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.

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.

The Billboard Rhythm & Blues DJ Spotlight

DJ Spotlight was a section in the Rhythm & Blues section of Billboard Magazine. Their Rhythm & Blues section itself goes back to at least July of 1952. It was a different era. Billboard still had both weekly Vaudeville and Burlesque sections.

It's original focus was on record reviews and charts as you'd expect. That same year, Bob Rolontz took over the "Rhythm & Blues Notes" column from Hal Webman. Mr. Kal Rudman was a contributing editor to the section starting in 1964. The column had been running since the middle of 1950, and addressed R&B more seriously as an industry. It was still full of record releases, and artist signings but it also covered R&B venue news, and both radio station and record label moves. Rolontz joined Billboard as a reporter in 1951, having grown up in radio. His father owned WCAU in Philadelphia. More here.

The Rhythm & Blues section fell under Music and Record news. But it didn't run in every issue. The spotlight ran irregularly. There was one spotlight it's first month, but three times in the following April. By March there was a spotlight every week. But back in the January 2nd issue there isn't a Rhythm & Blues section at all.  Because of that inconsistency I've broken out the below chart by week to indicate not just who is featured, but also if there was a DJ Spotlight at all. No DJ appeared more than once but some stations appeared multiple times. Out of 52 weeks only 37 DJs were spotlighted, and of those only one was a woman: Ruby "Lady Cool Breeze" Lewis of 890 KBYE-AM [More here].

Perhaps the most interesting discovery is that the spotlighted DJs are not all African-American. Both Charlie Brown of WLOU and the inimitable Porky Chedwick of WAMO were profiled. In a modern context it would be politically correct to see a race-agnostic chart or feature like that. I am not sure that's how it was intended or perceived way back in 1965.

Then suddenly in November, after the DJ Spotlight on Larry Daley, the feature just stopped. If it had been in December you might have expected it to re-start the following year.  But there were no Rhythm & Blues spotlights to come in January of 1966; and none ever again. It ended as abruptly as it began, without any explanation. The timing lines up with the departure of Rolontz for a VP job at Atlantic records but correlation is not causation. 

Date	Issue	Name	Call sign	City
01/02/1965	Vol. 77, No. 1	none
01/09/1965	Vol. 77, No.2	none
01/16/1965	Vol. 77, No. 3	none
01/23/1965	Vol. 77, No. 4	none
01/30/1965	Vol. 77, No. 5	Paul "Fat Daddy" Johnson	WSID	Baltimore, MD
02/06/1965	Vol. 77, No.6	George Hudson	WNJR	Newark, NJ
02/13/1965	Vol. 77, No. 7	none
02/20/1965	Vol. 77, No. 8	none
02/27/1965	Vol. 77, No. 9	E. Rodney Jones	WVON	Chicago, IL
03/06/1965	Vol. 77, No.10	George Woods	WDAS	Philadelphia, PA
03/13/1965	Vol. 77, No. 11	Jimmy Byrd	WILD	Boston, MA
03/20/1965	Vol. 77, No. 12	Charlie Brown	WLOU	Louisville, KY
03/27/1965	Vol. 77, No. 13	Porky Chedwick	WAMO	Pittsburgh, PA
04/03/1965	Vol. 77, No. 14	Bill Curtis	WUFO	Buffalo, NY
04/10/1965	Vol. 77, No. 15	Milton "Butterball" Smith	WMBM	Miami, FL
04/17/1965	Vol. 77, No. 16	Ruby "Lady Cool Breeze" Lewis	KBYE	Oklahoma, City
04/24/1965	Vol. 77, No. 17	George Truehart	WDAO	Dayton, OH
05/01/1965	Vol. 77, No. 18	Eugene Potts	WGIV	Charlotte, NC
05/08/1965	Vol. 77, No. 19	Chuck Moore	KPRS	Kansas City, MO
05/15/1965	Vol. 77, No. 20	Eddie Castleberry	WVKO	Columbus, OH
05/22/1965	Vol. 77, No. 21	Al Jefferson	WWIN	Baltimore, MD
05/29/1965	Vol. 77, No. 22	Edward "Pee Wee" Harris	WXKW	Troy, NY
06/05/1965	Vol. 77, No. 23	Sir Walter (Raleigh)	WAMO	Pittsburgh, PA
06/12/1965	Vol. 77, No. 24	Jerry Thomas	KNOK	Dallas, TX
06/19/1965	Vol. 77, No. 25	William Johnson	WUST	Washington, DC
06/26/1965	Vol. 77, No. 26	Bob Hudson	WCIN	Cinncinatti, OH
07/03/1965	Vol. 77, No. 27	Chet McDowell	KYOK	Houston, TX
07/10/1965	Vol. 77, No. 28	Chuck Cunningham	WLOU	Louiville, KY
07/17/1965	Vol. 77, No. 29	none
07/24/1965	Vol. 77, No. 30	Tom Reed	KPRS	Kansas City, MO
07/31/1965	Vol. 77, No. 31	William "Boy" Brown	KJET	Beaumont, TX
08/07/1965	Vol. 77, No. 32	"Big" Ben Tipton	KBYE	Oklahoma, City
08/14/1965	Vol. 77, No. 33	Bill Williams	WCHB	Detroit, MI
08/21/1965	Vol. 77, No. 34	Bill Moss	WVKO	Columbus, OH
08/28/1965	Vol. 77, No. 35	Dr. Bop (Hoyt Locke)	WAWA	Milwaukee, WI
09/04/1965	Vol. 77, No. 36	none
09/11/1965	Vol. 77, No. 37	"Cousin" Herb Lance	WERD	Atlanta, GA
09/18/1965	Vol. 77, No. 38	"Skipper" Lee Frasier	KCOH	Houston, TX
09/25/1965	Vol. 77, No. 39	Larry Dean	WWIN	Baltimore, MD
10/02/1965	Vol. 77, No. 40	Clifton "King Bee" Smith	KCOH	Houston, TX
10/09/1965	Vol. 77, No. 41	Ben Miles	WANT	Richmond, VA
10/16/1965	Vol. 77, No. 42	Rick Darnell	KPRS	Kansas City, MO
10/23/1965	Vol. 77, No. 43	Ruben T. Washington	KNOK	Dallas, TX
10/30/1965	Vol. 77, No. 44	Kelson "Chop-Chop" Fisher	WWIN	Baltimore, MD
11/06/1965	Vol. 77, No. 45	Larry Daley	WCIN	Cinncinatti, OH
11/13/1965	Vol. 77, No. 46	none
11/20/1965	Vol. 77, No. 47	none
11/27/1965	Vol. 77, No. 48	none
12/04/1965	Vol. 77, No. 49	none
12/11/1965	Vol. 77, No. 50	none
12/18/1965	Vol. 77, No. 51	none
12/25/1965	Vol. 77, No. 52	none

