>> Sirius 6 coming to you live from New York City.

>> ♪ Because I like radio ♪ >> Scott and Todd with Radio for the Musically Impaired.

>> ♪ You can call me a rock, you can call me a roll ♪ >> Well, that it's for me my little angels, I will see you next time.

>> ♪ ...on the air, on the radio ♪ ♪ Whoa ♪ >> The Beatle Paul may be dead.

>> This is Tom Donohue and that's all for tonight.

>> ♪♪♪ >> I'm Alison Steele, "The Nightbird."

>> ♪ I'm for the Wolfman ♪ >> Eddie Murray, socking it you you as the fifth Beatle.

>> Hey, Kemosabe.

>> ♪ Oh, please, Mr. DJ ♪ >> This is Arnie "Woo-Woo" Ginsberg.

>> This is Dick Biondi.

>> This is Hunter Hancock.

>> ♪ Well, that's all right, Mama ♪ >> Alan Freed here.

The station is W-I-N-S, the beat, the big beat, the biggest of them all, rock 'n' roll.

And here we go to rockin'.

Here we go!

>> ♪ I'd sit alone and watch your light ♪ ♪ My only friend through teenage nights ♪ ♪ And everything I had to know, I heard it on my radio ♪ ♪ Radio was new ♪ >> Casey Kasem: Being a disc jockey back in the '50s was fun because we had something that began to save radio.

>> Dick Biondi: What did you have for music?

Ray Anthony with the Bunny Hop, baddabum, baddabum.

Perry Como.

And this wasn't the kids' music.

It was the parents' music.

>> ♪ Papa loves mambo ♪ ♪ Mama loves mambo ♪ ♪ Look at him sway with it, gettin' so gay with it, shoutin' ole, with it, wow ♪ >> Jerry "The Geator" Blavat: You talk about 1954 and the changing scene in America; the Communist scare.

[explosion] [alarm sounds] >> You're radioactive right now, Daddy.

Does that mean we can catch it from you?

>> Blavat: McCarthyism.

>> One Communist is one Communist too many.

>> ♪ Papa's looking for Mama but Mama is nowhere in sight ♪ >> We've just begun to fight.

>> Dan Ingram, Radio Personality: The establishment, the Eisenhower era, all of that stuff was something the kids started to revolt against.

>> Kasem: Teenagers began to like Black music.

>> Blavat: Our music was Frankie Lymon... >> ♪ Boys and girls this is my story ♪ >> Blavat: ...Little Richard.

>> ♪ He saw Aunt Mary comin' and he ducked back in the alley ♪ ♪ Oh baby ♪ ♪ Yes, baby ♪ ♪ Whoo, baby ♪ >> Martha Jean "The Queen" Steinberg: The black disc jockeys started the revolution of rhythm and blues, but it was looked down from the white society.

>> The rhythm from Africa.

[drum beat] >> Steinberg: It was not accepted anywhere.

>> Jerry Stewart: The rhythm and blues really was very similar to what's happened with the Hip-Hop Revolution.

It really was the story of Black life, Black street life.

It was about jewelry.

It's about drugs.

It's about sex.

>> ♪ Have some fun tonight ♪ >> Steinberg: You got to understand, in the '50s, before the Civil Rights struggle, there was racial discrimination.

>> ♪ We can sing a melody that's pretty ♪ >> Rufus Thomas: Parents of the young kids during that time didn't want their precious white kids to listen to this black music.

>> ♪ We can't sing rhythm and blues ♪ >> Thomas: The N word music.

Dirty, filthy music.

Devil's music.

Then came WDIA.

>> Steinberg: WDIA in Memphis, Tennessee, was the first black programmed 50,000-watt radio station in the nation.

So the only voice of the black community at that time was a black DJ; Nat D. Williams, B.B.

King, Rufus Thomas.

That was the beginning of personality radio.

We had been denied an opportunity maybe for the movies, and no television at that time, you know, for us.

This was our stage, and we just brought color rhythm, drama, conviction.

>> Thomas: The people in Memphis are so critical.

They would boo their mama.

But that did not happen.

>> Steinberg: Because nobody watched us.

They didn't care.

They said, "Oh, leave them alone.

There's a bunch of clowns over there, you know, they're not part of the mainstream of what's happening in America.

But people started catching on.

>> ♪ Oh baby M ♪ Yes, baby ♪ ♪ Whoo-ooo-ooo, baby, havin' me some fun tonight ♪ >> Steinberg: The young people start really enjoying it, and they were sneaking around listening.

>> Thomas: When Mom and Pop go to bed at night, they put those little transistor radios up under their pillow and be listening to rhythm and blues.

When I'd come on the air at night, said, "I'm young, I'm loose, I'm full of juice.

I got the goose, so what's the use?

We're feeling gay, though we ain't got a dollar.

