E. Rodney Jones, The World's Greatest Disc Jockey

I first found Mr. E. Rodney Jones on the back of a cassette. It was the back of the album: War Live  UA-CA193-J to be specific. (By the way, it's a fine album) Looking online for more info on the release I couldn't actually find any about the cassette, but that's common for 1970s tapes. Here's an image of the 8-track, a format which has somehow retained more cultural caché. [LINK]

So the note is just a one line attribution. "Introductions By E. Rodney Jones Of Radio Station WVON, Chicago, Ill."  This would be WVON-AM. The station moved from 1450 to the former 5,000-watt WNUS signal on 1390 in February of 1974. This particular "War Live!" album was released that same month and year, so it's pretty likely that the frequency was 1450 when it was recorded but that Jones would have been giving the station ID as 1390 WVON when he first spun the record. The band War released 13 albums between 1970 and 1979, so suffice it to say that Jones probably said their name a lot.

While researching this record I learned that The "E" in E. Rodney Jones stands for Earl. I also discovered that he has a robust discography of his own. It includes an oddity, released in 2005 the album "E. Rodney Jones, the World's Greatest Disc Jockey Presents... the World Series Of Blues & Soul Vol. 1"   [LINK])  Similar to his intro on "War Live!" Jones introduces the compilation. What follows is 19 tracks of blues and soul artists like Guitar Shorty, Ruth Brown, Jimmy Reed, Lightning Slim and several folks I've honestly never heard of.  It looks like something you'd find in a truck stop record bin. But wait is that Tom Joyner on the left?

Tom Joyner was born in 1975 so he was all of 30 years old on that album cover. E. Rodney Jones died in 2004, so this is probably his last recording at the age of 76!  The art is honestly a little cheesey, with the clip art, but E. Rodney Jones is a legend. I needed to hear this. I found a copy on Amazon for $1.50. Apparently people do not agree with me that this is a collectors item.

Jone's short bios usually say something like "The late E. Rodney Jones may have been the most prolifically-recorded of the great R&B DJs." Below is a list of just recordings where he was the writer and/or performing artist. He also produced records for folks like Mel Brown, wrote the liner notes for Major Lance and Jackie Ivory. He even wrote lyrics for Richard Parker, Mamie Galore, and Snooks Eaglin.

FORMAT	Artist	Title	Year/Label
LP	E. Rodney Jones/Lafayette Leake Trio	Might is Right	1970/Yambo
LP	E. Rodney Jones	At Heave's Grocery Store	1982/Hep' Me
45	E. Rodney Jones	R&B Time Pt. 1 / R&B Time Pt. 2	1967/Tuff
45	E. Rodney Jones & Larry & The Hippies Band	Right On, Right On / Chicken On Down	1970/Double Soul
45	E. Rodney Jones & Larry & The Hippies Band	Right On / Football	1970/Westbound
45	E. Rodney Jones & Willie Henderson	The Whole Thing / Loose Booty	1972/Brunswick
45	E. Rodney Jones	Peace Of Mind / Do The Thang	?/Tuff
CD	V/A	...The World Series Of Blues & Soul	2005/S.D.E.G.
45	War	War Live!	1973/UA
45	E. Rodney Jones	Pushing The Buck / Soul Sister	?/Double Soul
45	Syl Johnson & E. Rodney Jones	Soul Heaven/Is It Because I'm Black Pt.2	N/A
LP	E.Rodney Jones & The Prairie Dogs	Country And Western	1970/Concert Hall

Was this pay back for play back? Probably some of the time. Alan Freed did the same thing and Jones wasn't just a DJ, he was also a manager. In 1973 Jones testified (with immunity) about payola in Federal Court along with several other radio programmers. I'll re-quote the New York Times article here:

"E. Rodney Jones, program director of WVON, Chicago, said he had received a total of $2,000 on six occasions from Mr. Moore, which the witness described as “a token of his appreciation” He said he also received airline tickets from Mr. Moore... “Gifts or money have never had any influence on my playing of records,” Mr. Jones said. “If I didn't believe it was a potential hit, it wouldn't have been played.”"