WUSS: The United States of Soul!

The radio metro Atlantic City - Cape May is a mixed market. The chart is a top 15 and in addition to local stations, a third of the list are stations which also chart in Philly and then a few radio stations Trenton. But that's a geographic problem with New Jersey. Most of their radio band is sandwiched in between the major metros of New York and Philadelphia, and in addition to Trenton also the Allentown-Bethlehem, Sussex and Wilmington MSAs.  The markets are easily 85% rimshot. So I'd like to zoom in on the history of a station that's 100% Atlantic City and always has been: WUSS.

In 1940 the local Atlantic City radio market was just one station 1200 WBAB-AM. There were no other local stations. Actually, at the time there were only 11 radio station in all of New Jersey, and some of those shared time. See below:

City	Frequency	Call sign	Licensee
Asbury Park	1280	WCAP	Radio Industries Broadcast Co.
Atlantic City	1200	WBAB	Press Union Publishing
Bridgeton	1210	WSNJ	Eastern States Broadcasting
Camden	1280	WCAM	City of Camden
Jersey City	940	WAAT	Bremer Broadcasting Corp.
Jersey City	1450	WHOM	New Jersey Broadcasting Corp
Newark	1250	WHBI	May Radio Broadcast Corp
Newark	710	WOR	Bamberger Broadcasting Service
Redbank	1210	WBRB	Monmouth Broadcasting
Trenton	1280	WTNJ	WOAX Inc.
Zarephath	1350	WAWZ	Pillar of Fire

As you can see above WTNJ, WCAP and WCAM had a three-way share time agreement, but in addition to that WHBI and WNEW has a share-time arrangement as did WBRB, WFAS and WGBB. But before the end of 1939 WBAB was part of a lawsuit with WILM and WAZL to stop Neptune Broadcasting from executing a CP for a new station on 1420 kHz in Atlantic City. (that station would be WFPG) Their entire basis was "economic injury", essentially arguing the metro can't support three stations. This would turn out to be prophetic. Strangely the FCC docket claims there are 12 radio stations in New Jersey, listing WPG as the only other stick in Atlantic city. Regardless of the other merits of that lawsuit, 1100 WPG was off air by 1940. The station was owned by Atlantic City municipal government and was on a share-time arrangement with WLWL in New York. It was sold in 1937 to John Iraci and Arde Bulova, who were trying to consolidate radio properties to make WOV a full-time station.They shuttered it and gave those hours to WLWL, later becoming WNEW.

