hop thesis. No matter what the origin of the rap may be, and no matter who commercialized it into a musical genre, the dissemination of rapping as a vocal style was done via radio by disc jockeys. Even a cursory familiarity with "jives" will bear this out.

One of those jive-talking pioneers was Maurice "Hot Rod" Hulbert. In 1949 he began his radio career at the age of 33, a late-starter who got ahead quickly. He started out at WDIA-AM, the famously all-black radio station in Memphis. It was there he began calling himself "Commander Hot Rod" and talking jive on the mic including the exclamation "Good googamooga!" which inexplicably has entered the cannon of common usage. his afternoon show was called the Sepia Swing Club. He did so well he added two morning shows as well. He outgrew WDIA in just over a year. More here.

In 1951 he became the only black announcer on WITH-AM in  Baltimore. WITH was Baltimore's first independent station, and had been founded only 10 years earlier. The move was somewhat contrived. Station owner Thomas Garland Tinsley was savvy enough to make a play for the large black demographic in Baltimore. He wasn't discriminating, he also owned a Muzak franchise in the same market. The WITH  morning man Buddy Deane gave Hulbert a recommendation —and he was in.More here.

At the time, WITH, was Top-40 station that mixed in some rhythm and blues. His program ran from 8:00 PM to Midnight. The playlist there wasn't as progressive as  WDIA, but it wasn't Lilly-white like either. Hulbert stayed at WITH until 1959 and even began to get syndicated. But he also started publishing a private tip-sheet. ((I'd love to see one) but apparently it was a  very pay-to-play situation that got him in a bit of hot water. if you recall 1959 was the year of the great senate payola crack down. His own station manager, Jake Embry ushered him out the door and up a metro to WHAT-AM in Philadelphia. It was about then that Jocko Henderson started aping his routine. Henderson didn't plan to stay at WHAT, he also started doing a show at WOV-AM New York.  But the big apple wasn't biting, after the heat was off he returned to WITH in 1963, for a year but in 1964 he crossed the street to 1400 WWIN-AM. He stayed there well into the 1970s and became an institution instead of a star.

Hulbert retired in 1974 at the age of 59 but continued on in sales at a few Baltimore area stations. He later managed gospel-formatted WBGR-AM from 1984 until his real retirement in 1991. He was inducted into the Black Radio Hall of Fame in 1991. He died oin1996 at the age of 80.

Jocko

Douglas "Jocko" Henderson was a legendary Philadelphia and New York disc jockey. Like a handful of mic pioneers he opened his show with a rap which was so well known in his time that children recited it to keep rhythm while jumping rope. That puts his work in a class with truly ancient clapping songs like "Miss Mary Mack." The rapping wasn't his whole deal... in a nutshell, his schtick was that his radio show was in space and he was an astronaut. ...but about that rap:

"From way up here in the stratosphere,we gotta holler mighty loud and clear

ee-tiddy-o, and a ho, And I'm back on the scene with the record machine,

Saying ooh-pap-doo and how do you do?"

Originally from Baltimore, it's unsurprising that his first gig was in his hometown in 1950 at 1010 WSID-AM. Some sources claim it was WBAL-AM. But those same sources can't decide if it was in1950 or 1952. Henderson was born in 1981, so he would have been 32 in 1950; a very late start for a radioman. I'll rely on the younger = more likely DJs, and smaller stations = more likely starts as a thesis. Regardless, it was there in Baltimore he heard the rapping schtick of fellow DJ Maurice "Hot Rod" Hulbert on WITH-AM. In 1952 Henderson moved to Philly, for a gig on WHAT-AM., which is actually where he picked up the name "Jocko"and started rapping himself. His program  ran for 2 hours on weekday afternoons.

He did so well on WHAT, that WDAS-AM poached him just a few months later. And Jocko ended up flipping 45s there until 1974. Not that he stood still. He began commuting to New York city to do a morning show on WLIB-AM starting in 1957. He moved to 1280 WOV-AM in 1959 and stayed there with a late night slot broadcasting from the Palm Cafe in Harlem.  He stayed on when it changed calls to WADO-AM and then to WWRL-AM. Hot Rod" Hulbert" found his way to WOV while he was still there making for some serendipity. Despite the fact that Jocko stole most of his act from Hotrod, he kept rolling with it. In fact in 1961 he sent a prank telegram to the Yuri Gargarin, the first cosmonaut "Congratulations.  I'm glad you made it. Now it's not so lonely up here."

In 1958 he got his own TV show in New York City on WNTA-TV. He retired in the 1980s and after that only made occasional appearances on WCBS. His son, Doug Henderson, Jr. followed in his footsteps and had a show on WDAS in the 1970s. Doug "Jocko" Henderson Sr. died in 2000 after a long struggle with cancer and diabetes. He was 82. In 2004 he was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall Of Fame.