Mr. Moore there would be Melvin Moore, a promoter from Brunswick records. Moore was in many ways similar to Jones. He was a jazz trumpeter and vocalist from Tulsa, OK. He performed with Ernie Fields’ orchestra and Zoot Sims, Lucky Millinder, even Dizzy Gillespie's band. In 1963 he got a straight job at Decca Decca Records as a promoter, then moved to Brunswick records in 1966. By 1970 he was their director of R&B promotions. More here and here.

The breadth of Jone's career is difficult to measure. He worked for more than 20 years at WVON-AM in Chicago with an afternoon program calling himself "the Mad Lad."That's the tenure his was best known for, but he moved all over the country which in may ways spread his style of R&B programming, he personally shaped R&B as a radio format.  

Jones was born in Texarkana, AR in 1927 (or 1928). Every biography fixates on his long tenure at WVON. But his career didn't stop or start there. A 1968 radio programming guide [LINK] gives one of the more plausible biographies of his early years:

 "[He] began his career as a band musician in Texarkana. Later became a MC., then worked a trick in Kansas City, Mo., moved to KXLW in St. Louis and WBBR in East St. Louis for 8 yrs. In 1962, the "Mad Lad" moved to Chicago joining WVON in 1963."

There are biographies that claim he worked at a local station in Texarkana, this is difficult to corroborate. The band story makes more sense. And can be corroborated. [SOURCE] We can even narrow down what station pretty easily.  Between the 1947 and 1957 editions of the radio Broadcasting annual only three stations exist in Texarkana: 1230 KCMC-AM/98.1 KCMC-FM and 1400 KTFS-AM, only adding 790 KOSY-AM to the market in 1951. That's three of the 5 radio stations in the whole state of Arkansas. He confirmed it was KTFS in a taped interview [SOURCE] for the book Black Radio : Telling It Like It Was. He also names the old top-40 station 1490 KUDL in that interview but not KXLW though the latter has many citations. KUDL signed on in 1953 so that does little to box in the time frame. But his brief time at WBBR is time-bound, they only used the call WAMV from 1961 - 1963. It's corroborated by a short "Good Guys" bio in the 1968 WVON Holiday LP.

CALL SIGN	City	Years
1400 KTFS	Texarkana, AR	1954/55?
1490 KUDL	Kansas City, MO	1956?
1320 KXLW	St. Louis, MO	1957 - 1960
1500 WBBR	East St. Louis, MO	1961 - 1962
1390 WYNR	Chicago, IL	1962
1450 WVON	Chicago, IL	1963 - 1976
1570 WBEE	Chicago, IL	1966?
940 WYLD	New Orleans, LA	1982-1986
1090 KAAY	Little Rock, AR	1984*
1310 KDIA	San Francisco, CA	1992?
1460 WXOK	Baton Rouge, LA	1994,1995
106.3 KQXL	Baton Rouge, LA	1994

I think Jones had departed WVON in 1977 or 1978 as WVON and WXOL had been forced into a time share agreement by then changing both stations. One Billboard reference in 1994 reports that he was a program director at KDIA, but that's hard to fit into his timeline. Multiple references cite his combined tenure at WXOK-AM and KQXL-FM in Baton Rouge to be more than 12 years. It seems highly likely but there are few references to confirm the dates.

E. Rodney Jones time at WVON -AM in the 60s and 70s made him a superstar. He became known to the station's audience as one of "The Good Guys," one of five radio personalities handpicked by the owner Leonard Chess. 

We don't have line ups today like The Good Guys on WVON 1390. We barely have line ups. Above is the top 45 at WVON from June 20-26 1975. The word soul today evokes an entirely different genre really. But check out those DJs: Lucky Cordell, Bernadine Washington, Pervis Spann, Bill 'Doc' Leem, Joe Cobb, Bill Crane, Jay Johnson, Cecile Hale, Herb Kent, Wesley South, Richard Pegue, Isabel Johnson, Ed Cook, Jim Maloney, Earl Law, Larry Langford and E. Rodney Jones! Don't touch that dial!  A 1972 list would have looked quite similar, missing only Langford from the list.