So from the sign off of WPG in 1939 to the sign on of WFPG in 1941 WBAB was the only radio station in Atlantic City. They operated as a CBS affiliate in the 1940s and in the broadcasting annual of 1941 you can see that they're moving to 1230 kHz, but by the time the 1942 annual was published they were already on 1490. It was a clearly a quick frequency shuffle. It wasn't until 1947 that another local CP was approved and 1340 WMID made them a trio, unless you also count 100.7 WBAB-FM which had signed on in May of 1947.

WBAB went off the air in 1949. (Some guides list them as late as 1951.) But the cause was litigious. The Press Union lost the licenses of WBAB-AM and FM due to "unauthorized transfer of control" of the those stations. The case was notable enough to be referenced in multiple subsequent FCC rulings.

In 1955 a new CP was granted to Atlantic City Broadcasting for 1490 in Atlantic City. This station was to be WLDB. This is where the history gets really interesting. As late as 1974 WLDB was just another NBC affiliate playing a lot of country music.  But I noticed that in the 1956 Broadcasting Annual the station was listed as airing 10 hours of "Negro" programming. That's certainly not the most in New Jersey, but it was the most in Atlantic City. Perhaps that was something that foreshadowed the station's future. 

City	Frequency	Call sign	Hours of Negro Programming
Atlantic City	1450	WFPG	4 hours
Atlantic City	1490	WLDB	10 hours
Atlantic City	1340	WMID	7 hours
Bridgeton	1210	WSNJ	1 hour
Camden	1310	WCAM	77 hours
Camden	800	WKDN	0.5 hours
Newark	1280	WHBI	19.5 hours
Newark	1430	WNJR	130 hours
Trenton	1260	WBUD	7 hours
Trenton	920	WTTM	2.5 hours
Wildwood	1230	WCMC	0.25 hours

In November of 1974 WLDB was bought by the Atlantic City Community Broadcasting Inc. (ACCBI). In come documents they are listed as the Atlantic Business Community Development Corporation (ABCD). The corporation was owned by a group of local African-American businessmen. The station went dark in April and 2 weeks later a soul station debuted. By 1976 they had changed the callsign to WUSS which stood for ("We're the United States of Soul!") and the format was changed to focus on the black community. The station was a member of both the Mutual Black Network and the National Black Network but so were WNJR and WTNJ by 1977.

This 20-year stretch was the stations strongest period, lasting into the 1990s. The ringleader of the group was Larry Hayes. He had been a DJ at WFOX in Milwaukee, WI;  KFIW in Fort Leonard Wood, MO; WJLD and WENN in Birmingham, AL;  WGPR in Detroit, MI; and both KALO and KOKY in Little Rock , AR. Hayes left his career in Birmingham under strange circumstances. A big Atlantic City property owner Jim "JC" Cuffee helped make the arrangements. How J.C. and Hayes connected I don't know. But I do know Jim Cuffee is a man who should have a book written about him. His name comes up in news articles about Liberia, the infamous Klinic Hotel, Black nationalist movements, and the civil rights movement. He's a ghost in the machine.

WUSS attracted star talent like Larry Hicks, Larry Hayes, Lee "Brown Sugar" Sherman, Ron Allen, Eddie O'Jay, Stan Brooks, Cooks Books, Kingsley Smith, Ellis B. "Bruce Ellis" Feaster, Vernon Robbins, Cleo Rowe, and William K. Fisher. DJs Vernon “Boogie Child” Robbins, and Curtis Grey were former WLDB staff they inherited. But they also reputedly inherited a debt of $300,000 from WLDB. There was a sheriffs sale of some of their equipment, which was bought up by rain-maker Jim Cuffee; thus settling their legacy debt. Nonetheless the station never did well financially. More here.


Most station histories attribute the fall of WUSS to the general trend away from music on AM band. That certainly didn't help. However, WUSS actually lost their license in 1990 at renewal time. The owners of ACCBI; Larry Hayes, and Fred "Eric" Anderson, had some hard questions from the FCC about their EEO policy. They had complaints, and had been sued and then had subsequently concealed it in later FCC filings. This is very naughty. In 1990 the Commission made a decision which included the most cutting remarks I've ever seen in one them publish:

"The facts surrounding Mr. Hayes failure to report the case are not the only issue of concern. The Commission has long had rules that prohibit broadcasting stations from discriminating against female employees... Mr. Hayes ultimate fall back position was that he thought that the only discrimination that the Commission cared about was race discrimination. There is overwhelming evidence that he knew this was not the truth... During his testimony Mr. Hayes was untruthful and withheld true facts about his conduct. He frequently had to be confronted with objective evidence before he would agree to the facts as they really were... he engaged in conduct as a station manager which is contrary to Commission rules and policy, and he lied in the course of a Commission proceeding about his conduct. ACCBI is not qualified to become a Commission licensee."