Rufus is here, so hoot and holler."

And at night, maybe the man didn't know it, but I used to have a studio full of white kids.

They came, they saw, they danced.

>> Steinberg: And than what happened, everybody said, "Hey, they're selling records.

Hey, somein' is going on here."

>> Thomas: It was found out that there were gold in them thar hills.

>> Steinberg: So they said, "Well, we know that the black jocks can not get on white stations, and they're taking the ratings."

Oh, we didn't know anything about ratings, but they say you're taking the ratings from the white stations, so what are you going to do?

>> George Klein: You had guys like us all over the country.

One guy, two guys in the market, white guys, who were picking up on that rhythm and blues and playing it.

>> Steinberg: Talking like us and, and listening and imitating.

>> Klein: You had Hunter Hancock in Los Angeles.

>> Hello, everyone.

This is Hunter Hancock, old H.H., speaking to you direct from Hollywood.

>> Biondi: White kids in the north listened to WLAC in Nashville; Gene Nobles, John R., Hoss Allen.

Listening to them was for me.

It was like listening to something like up in heaven or something, hearing the angels talk.

These guys were great.

>> Steinberg: We got the Dewey Phillips talking like us.

>> Oh yeah, comin' to you on WHBQ.

>> Klein: Dewey's main attribute was the fact that he had a great ear for music, and he always wanted to be the first disc jockey to play a record.

He wanted to break the record first.

Sam brought up, "That's All Right, Mama," that night, and he told Dewey - he said, "Dewey, I think this kid's got it.

He's a white kid from Memphis."

>> So I got a new song we're gonna play here.

We're gonna cut loose this new song.

>> ♪ Well, that's all right, mama ♪ ♪ That's all right for you ♪ ♪ That's all right for mama, just anyway you do ♪ >> Klein: The phones went crazy.

He ended up playing it seven times that night.

>> Thomas: White disc jockeys always wanted to sound black.

>> [deep voice] I want to say a big hi to all you cats and kittens out there in Radioland.

It's your old Platter Pappy, spinning all the sounds.

>> Thomas: Didn't want to be black.

[dramatic music] >> Cousin Brucie Morrow: I mean, in the '50s, you know, this was the devil's doing, Only the kids would listen to it.

>> Biondi: I did a hop on the southeast side of Chicago at a Catholic high school, and I pulled up with my friend that drove me, and I had my little box of 45s.

As I got out of the car, the principal, the nun, stood there, said, "Are you going in to do a hop here?"

And I said, "Yep."

"Are you gonna play records?"

I said, "Yeah."

"Let me see them."

I said, "Yes, Sister," and I gave her the box and she - and she came to one and she took it out, broke it in two, threw it in the street and said, "You're not playing that piece of devil music in our gym."

>> Steinberg: I thank God for people like Dewey and all the rest of them because they said to the white community, "Hey, it's not as bad as you think.

It's fun.

Why don't you buy into it?"

And when the white community bought into it, all of a sudden you heard a rock 'n' roll revolution.

But it was a rhythm and blues situation.

>> Thomas: Some white boy named it rock 'n' roll.

And it stuck.

>> Jocko Henderson: Rock 'n' roll came from Alan Freed.

Honest to goodness, from Alan Freed.

[howling] >> Hello, everybody.

How are you all tonight?

This is Alan Freed, the old King of the Moondoggers.

>> Jerry Stewart: He had a vision, he had a voice, he had an approach, and even when you listen to him today, he really comes through strong and clear.

>> Lance Freed: My father had been on the air, WJW Radio, he had filled in for a disc jockey who didn't show up one night and he went down to the car and grabbed some of these race records... >> Stewart: The legend goes, Leo Mintz really introduced it to him over at Record Rendezvous.

>> Listen.

♪♪♪ >> That's rhythm and blues.

I've been listening to those records for years.

>> You're not the only one, my friend.

>> Lance: ...and brought them up and just started playing the records.

>> This is Alan Freed, kids, rolling right along with your own special brand of music, all rhythm and blues.

>> Lance: And he would have a howling wolf and a cowbell and he'd beat on a phone book.

>> All right, Moondog.

Get in there, kid.

>> Lance: He got so many phone calls, so many letters, really loving what he was playing because there was no white radio station that actually would embrace this kind of music.

>> Henderson: He exposed the white kids to the music and they weren't used to it, and they ate it up alive!

>> Lance: They had to sneak out of their house to go to these shows for the most part because, my God, we didn't want our young kids being exposed to black people sweating on stage and grinding their hips.

He decided that he would throw a ball, a Moondog Coronation Ball.

>> ♪ Have some fun tonight ♪ ♪ Everything's all right ♪ ♪ Have some fun, have some fun tonight ♪ >> And it only lasted about 40 minutes because of the riot.