Symphony Sid

Symphony Sid was the man that brought bebop to the masses. We don't know for sure how Sidney Tarnopol became known as Symphony Sid. In that era, it was common for immigrants to shorten or modify their surnames to make them sound less "ethnic."  That's how Sid Tarnopol became Torin. But that doesn't answer the question at all. One story says that he worked at a record store, the "Symphony Shop." I can find no record of any such retailer. Another version claims that it came with a rhyming introduction by announcer Walter Tolmes. The most believable version is that it came from the classical program he DJ'd on his first radio gig at 1380 WBNX-AM.More here.

Sid was born in 1909, in New York City. and grew up in Brooklyn. And that's where he made his debut in radio as a Jazz DJ on WBNX in the Bronx. He was already using the name Sidney Torin.  More here and here. I can't find a starting year, but generally I assume it to be around 1931, to fit the rest of his timeline. It is often written that he also worked at WBMS-AM, whose calls did reside in New york in this era, but that station was absorbed by 1450 WHOM-AM in 1933. The calls moved to Boston, as did Mr Torin later on, not until 1951, and took a job at another jazz station, 1090 WBMS. He didn't return to New York until 1956.

By 1937 on WBNX he was hosting a jazz show, his "After School Swing Session."  By 1940 he was also DJingat WHOM for his "After-Hours Swing Session.".  He followed that with overnight shifts at WMCA and WJZ . On WMCA it was an all night jazz show "the royal Roost" on WMCA around 1948.  That graveyard shift at WJZ was "Jumpin' With Symphony Sid." Somewhere in there he also was on WWRL. He was already the best known jazz DJ in New York. They even started wring songs about him. In 1947, Arnett Cobb recorded "Walkin' With Sid" on Apollo records. In 1952 King Pleasure recorded "Jumpin' With Symphony Sid" on the Prestige label. The George Shearing Quartet recorded it the next year for MCA, but so had Charlie Parker and Sonny Stitt.

In Boston he ruled the airwaves on WBMS and also did a turn or two at WCOP. He came back a few years later and landed at WOV, hosting the Birdland Jazz show.  He stayed for just a year, giving up the mic to B. Mitchell Reed in 1956 (probably). She spent the next year at WEVD, spinning salsa. He later moved to WADO-AM, still spinning jazz, he stayed there until 1964 when the station first went to an all-Spanish format. It was a shame they didn't keep him on.  the jazz community gave him a lot of flak for shunning jazz at WEVD, he eventually added jazz to the last hour of his program. He retired in 1970 to the Florida keys, and in 1976, briefly un-retired to do shifts on a Miami jazz FM station, 93.9 WBUS.. that today we call WMIA. He died on September 14th, 1984.

B. Mitchel Reed

Burton Mitchel Reed was the host of the all-night Birdland Jazz Show on 1280 WOV-AM in New York City in 1956. For this razzmatazz, fast jive-talking persona he became famous. But he also was a figure in the burgeoning free-format world of FM radio.

Reed started out doing overnights in Baltimore and picked up the all night Birdland show in 1956. He took over for Symphony Sid who had hosted the program for only a couple years. Reed only stayed about a year himself. (Some sources incorrectly put the show on 710 WOR-AM. (In August of 1959, WOV was sold to Bartell Broadcasters, who changed the call letters to WADO.)

In 1957 he took a job at KFWB in Los Angeles doing evenings. Within a year the station flipped formats to Top 40, it's most popular DJs were known as "The Seven Swinging Gentlemen." The seven also included Bruce Hayes, Al Jarvis, Joe Yocam, Elliot Field, Bill Ballance, and Ted Quillan. More here.

Reed left KFWB for WMCA, moving back home in his home in1963. Two years later Reed returned to LA and returned to KFWB. But then come one of those game-changers. He attended the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and something clicked. He met with Tom Donahue the Program Director of KMPX, the hit it off and then it's owner Metromedia took over KMET Reed became it's PD. Reed programmed it as a 24 hour automated AOR station. Its studio was located on Wilshire Blvd.Reed took over the station in 1969, and stayed until 1971, when he left for a spin on KRLA. But He went back to KMET in 1972 staying on for an additional six years. Donahue died in 1975 at only 46 years old. In 1978, Reed had coronary bypass surgery and shortly thereafter left KMET for KLOS. He stayed at KLOS from 1979 to 1981. He died on March 16, 1983, he was only 56. NY Times obit here.