Lenore Frazier had filed suit against the station, the company, GM Larry Hayes and 10 John Does in a 1985 lawsuit for sexual harassment, and for unlawful termination over those very grievances. The Superior court in New Jersey ruled in her favor and awarded compensatory and punitive damages.  On May 15, 1986 the ACCBI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Their landlord/benefactor Jim Cuffee tried to evict the radio station and padlocked the doors. WUSS went dark and ACCBI had to sue him. Eventually Cuffee won out, probably as their main creditor. In 1991 radio guides list him as the station president. But by the 1996 guide the station is listed as silent.

To his credit, Jim tried to run the station for years. The station rebranded as "1490 JAMs" but continued to decline. After a short period of running satellite-fed programming, it went silent in late 1995. WUSS was in the hands of court-appointed trustee Allan B. Mendelson by March of 1996; Cuffee was selling. South Jersey Radio already owned WOND in Atlantic City, so to buy WUSS they required a waiver, which the FCC granted.

South Jersey Radio changed the station's city of license to Pleasantville, NJ and relocated its antenna to the WOND broadcasting site. The call letters were changed to WGYM and the format flipped to sports talk. Things declined more. In 2001 the WUSS calls returned and they tried a gospel format. they tried simulcasting WTKU, WIP, WOND, even WBON. In 2005 they tried the Air America network and the new calls of WTAA. Today they are running syndicated "sports betting radio" as WBSS. Where is Jim Cuffee when you need him?

DJ Frederick McKinley Jones

The first African American to build a radio station was Frederick McKinley Jones. He hailed from the small town of Hallock, MN. How small?  The population was 981 at the 2010 census. It's population probably peaked around 1960; the census that year put the population at 1,552. It's so far into north west Minnesota that it touches both Canada and North Dakota. The movie Fargo was filmed there. So it is unclear why Jones, a man born in Cincinnati would move over 1,000 miles arriving next door to nowhere. More here.

Most biographies of Jones point out that he was orphaned at age nine, and had little formal education. The details are a little uglier. He was born in 1893 to a white father and black mother. His mother deserted him, and at the age of 7 he was sent to live with a priest in Kentucky. His father died when he was nine. At the age of 11 he ran away and went back to Cincinnati and worked odd jobs. He turned out to be a mechanical genius, and became foreman of an auto-shop. In 1912, he landed in Hallock, Minnesota where he obtained a job as a farm mechanic. He was 19.

After serving in the army during World War I, he returned to Hallock, MN and this is where his career intersects with radio. Every biography mentions that he became interested in radio and built the first radio station transmitter in Hallock. Today there are zero radio station in Hallock. The nearest audible station is 950 CFAM-AM; 50 miles away in Altona, Manitoba, Canada. The closest US station is 1340 KXPO-AM in Grafton, ND. It might be audible when the weather is just right... So what station was this? The book The Entrepreneurial Spirit of African American Inventors by Patricia Carter Sluby adds a little detail.

"He began to invent things such as an improved microphone, called a 'condenser type' and fiddled with wireless transmitters. Jones and a friend built a powerful 500-watt radio station that aired short programs three days a week."

Unfortunately, Sluby doesn't name the call letters. But if you browse through old radio guides there was only one radio station in Hallock: KGFK. In 1929 the Radio Service Bulletin lists it as owned by R. W. Lautzenheiser and O. R. Mitchell. The frequency was 1340 kc operating at 50 watts. Earlier sources list the station as owned by Kittson County Enterprise the frequency as 1200. By June of 1930 the station changed hands and moved to Moorehead, MN, licensed to Red River Broadcasting and moved to 1500 kc at 200 watts.

So if we follow the timeline, Jones founded the station sometime after WWI. By the mid 1920s it was owned by Kittson County Enterprise newspaper publisher. By 1928 it was in the hands of  R. W. Lautzenheiser and O. R. Mitchell. But in March of 1929 Radio world lists the partners as O. R. Mitchell, J.E. Bouvette, and N.L. Cotter. Regardless the partners sold the station to Red River who took the license to Morehead. White's radio guide lists it operating in the Fall of 1927, But it's also in the CKLC Radio log in an undated edition that is believe to be from 1926.

In 1934 Red River began the process to move KGFK from Moorhead to Duluth. Despite a legal challenge they succeeded. [SOURCE] The FCC decided that the primary service from WEBC was adequate and granted the move in 1936. Red River already got a CP for KDAL-AM in 1937 which also in Duluth on 1490 which may be why it moved to 610 in 1941. Or it may be that they are the same station. The Federal Communications Bar Journal of 1938 clearly notes:

"In December of 1933, the majority stockholders in the Red River Broadcasting Company entered into a contract with Dalton A. LeMasurier and Charles LeMasurier. The contract provided that the licensee of KDAL (formerly KGFK) would apply to the Comission..."

