DJ Major Robinson

It starts on page 23 of the 33⅓ book, Live At The Apollo by Douglas Wolk. The historic arguably epic James Brown album was ostensibly recorded the night of October 24th, 1962. But in reality it is definitely edited, and probably contains takes form different shows that week. Brown rented the venue for the week for the purpose of recording the live record. This stretched from Friday October 19th through Thursday October 25th in 1962.  Thursday October 18th was spent rehearsing in New York. They played 4 to 5 shows per day that week. So When a little-known DJ pops up in the story, you know it's arcane.

"Traditionally, the the outgoing and incoming shows would have a Thursday-night "wrap-party" at the Palm Cafe, a bar and restaurant down the street from the Apollo; between Midnight and 3 AM, Major Robinson would broadcast over WWRL from the Palm, although the 18th was his final night there." 

So there was a live broadcast at the Palm the night of their rehearsal. Major Joseph Robinson was there on the 18th, but not the 25th. The question becomes.. did James Brown appear on WWRL-AM that night? It seems unlikely, the man did coin the phrase "kill 'em and leave." But Major Robinson remains an interesting radio personality.

The caption on the image is from February of 1962, and Interestingly The North Carolina Times called Robinson a "Nationally known columnist" in March of 1962. Notice that he stands taking notes beside WWIN disc jockey Maurice "Hotrod" Hulbert. Clearly, Hotrod is the news, Robinson reports it. So notwithstanding that national renown,  Robinson's radio show ran nightly from midnight to 3 AM, so this is more of a "night mayor" kind of renown. But Robinson was also writing for Jet Magazine and Ebony Magazine from 1953 to 1962.

Born in New York, his most high profile writing appeared in the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier Newspapers back to at least 1941. (These were both black-oriented papers of that era.) Robinson crossed color lines early. In 1948 he landed a weekly radio column with NBC. A Billboard article at the time noted that Robinson was already syndicated by Carter-Johnson to papers in 74 cities.

Robinson continued to write for the Courier through at least 1967. But for the Courier he wrote mostly celebrity gossip. The Defender was real news. But he began diversifying his career before 1960.  Sheldon Music signed him as a talent scout in 1958. In 1968 he was appointed director of Community Relations for Atlantic Records.

That was probably his career peak. He became involved in politics in the 1970s. Robinson worked on U.S. Senator Jacob Javits’ [R] Advisory Citizens Comittee, and had was a PR advisor for Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. [D]. Robinson.  He was still active in music as late as 1978, managing the Pilgrim Jubilee Singers. In 1981 he attended the Jack the Rapper convention in Atlanta listed by Billboard as working in Public Relations. When he died in 1988 at the age of 70, he was still working in PR, and still writing a column for the Amsterdam News.

Armstrong Williams

You may or may not know the name Armstrong Williams. If you know it, you either live in Washington D.C., and/or you were paying attention when his big scandal hit in 2005. IT was about 10 years ago that USA Today used a FOIA request to look into some dubious Bush Administration spending. it turned out that Williams was paid $240k by the U.S. Department of Education, to promote George W. Bush's Education plan a.k.a. the No Child Left Behind Act. The contract with Williams was part of a $700k contract between the U.S. Department of Education and the public relations company, Ketchum Inc. The GAO had some harsh words about this. [SOURCE]

This violated the publicity or propaganda prohibition for fiscal year 2004 because it amounted to covert propaganda. As a result of this violation, the Department also violated the Antideficiency Act, 31 U.S.C. § 1341. 

Strangely Williams was not jailed or fined, and the Department of Education was merely admonished.  In fact, Williams continued on with his career as a broadcaster and commentator as if nothing had happened at all. He currently writes for the Washington Times, the Hill, RightSideWire.Com, and JanMorganMedia.com among others. His eponymous Armstrong Williams radio program continues in syndication. It's heard on 620 WGCV-AM, The SiriusXM Urban View, and on 105.9 GEMS-FM, Nassau, Bahamas.But there used to be more. His radio career survived the scandal but not inertia. These are the last refuges of a personality soon to depart the medium.