Freddy's on KSTP-AM

Today 1500 KSTP-AM is a conservative political talker. Minneapolis is a pretty liberal city which explains why their ratings are typically half that of WCCO-AM. But in the 1980s they were a much more mixed talker under Hubbard broadcasting. They were the station that gave Jesse Ventura a talk program in 1988. In the 80s who thought he'd have a political career? More here.

But today I look back to KSTP-AM circa May 1960. In 1928 a share-time between KFOY-AM and WAMD-AM ended in a merger. The resulting station was KSTP. They ran some NBC syndication but were a full-service MOR outlet for most of the 60s which was in my mind a non-format. MOR is what we now call Standards or nostalgia and full-service means you have block programming.

What sent me on this flurry of research was the last 30 seconds of an 1981 Jack Teagarden LP. I knew the LP was recorded live at Freddy's Cafe in Minneapolis by KSTP. Freddy's no longer exists but they had comedy, jazz, live entertainment of all kinds. They were a night club in the classic sense. I don't know who recorded his program but in catching Teagarden at the end of his career they captured a now famous DJ at the beginning of his. The hosts of that show was Leigh Kamman.

Leigh Kamman started out just a jazz fan and got a gig at WMIN-AM as a janitor. he moved to WEBC-AM in Duluth in 1942. He left that to to do AFRN programs out of KOA-AM in Denver during WWII. He went to New York City in 1950 and did a jazz program on WOV in New York.

In 1956 he blew back into Mineapolis and picked up work at WLOL and KSTP and he hosted show's at Freddy's. The jazz shows at Freddy's were broadcast live on KSTP. This program evolved over time to become a regular late night gig for Kamman called The Jazz Image on Minnesota Public Radio. That program ran from 1973 until September 23rd 2007. Kamman retired at the age of 85.

If you have any question of Jack Teagarden... He was a man of red hot jazz in his era. Try this old 78s on for size.

The 1280 Club

Long ago, this was a program of Rock n' Roll renown, and even jive talk. Fred Robbins was the DJ on the 1280 club on WOV based in Harlem. He laid down the spectacular vernacular. Fred is supposedly the man who first called singer Mel Torme, "The Velvet Fog."More here. more on Fred in a minute.WOV ditched a cumbersome three-way time share in 1940 to become the powerhouse it is today. Greater New York Broadcasting Corporation bought 1130 WPG and absorbed it into WOV. Then asked the FCC to delete the WOV license and shut down WOV and WPG for interfering with 1100 WBIL then deftly they moved WBIL to 1130, changing it's calls to WOV. That all happened in 1940. The next year they swapped call letters moving WOV to 1280 and WNEW to 1130. Without that complicated series of changes, they couldn't have maintained the listenership to become what they did.

More complicated is that 1280 still was a share time with WHBI. That was not resolved until March of 1962, when WHBI was sold to Greater New York Broadcasting for $635,000. WHBI was bumped off shortly thereafter... But that happens long after out tale.... So in the 1940s WOV is running ethnic Italian programming in the mornings. In the evenings they were running what we now call Rhythm and Blues marketed at African Americans. (The ethnic Italian programming continued until 1962 under the WADO calls.)

So the 1280 Club begins as WNEW's "1250 Club" in 1937. Alan Courtney was it's original host and creator his focus was swing jazz. When the frequency swap goes down the name changes to WNEW's 1280 club. Courtney stayed on 1280 with the show until about 1945. Robert Q. Lewis became the new host, but it wasn't his bag really and it was Fred Robbins who took the chair in 1947. [Lewis reference here. ]

Robbins was unusual as a DJ having been a law student at University of Baltimore Law School. He only got into radio as an announcer in Baltimore on WITH-AM. In 1942, he joined WHN radio in New York City. He later scored the MC job at the 1280 Club for his jive talking ways. By 1948 Robbins was hosting his own program, "Robbins Nest" which was carried on WINS, WABC and WNEW. His big gig was the the M.C. spot on the Columbia Record Shop a syndicated rock program carried on 359 stations. He also hosted 'the Fred Robbins show" in the 1950s for the CBS network. Jazz broadcasting legend Leigh Kamman picked up his slot on WOV. Phil Gordon carried on the show until around 1962 when the new owners shooed him out the door. More here.

The amazing blog Rand's Esoteric OTR actually has a aircheck of the latter program. He also makes it embeddable. What a guy. Sadly Podbean spits out very ugly cumbersome HTML and isn't very configurable so you'll have to settle for the link.

Kamman went to Minnesota Public Radio in 1973 and only retired in 2007. Robbins died of lymphoma in 1992. 1280 WOV-AM is now known as WADO-AM, a Spanish News Talk station owned by Univision. Side note: In 1944 there was a film at least related to the program called Alan Courtney's 1280 Club... On that one tidbit I have nada, no soap, nothing shaking. If you do please lay it on me.