A 1940 FCC report further notes:

"The application for the removal of Station KGFK from Moore- head to Duluth was originally granted without a hearing by the Federal Radio Commission on January 30, 1934... Thereafter the application was heard and this Commission, by its decision adopted February 26, 1935, 1 F. C. C. 215, granted a permit to construct the station at Duluth... When the station was constructed at Duluth, Minnesota, its call letters were changed from KGFK to KDAL."

This confirms that the first radio station built by the first black radio engineer is still on air in Duluth today as KDAL. It is unclear why their official history omits this. Today the old KGFK call letters live in nearby Grand Forks; though it's a different station. They began broadcasting in 1959 under the call sign KRAD. Jones went on to co-found Thermo-King, and consult for the U.S. Department of Defense. He died in 1961, and was posthumously awarded the the National Medal of Technology in 1991.

Who is Bill Branch?

On November 3rd of 1947, the Chicago Tribune quoted the legendary Ebony magazine article "Sixteen Sepia Spielers" and humble bragged about the pioneering black DJs fof the greater Chicago area: Jack L. Cooper, Al Benson, Jack Gibson and Bill Branch. That local and contemporary corroboration supports their existence. Benson, Gibson and Cooper are well documented DJs. But Bill Branch at WEAW-AM... let's just say there are difficulties with the Bill Branch story.

There are exceedingly few contemporary print references attesting to the existence of Mr. Branch.  Firstly, the call sign of the station appears to be incorrect. There appears to have been some confusion on the part of the writer between the AM and FM designations. The Ebony article clearly referred to WEAW as a "kilocycle" station, in other words... operating on the AM band. But 1330 WEAW-AM didn't sign on until 1953. However, 105.1 WEAW-FM was on air in 1947, and it was brokering airtime to all comers. Note: this FM novelty also makes the obscure Bill Branch possibly the first black DJ on FM radio.

The WEAW-AM station errantly referred to in that Ebony article, began to operate in the 1950s, as a daytime-only repeater of WEAW-FM.  By the early 1970s, the station primarily aired brokered ethnic and religious programs. Then by the late 70s it tried an Adult contemporary format before backsliding into brokered programming again. In 1979, the station tried out a Christian contemporary format as "Praise 1330" and changed call letters to WPRZ. They changed calls to WEAZ in 1981 then to WSSY in 1987 with a flip to AC as "Sunny 1330." In 1990 it became WKTA with a doomed attempt at hard rock on the AM dial.

The station founder, Ed A. Wheeler, was quoted in a 1951 issue of Broadcasting Magazine referring to the station's prior FIVE years of sales, listing the sign-on in February of 1947, which can only be the FM stick. He named that station after himself:  Edward A. Wheeler.

Somewhat arbitrarily I came to believe that DJ Bill Branch was none other than the playwright William Blackwell Branch. While he was born in Connecticut in 1927, he graduated from Northwestern University in 1949... in Evanston, IL.  He enrolled at Northwestern with scholarships won from the Elks and from Pepsi Cola for oratory. At first, my theory rested entirely on name, time and place, but in reading his bibliography, I increasingly found context. For example, especially early in his career, Branch wrote dramas for television... i.e. for broadcast. Here's a partial list:

• This Way, ABC, 1955
• What Is Conscience?, CBS, 1955
• Let's Find Out, National Council of Church, 1956
• Light in the Southern Sky, NBC, 1958
• Legacy of a Prophet, Educational Broadcasting Corp., 1959
• The City (documentary series), Educational Broadcasting Corp., 1962–64
• Still a Brother: Inside the Black Middle Class, NET, 1968
• The Case of Non-Working Workers, NBC, 1972
• The 20 Billion-Dollar-Rip-Off, NBC, 1972
• No Room to Run, No Place to Hide, NBC, 1972
• The Black Church in New York, NBC, 1973.
• Afro-American Perspectives (series), PBS, 1973-74.
• A Letter from Booker T., PBS, 1987.

My best evidence is an article Branch wrote about his own studies for Opportunity magazine "The Journal of Negro Life" for the April-June 1947 issue. This was published in on or around the time he was supposedly on air. In his own words, Bill makes a passing reference to his radio resume. The reference is brief, but specific.

"I've been at Northwestern for a year and a half now and already my future is beginning to take shape. A six month's run with the famous stage hit "Anna Lucasta," first place in two nationally recognized college oratorical contests, and a berth on the growing radio show, "Democracy U.S.A." have helped to bring closer to meaning, that distant term, "the future."