There were at least 15,000 people on the street with tickets for an 11,000 seat arena, and another 10,000 trying to buy walk up tickets.

So the show turned into a riot.

They literally tore the doors off the place.

>> Lance: The show was called off, the police were called in, the fire department, some people were trampled.

It was an absolute disaster.

And he went on the next evening to apologize.

>> Alan Freed: And I think we're a big enough and happy enough family, and have been, that we can overlook this situation that happened last night.

>> Lance: Two days later, over 50,000 telegrams had come in from people saying we support you.

We want the show back on.

>> Morrow: Well, a friend calls me and he says, "Hey, you've got to listen to WINS, Moondog is on the air, he came from Cleveland or someplace like that."

>> Freed: The station is WINS, your contact station.

The city is New York.

>> Morrow: And he was different.

>> Time again for another of your favorite records for all the gang in the Moondog kingdom.

[howling] >> Alan Freed here.

The station is WINS, your contact station.

The city is New York, and the beat, the big beat, rock 'n' roll, the greatest pop musical era of all time.

>> ♪ All around the world rock 'n' roll is here to stay ♪ ♪ You can hear those jukebox jumping, all night and all through the day ♪ >> Morrow: This was the very first person that sounded like rock 'n' roll.

He was rock 'n' roll.

>> Freed: We're going to hit you with one of the top vocal groups in the nation.

>> Lance: And he'd have a show in New York, Labor Day, Christmas and Easter.

He would assemble the artists who had the biggest hits at that time; Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard.

Lines were around the block.

He was in it because he loved the music, and he loved the kids he was playing it to.

>> Kasem: Alan was a very, very popular disc jockey in New York City, and he broke a lot of records.

If he played a record, because he had such an enormous audience, a record manufacturer could know very quickly whether that record was a hit.

>> Lance: And at home on Sunday afternoons, there used to be a stack, sometimes of 70, sometimes as many as 100 records.

And I remember he used to listen to about eight bars of this stuff, and most of the records he'd take and he'd sling them across the room, and then every once in awhile he'd play the whole record, and he'd play it again and again and say, "That one's going on the show."

A lot of people said thank you to my dad because when he played a record, if he stayed on it, and it was a good enough song that you could actually sell a million records.

I don't even think that he knew how powerful this music had become.

>> ♪ All around the world rock 'n' roll is here to stay ♪ >> Lance: He was warned by the Archdiocese and by the mayor and chief of police of Boston, saying, "Don't bring this show to Boston, because if you do, we're gonna shut you down."

>> If you want my advice, you'll take the next train back to New York.

>> Lance: And what happened that night, he said, "Okay, we're gonna rock 'n' roll tonight."

The kids immediately stood up, and some of them started dancing in the aisles, and the house lights came up and the police came down and they stood in front of the stage and they said, "This show is not gonna go on.

We're gonna stop it because you're inciting a riot."

And my father said, "Look, everybody sit down.

We really want to have this show."

Because the next time they came down and they turned up the house lights, my father was angry.

All that happened was some kids had jumped out of their seats and they were dancing in the aisles.

And my father said, "Are we gonna let them get away with this?"

The place went wild, you know, and the show, of course, was canceled instantly.

[bang] He was arrested and thrown in handcuffs and taken to jail for inciting a riot.

What he saw and what he believed to be true about the way the kids really enjoyed it.

Why not?

Why shouldn't they have fun?

Why shouldn't they dance in the aisle?

>> ♪ All around the world rock 'n' roll is here to stay ♪ >> And here it is, Alan Freed's Rock 'n' Roll Party.

>> ♪ People jumping all night long and all the day ♪ >> Lance: I've never seen such bad acting in my life.

"Oh, golly gee, isn't this fun?"

And we'll have Chuck Berry stand up and sing the song really, really nice.

Let's not have him do it the way he really does it on stage.

Let's do something that's going to present to the parents a way that this is non-threatening.

>> Freed: Rock 'n' roll is a river of music which has absorbed many streams; rhythm and blues, jazz, ragtime, cowboy songs, country songs, folk songs, all have contributed greatly to the big beat.

>> Dan Ingram: Actually, rock 'n' roll is one of many euphemisms for sex that came out of Black English.

>> Pat Boone: Rock 'n' roll itself created consternation and great concern for preachers, teachers, legislators, and they thought rock 'n' roll was gonna be a terrible influence on our young people.

Not because it was Black, though that entered into it, I guess.

>> We've set-up a 20-man committee to do away with this vulgar, animalistic rock 'n' roll bop.

>> ♪ Having their fling again, younger than spring again, feeling that zing again, wow ♪ >> Rock 'n' roll has got to go, and go it does.

That's the best way I know to get rid of it.

>> Hey, wait a minute.

>> We didn't care what was happening and what people thought about our music.