Williams began his radio career at WOL-AM in Washington, D.C. in 1991.  Four years later his show was syndicated by The Talk America Radio Network. In 1998 the Salem Radio Network syndicated his now national program into 26 markets including St. Louis and Washington D.C.  In 2002, he joined the lineup at 1600 WWRL-AM in New York City.  In 2008 he added a nightly talk show on XM Satellite Radio on the Power 128 channel.

So his radio chops are legit. But what about the scandal. How does a middle market radio host end up getting three quarters of a million dollars to shill for the man? Well let's say it wasn't' the first time, or the last time. In 2005 he took money from the tobacco lobby to attack the FDA. [source] At the time his program was on 60 radio stations. But I think it all goes back to his peculiar interview with Trent Lott in 1998. Back then Williams had a cable TV show. The interview was on Fathers day and the topic was homosexuality. I was a bit of a problem for Lott. On the Armstrong Williams show, Lott equated homosexuality with alcoholism, kleptomania and sex addiction. It was received poorly, but received very heavy coverage.

More recently he's begun buying up media holdings: WJSU-TV, WCFT-TV, WMMP-TV, WEYI-TV, and WWMB-TV.

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.

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.

The Magnificent Montague

In 1974, Billboard published an article claiming that as of that year, the Magnificent Montague aka Nathaniel Montague, had worked at 80 radio stations. He was a radioman among radiomen. He brought his style and personality with him everywhere, for better or worse. His career began in 1949 by his own recounting which means for 25 years he was on an average of 3.2 radio stations per year. It seems impossible. It might not even be true. By his own recounting in for that 1974 article, that he couldn't remember all the dates and places. He went on to say:

"For years I never lived in any one city more than six months. I was the original rebel and I had to move around the country because I was always getting fired for moving my mouth... trying to bring in unions, and things like that...  That's why I consider myself a leisure time executive rather than a disc jockey."

 And that' swhat most of the press blubs say as well. In Ebony magazine they plainly state that KSAN fired Montague and described him as "uncontrollable." But in that same 1974 issue, IBS was taking out two full pages to advertise his shows syndication. He was huge.

He's used so many different names on air: Rodney Jones, Georgie Woods, Fat Daddy, Chatty Hatty, Charlie Brown, John Hardy, and it was on WWRL-AM where he became the Magnificent Montague.

In 1965 he was blamed for the riots in Watts. Mobs of rioters in the primarily black neighborhood chanted "burn baby burn," a signature line for Montague. He had used it in reference to "hot" records. The Los Angeles Times ran a front-page story explaining where the "hep" slogan came from. The mayor and the police chief pressured KGFJ to fire him. Instead they cut his hours and banned his catch phrase. Then they cut his hours a bit more. Then whittled him down to nothing. It was no problem to Montague. He just moved onto another city and another station. Supposedly that scene repeated more than 80 times. I read everything I could find and I came up about 60 stations short. If you can add one please do leave a comment.

WVOM-AM Brookline, MA 1949
WHAT-AM, Philadelphia 1952
KCOM-AM, Beaumont, TX 1953
KTLW-AM, Houston, TX 1953
KCOH-AM Houston, TX 1954
WGES-AM, Chicago, IL
WAAF-AM, Chicago 1955-1957
KSAY-AM San Francisco, CA ? (apocryphal)
KSAN-AM, San Francisco, CA 1957-1961
KGFJ-AM Los Angeles, CA 1958 -1959
KXLW-AM St. Louis, MO 1960 - 1961
WWRL-AM, New York , NY 1962
WVON-AM, Chicago, IL
WEEJ-AM (apocryphal)
KGFJ-AM, Los Angeles, CA 1965-1967
XERB-AM, Tijuana, MX 1968
KYNO-AM / KPHD-FM Fresno, CA 1971
XPRS-AM, Tijuana, MX 1972
KPLM-FM Palm Springs, CA 1990

In 2003, Montague published his autobiography through University of Illinois Press. Think of it as an early Christmas gift to yourself. History matters. You can read about it here.