And there is was. The Program "Democracy USA" was not only real, but utterly ground-breaking. It was a drama about black achievement, written primarily by Richard Durham.  (Robert Lucas also wrote for the program) Durham started out in the radio division of the WPA-sponsored Illinois Writers Project. He wrote for local Chicago radio shows in the 1940s while also working as an editor and journalist for the Chicago Defender newspaper and Ebony magazine. Interestingly, Durham is connected at both ends of this story, giving rise to the possibility that he planted the young Mr. Branch in the list. However, The only problem is that "Democracy USA"aired on WBBM-AM not WEAW. But, there is one last connection I unearthed. In 1947, Radio Daily magazine published the following verbage:

"WEAW Evanston FM station, carried more than 1,872 live remote broadcasts from Northwestern University during the station's first 52 weeks of operation and claims that was more live programs than were broadcast by all the other Chicago area stations combined." 

So Bill Branch didn't need to go to WEAW, perhaps WEAW came to him. We are left with a heap of inference. It is entirely possible that Branch was on air at WBBM on one or more episodes of Democracy USA. It is further possible that at some time in 1947 Branch bought some time on WEAW to host his own program, or that he appeared regularly on those remote broadcasts held at his own campus in 1947. But after all that context, we are left with no proof.

Sixteen Sepia Spielers

I've never found the original article, but it's referenced in a few books and one very notable Billboard article by Nelson George in November of 1985. Over half a century later I have no way to vet their stats but it's all too believable. The key claim is as follows "In 1947, there were three thousand disc jockeys in the country, but only sixteen were black."

It appeared on page 44-47 in their December 1947 issue. Four years later Mr. George wrote a book The Death of Rhythm and Blues and the book appears again in the works cited. But it also was cited in Doowop: The Chicago Scene by Robert Pruter, Nothing but Love in God's Water by Robert Darden, African Americans and the Media by Catherine Squires. (For the record DJs had been called Spielers since at least 1939.) Their definition of a Spieler is unclear but we can infer much from the list itself (below) we can exclude one-shot performers. These are DJs with a music program, not news programs.

DJ	CALLS	CITY
Ed Baker	WJLB	Detroit, MI
Al Benson	WJJD	Chicago, IL
Bill Branch	WEAW	Evanston, IL
Ramon Bruce	WHAT	Philadelphia, PA
Jessie Burks	KXLW	St. Louis, MO
Jack L. Cooper	WSBC	Chicago, IL
Van Douglas	WJBK	Detroit, MI
Jack Gibson	WCFL	Chicago, IL
Bess Harris	KING	Seattle, WA
Eddie Honesty	WJOB	Hammond, IL
Harold Jackson	WOOK	Washington D.C.
Sam Jackson	WHIN	Providence, RI
Emerson Parker	WQQW	Washington D.C.
Sam Price	WPEN	Philadelphia, PA
Norfley Whitted	WDNC	Durham, NC
Woody Woodard	WLIB	Brooklyn, NY

I've written about most of these DJs at one time or another. So perhaps that is why Major Robinson for was not included for his NBC radio column was back in 1948... but he was also one year too late for the article. Mary Dee Dudley, the first black woman to be a radio DJ misses the list by one year. Holmes "Daddy-O'Daylie of WMAQ misses the mark. Even the great Bill Hawkins at WHK misses by just a few months. This was only a list of black DJs active in 1947. The year was very early in the struggle for civil rights so it's certain that the list is short.  But some of the omissions are notable: Bill Cook at WAAT, Dan Burley at WWRL, and Lavada Durst at KVET to name a few... but only a few.

But I should comment on math and veracity:  The number 16 is very specific and allows me to suggest possible omissions. The number 3,000 is clearly an estimate. According to a November 1947 report by the FCC there were only 142 commercial radio stations operating in the U.S. in 1942.  Radio researcher Jeff Miller was able to add 6 non-commercial stations [LINK] to that tally for a grand total of 148.  So that 3,000 number is assuming 20.27 DJs per radio station, and considering the number of part time radio stations in that era, is actually plausible. But it also means that 0.533% of all DJs in 1947 were black or that 99.46666% of all DJs were white. So adding a few names to this list changes exactly nothing.

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.

Little Lord Fauntleroy Bandy

Even the great Jerry Blavat called John Bandy an influence.  But before Bandy was in the Philadelphia area, he was a DJ in DC. In the book Divided Soul, by David Ritz, is a single reference to a certain leganday Washington D.C. area DJ:

"Among the black kids back in the neighborhood, the fifties in D.C. was an age of hot curlers, outrageous conks, and do rags.  The crowd was greasing up and straightening out their hair. It was a time when Little Lord Fauntleroy Bandy ruled the airwaves at WUST..."

