We talked in the last video about the rise of rhythm and blues in the period
leading up to 1955, our birth of rock. But especially the time between 1945 and
1955, and the role of independent labels as they were able to create music that
people in urban areas wanted to buy. But they were limited by the amount of
distribution they could get, limited by how far a guy could drive, with records
in his trunk, to put them in a record store each week.
Major labels, on the other hand, had distribution networks that could get
recordings out across the country, in relatively short periods of time.
But for most of the period, up to 1955, the indies and the major labels coexisted
fairly easily. That apple cart was upset in 1955 with
the rise of rock, but we're anticipating our story.
Let's talk now about the rise of regional R&B lit radio in the 1950's.
Now as I've said before, programming, radio programming started to be directed
at an African American audience in these urban areas.
Because radio broadcasters started to realize that there was a significant
population to which they could, you know sell product.
And you may think, well that's a kind of a cynical way to view but after all radio
is a for-profit enterprise. The music is there really only to get you
listening, so they can sell you a product.
I mean, it seems like a cynical thing to say, but that's the way that business
works. You don't have any advertisers, you can't
stay on the air. And so from that point of view, you could
say well, this advertising thing is not such a good thing.
But on the other hand, if you think about the fact that we're at that point African
Americans are living in a very segregated country, where there are certain stores
they could go into quite innocently to buy something, where they can be turned
away simply because they were black. There was restaurants where they might
go, where they might want to get a meal but they were turned away simply because
they were black. If they were listening to one of these
stations and they heard an advertiser advertising on this station, they knew
they could go to that business. Be it a restaurant or a theater or or a
store or something like that and their business would be welcome.
So to a certain extent, these radio stations, even though they were about
selling advertising and using music, that they thought black listeners would
appreciate to do so. Were actually providing a public service
in that they were helping folks out from that point of view, at least that's a
kind of more positive way to think about it.
Some of the most important R&B stations that rose up were WDIA in Memphis, and on
the, on the air there were Rufus Thomas and BB King.
You thought he was originally a blues guitarist, he's always been a blues
guitarist but he was DJ in Memphis. Also in Memphis, WHBQ, which featured
Dewey Phillips, the guy who originally played That's All Right Mama on the radio
in 1954 after Elvis Presley had recorded it at Sun Records.
WLAC in Nashville, Gene Nobles, John R Richbourg and Hoss Allen, were the DJ's
there. WGST in Atlanta featured Daddy Sears.
Out in Los Angeles, on KFVD, you had Hunter Hancock.
All of these guys were on the air doing shows that featured exclusively black
musicians, R&B musicians. So, when Alan Freed comes along in 1951,
First in WJW in Cleveland, and starts to put his show on the air.
He's already aware that these other guys have been doing this.
In fact, there are stories that Freed would call those stations and ask the
kinds of things they were playing. Now, not all of these DJs were black, but
they sounded black on the air. And so did Alan Freed in 1951.
In fact, listeners, black listeners, would come down to the station to see him
when they knew he was finished, and they would be surprised to see this white guy
coming out and they would be who's this guy, we were looking for Alan Freed.
Well, I'm Alan Freed. Really?
I didn't know you were white. Well, this just goes to show that the,
the, some of these sort of, race distinctions that we like to draw are
sometimes a little bit more fluid than we, than we, than we imagine.
Well, in the case of Alan Freed he ends up moving with the success of his show in
Cleveland, to New York, WN WINS changing his his he was, the original show was
called The Moondog Show. But it turned out there was a panhandler
in New York by the name of the Moondog who tried to sue him, so he just changed
it to The Rock and Roll Party. Because he changed it to The Rock and
Roll Party, and because it was so famous because it was coming out of New York, he
says that he invited the word Rock and Roll.
Well, however that may be, the fact is that because the radio population that
had been part of the national audience up to 1945 was now migrating to television,
that offer these opportunities in radio. R&B Regional Radio folks took advantage
of that. They started to play a lot of this black
music, because black folks were now moving up from the rural areas into the
northern cities, and so there was an opportunity for to sell advertising on
these stations. And so far so good everything's fine,
what could possibly be disruptive about the fact that a black community is
listening to black music on a black station.
And going into businesses and frequenting businesses that welcome their business.
Everything is fine, but the problem is, or the problem came to be, not a problem
for us, we celebrate it, was that white teenagers could also hear those stations.
Because just about this time radio's were starting to become portable.
You could have a radio in your car, right, you could get away from what your,
what your parents were listening to, and you could listen to this music in the
car. You might never be able to go into the
neighborhoods where these records are sold.
You might never be allowed to go into the clubs where this music is played, but you
could turn on the radio and hear it any time.
So, what happens in the first half of the 50's is that these shows get rolling,
because people think they're playing music to black audiences they are, but
the white teenagers are listening in as well.
And they don't, people don't find out about this until disc jockeys like Alan
Freed start to put on shows where, you know, they put on a show that they think
is going to be, is going to ha, it's going to have all black artists on it.
They think it's going to be attended by an all black audience, and all of a
sudden, there's all these white kids there.
And they're saying to themselves, where did these kids come from?
Right. And that ability of this regional R&B
radio, to reach a white audience, is to a large extent responsible for how it is
that music started to catch hold as the music of America's youth.
And it plays a big part in how it is that rock and roll comes to be an important
style in 1955.