E. Rodney Jones is a member of the Black Radio Hall of Fame and a recipient of the Living Legend Award in the Radio Smithsonian Institute. His career spanned over 40 years but he is forever one of the Good Guys.

Radio in Mass Transit

In the Fall of 1949 Chicago was installing radio in it's buses. A short list of stations were even being considered for the right to be aired inside the buses: WMOR-AM, WBBM-AM, WFMF-AM, WBIK-FM, WJJD-FM, This was a big change. Car radios debuted in the 1930s, but these were mostly add-ons. Cars did not come with radios standard for a couple more decades.  Ford pushed it as an popular option starting in 1950 and it took off. In 1952 Blaupunkt became the first maker to offer FM receivers but AM remained king for another 30 years. Why were Transit companies and city governments so keen on installing FM radios in their transit vehicles?

The first company was Transit Radio Inc. based in Cincinnati. In July of 1948 they launched the service in Covington, Kentucky installing 100 sets in the cars of the Newport and Covington railway. A Month later St. Louis was announcing plans to install radios in their buses to get news, time and weather reports from WXOK-FM. In Washington D.C station WWDC-FM  worked out a similar deal. Eventually over 1,000 buses and rail cars were equipped. Other cities followed in the first year: Houston TX,  Wilkes-Barre PA, Worcester MA, Huntington WV. It was a captive audience that advertisement wanted a piece of. The public reaction was mixed to say the least. A survey by the Edward G. Doody Company determined that 80% of riders found radio made their ride more enjoyable, 6% found it less enjoyable and 14% were ambivalent. They complaints were initially dismissed as a vocal minority.

When mass transit vehicles added radio to existing vehicles there was nearly no consideration for acoustics.  In the previous century acoustics had been acknowledged, but poorly understood. Even symphony halls were still designed in what's called a "shoebox configuration." The world's first scientifically designed symphony hall was only built in 1900, and it wasn't much different than those that preceded it. Imagine a 48-foot long aluminum and steel tube with an antenna, spark plugs, speakers and a radio. It's a metal box, it vibrates, sounds reflect and scatter. The saving grace of the bus was in that it is usually filled with humans. Compared to steel and aluminum we're pretty squishy. We provide a lot of acoustic absorption. In Chicago General electric and WGNB-FM tested their system and got specific complaints. One account in Billboard magazine described the reaction of the Chicagoan guinea pigs:

"One of the complaints of the public tested with sample uses of transit radio here has been irritation caused by lack of controlled volume. When vehicles were crowded, top volume was used.  But when there were fewer riders continued high volume was disturbing."

In the book Broadcasting the local news Lynn Boyd Hinds described committees forming opposed to radio in transit vehicles. Some people didn't like the idea of being bombarded by advertisements. In 1949, the first year of transit radio, complaints were being filed not just in Chicago, but with the transit authorities in Washington D.C. and others. Eventually it went to the courts. In 1952, after two appeals transit radio was declared constitutional. It was a show trial, with one justice even recusing himself. You can read the legal brief here.  Broadcasting Magazine summed up the verdict with a bit too much entitlement:  

"It sanctions the birth of a new advertising medium.  It affords opportunity to a substantial number of FM broadcasters to earn a return on their investments."

It may seem today to be an over-reaction. But try to compare it to the ire you give TV networks when the commercials are louder than the programs. The problem some thought, was really just one of volume. There was a valid argument for this. While loud speakers were already 70 years old, the electric amplifier was not. More here. Without a a modern amplifier, loud speakers aren't very loud in 1949 they were using tube amps, not solid state. Tubes themselves barely date to 1907 with DeForest. Radio was listed to at home in the parlor, car radios were a luxury.  So in every practical sense, these engineers had little prior work to base their implementation on.

General Electric, REI and Stromberg-Carlson came to the rescue with radios that automatically adjusted volume based on the number of riders. 21 Cities were using the devices so thsi was no small market.  Stromberg-Carlson probably got some Chicago contracts for virtue of being a local company. Alfred Stromgberg and Androv Carlson founded their first company in 1894, then a series of others. In 1910 they began making headsets, and other radio parts. They like others tried to tackle the problem in 1950, but as advertisers shied away in the face of the very public court cases... the service faded  away.