In the fifties radio was about showman ship ans shtick. The Lord Fauntleroy shtick was genius. On 1120 WUST-AM, a 250 watt daytimer he needed it. He hammed it up and wore tailored suits with a waist coat and an ascot.  He brought hours of the hippest R&B to DC airwaves. As the Lord Fauntleroy Bandy, he spoke in a fake British accent on air. The accent was perfect, so perfect many people thought that he was white. But even off air Bandy didn't sound like he was from the Mid-Atlantic, he and his family were from Jamaica. Jet Magazine relished linking the dapper John Bandy to various singers and starlets. In 1954 it was Beauty Shop owner Meta Cardoza, before that TV singer June Gaskins. More here.

In 1960 Bob Klein hired Bandy at WDAS-FM in Philadelphia, where he became the assistant general manager. Multiple sources describe Bandy as adlib "rapping" over records at WDAS, which would be one of the earliest references to rapping in a hip-hop context. One of those sources was his fellow WDAS DJ and rapper,  Jocko Henderson. "The Lord of Rhyme bringin' the sound from out of the ground to your part of town!"

By 1963, Bandy was appointed a WDAS corporate vice president by station CEO Max M. Leon. Bandy later had a short-lived stint hosting TV talk show on Channel 5, WNEW-TV. It debuted in February of 1971 and lasted eight episodes. He didn't really need the job, he'd married Sun Oil heiress Roberta Pew in 1976. The book Voice Over by William Barlow claims he retired to a country estate in Bryn Mawr, outside Philadelphia. In retirement they funded a number of civic projects and organizations. Bandy died in the late 1990s.

I have often wondered if he or Sir Walter Raleigh (John Christian) on WAMO in Pittsburgh (and later WEEP) picked up the faux-British shtick first. Christian, who started out at WILY-AM, also liberally applied a British accent, and wore a English butler suit with tails and a monocle. Christian first hit the air in about 1955 so they were active more or less concurrently. But I suspect either may have gotten it from Lord Buckley in one way or another. Buckley was actually British, but his lordship too was self-enobled. Buckley claims he got his shtick from another DC area hipster... Cab Calloway.

Ethel Waters on WGV-AM

 Ethel Waters was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist; active between 1919 and 1959. She died on September 1, 1977, aged 80 from cancer. Three of her recordings were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame post-mortem and you know all three of them: Stormy Weather, Am I Blue, and Dinah. Her all-too-late accolades were the result of her career peaking in an era when it was much harder to be black and in the music biz. Nonetheless there is an apocryphal radio first in her career. The much-respected jazz book Riding on a Blue Note by Gary Giddins even refers to this early black radio first in passing: 

"The Black Swan [record label] house pianist was Fletcher Henderson... Henderson organized a band to accompany her on a tour of the South, where they became the first blacks heard on the radio."

The context her is an early Ethel Waters tour. She had done her first recordings for Black Swan in 1921. She recorded with Black Swan from 1921 through 1923. Then in early 1924, Paramount records bought the label. (She stayed with paramount only one year before signing to Columbia in 1925.) This quick succession makes dates difficult.  Collectively record geeks have solved much of this for us here, and here].

From this discography we know that she recorded 14 sides (multiple takes) recorded in four sessions, one in May of 1921, then three in 1922, one in June another in July and a final session in December of 1922. So it is generally believed this occurred while she was still active on Black swan. But she made no recordings for them in 1923 (though the 1922 recordings were pressed) and none in 1924. So the 1921 and 1922 dates are generally more reliable.

WGV-AM was first licensed on March 21st, 1922. The station was owned by the Interstate Electric Co.  Some sources state that it was "operated" by the New Orleans Item newspaper. But that didn't begin printing until 1924 so the relationship may have begun later. Note, a maritime station also used those calls in Galveston, TX starting around 1914. More here. But the station is known to have been broadcasting before it was licensed. According to C. Joseph Pusater in his book Enterprise in Radio our WGV had already been on air over a year before it had a license. So in early January 1921, Dorr Simmons, a factory manager for the Interstate Electric Co. began broadcasting phonograph music on his experimental station.

Sad side note: Dorr Simmons continued to work in radio for a decade. But his career ended abruptly in November of 1932. He was an engineer at KTBS in Shreveport, LA and "came in contact with a section of the transmitter carrying 5,200 volts." Multiple newspapers mentioned his death. One even specified that he touched a radio amplifier while installing new equipment. He was 44 years old.

I would assume Ethel Waters and Fletcher Henderson played on WGV after they did their first recording sessions for Swan in May of 1921, and no later than their recording session in December of 1922. The FRC had only been assigning licenses since October of 1920 so it was not unusual that a station not yet have a call sign. Their appearance on radio was very early in the history of black radio. But with the uncertain date it is hard to definitively say it is the first.

Earl Fatha Hines on KDKA

I have written often about the beginnings of black radio: the first appearances of African Americans in broadcasts that also demographically target African Americans. There were blacks portrayed on Amos & Andy but no one could honestly refer to it as black radio. But outside documented appearances we have some that are more apocryphal... such as this. But the site Pittsburgh Music History flat out claims "He and Lois Deppe were the first African American musicians ever to perform on radio in 1921. "

Thus it is reputed that Earl "Fatha" Hines performed on KDKA-AM as early as 1921. It it can be firmly corroborated it would make him one of the first African Americans on radio ever. The KDKA call sign was assigned in November of 1920, So it is just this side of possible. But the first problem is that Earl Kenneth Hines was only born on December 28, 1903. That would have made him just 18 years old at the time of the broadcast. But the plausibility meter ticks upward from there.

Hines was born in Duquesne, PA; just 12 miles from Pittsburgh. Earl's father was a musician, his mother a church organist. Hines took lessons from an early age and by the time he was eleven he was playing organ at his local church. By the time he was 17 he'd left home to play with Lois Deppe & his Symphonian Serenaders. This band toured regionally and played New York City. It was this group that broadcast over KDKA.

Defining "firsts" in the earliest days of radio is a very dubious proposition. Earl Hines makes the claim in his autobiography The World of Earl Hines (written with Stanley Dance). Academic journals such as the African American Review have repeated the claim. The definitive text on black radio, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio by William Barlow also makes the same claim and further quotes Deppe describing the community reaction "the street was all blocked with people and we were just mobbed..."

But the most reputable claim is often the oldest. A July 1953 issue of Jet Magazine shows Hines and Deppe celebrating the 32nd anniversary of their appearance on KDKA. The article gives the date of that appearance as Saturday, July 9th 1921. The article also claims they are "The first Negros to appear on an American radio station."It's not a contemporary reference. So far as I have ever found it's only stated by one prior publication: a 1951 issue of Negro Digest. It's 30 years after the fact but the consistency of the statements over time gives it a lot of credence.

Radio in Fahrenheit 451

Reading makes you smarter. Decades ago when I first read Fahrenheit 451, I overlooked a radio reference in this classic American text. In in the Ray Bradbury book, the character, Beatty,a fire captain, makes a speech about their profession burning books; and concludes it with the following words:

"I must be going. Lecture's over. I hope I've clarified things. The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is that we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought."

Online I found a dozen bunkum explanations about symbology and pseudo-happiness, and most of them miss the point. Bradbury was making a pop culture reference back in 1950. But so much time has passed that it has ceased to make sense without foot notes. The Happiness Boys and the Dixie Duo were musical groups form the 1920s and 1930s. By 1950 both would have already been considered an "oldies" groups. Today, over half a century later, they're utterly obscure.

Around 1919, an American songwriter and ragtime and jazz pianist, Eubie Blake, joined Noble Sissle, a jazz composer, singer and playwright, to become the "Dixie Duo." They performed in variety shows around America. In 1951 Blake actually came out of retirement to play USO shows. But they weren't radio stars, they played Broadway and even appeared in some talkies and even the classic 1927 silent Al Jolsen film, The Jazz Singer. Being black, they had a tough time breaking into radio prior to the 1950s.  But in coming from vaudeville and theater, they had an angle...

In 1922, Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle showcased their single “Shuffle Along” on Boston's WNAC-AM during the Boston Radio Exposition.  In 1941 Noble narrated a part of the program "Freedom's People." In January of 1954, WMGM-AM in New York hired Sissle as a disc jockey. His program focused on African American artists and jazz of course. His one-hour program "Rhythm of America" ran six days a week, Monday thru Saturday starting at 1:00 PM. He is reputed to be the station first black DJ. His program was on the air for abtou a year. Eubie Blake didn't go into radio but he was still alive in 1980 to be interviewed about vaudeville. More here.

The Happiness Boys on the other hand were huge radio stars. I've written about them before. [HERE] They were "Hobo" Jack Turner and Thomas Ernest Hare. Like other acts of the day they borrowed branding from the products that sponsored them. The insecticide Flit underwrote them and they were the Flit Soldiers. They performed as The Interwoven Pair on WJZ to hock Interwoven Socks and eventually as The Happiness Boys for Happiness Candy Stores a small chain owned by Irving Fuerst. Those radio spots started in 1923 on WEAF. In 1933 they were still together but using the name The Taystee Loafers, from yet another sponsor, the Taystee Bread Company this time on WOR. In 1936 they were still in radio but now The Gillette Gentlemen, promoting razorblades on the CBS network. By the time Fahrenheit 451 was in print, both had been dead for a decade.