It was an age of innocence.

We were only worried about hanging out on the corner, playing halfball, picking up girls,listening to the guy on the radio who played our music and making dedications.

>> Viola wants this one dedicated to her boyfriend, Jimmy, who plays fullback for Stanford High.

>> ♪ Dear Mr. DJ, play it, play it again ♪ >> Kasem: The music is so powerful, such an emotional thing and you're playing the favorite songs of people who are listening.

They identify with you.

>> ♪ Remember when ♪ ♪ Oh make him remember how he loved me then ♪ ♪ Oh please, Mr. DJ, play it again ♪ >> Handsome Dick Manitoba: Oh God, what I consider the glory years.

We used to sit with our little transistor radios and listen to Murray The K and Cousin Brucie.

>> Hi, everybody all over America, this is your Cousin Brucie.

It's the WABC party.

Go, go, whoo!

>> ♪ Don't you want to tap your feet now baby ♪ >> Cousin Brucie: Everybody sing.

>> ♪ Come on, let's go... ♪ >> Cousin Brucie: You're doing fine.

I hear you.

>> ♪ What a groovy show ♪ ♪ Come on and go, go, go... ♪ >> ♪ With Cousin Brucie ♪ From now until midnight tonight we're on our party.

And I know you're listening all over America, all over Canada, and it's really great.

>> Morrow: Because of the national reach of a 50,000 watt Clear Channel radio station, by 9:00 at night I was heard in 50 states from a local radio station in New York.

There were no rules.

We went on the air and did everything we wanted to do.

Nobody bothered us.

We were experimenting.

What's that sweetheart?

[gibberish] Ha-ha-ha-ha.

>> Lesley Gore: The first time I met Bruce Morrow was at Palisades Park.

>> It's Cousin Brucie, 67 degrees right now, and we're here at beautiful Palisades Amusement Park, so cool and comfortable.

>> Cousin Brucie: I use to dress in a leopard skin suit, and so did my little dog muffin.

>> Gore: And he was on stage and he was making love to the audience.

He was just like their best friend and their father and their brother.

>> Morrow: When somebody was lost, when a child would run away from home, parents would call me.

I would say something on air to the child and the child would call me back and he trusted I would be able to patch things up and that we'd all talk it out.

♪ With Cousin Brucie ♪ >> Cousin Brucie!

>> Cousin Brucie!

>> Cousin Brucie!

>> Cousin Brucie!

>> Cousin Brucie!

>> Cousin Brucie!

>> WABC, hit time with Dan Ingram.

>> ♪ Exciting music ♪ >> Peter Fornatale: My radio heroes growing up, one won't surprise you at all is Dan Ingram.

>> Ingram: Yeah just stomp right in there with your big muddy feet.

That's the Shirelles.

Big John right here on your Dan Ingram Show.

This is Big Dan in the afternoon.

How are you doing, Kemosabe?

I was the listeners' friend, they were my kemosabe, which came from the Lone Ranger.

I was on the air once, a very warm summer day, and all of a sudden, one of the people from the newsroom came bounding into the studio and started screaming at me, "You gotta tell people don't use the Long Island Expressway.

It's jammed up, it's closed, it's backed up for miles.

Women could be having babies.

Go on the air and tell them."

Well, I went on the air and I said, you know, avoid the Long Island Expressway, but if you're sitting there in traffic, why don't you roll the window down, it's kind of a hot day, wave to the guy in the car next to you, you may even make a friend.

About six months later I got an invitation to a wedding.

>> ♪ ...pledging our love ♪ >> There's others who did the same thing that I did.

>> ♪ It's Murray ♪ ♪ Murray The K with the Swingin' Soiree ♪ >> Murray The K: Badda-bey, baby.

>> Kasem: Murray The K was a giant, one of the biggest disc jockeys ever in New York City, and he was a guy who loved to take that 50,000-watt radio station and showcase acts that weren't getting showcased, like Black acts and Hispanic acts.

>> Peter Altschuler, son of Murray The K: My father had an incredible intimate relationship with his listeners.

The idea that he was a friend to these people was very, very real.

They responded to him as if he was an older brother, whom they could trust.

Submarine race watching was something he just came up with, and the idea was that if kids were going down to the riverside to watch the submarine races, there was nothing to see.

>> ♪ Wait awhile until your lovin' baby gives that certain smile ♪ ♪ Then you turn up the music and you hold her tight and you watch the submarine races all through the night ♪ >> Altschuler: When he did the rock 'n' roll shows, it was for him and for his fans I think, just a natural extension of getting closer to that person whom they'd come to know.

♪♪♪ [applause] >> Murray The K: Aw bay!

Aw bay!

Oowa zowa zowa.

[cheers & screams] >> Yeah!

You all, what's happening?

We want to welcome you to our show.

We think it's gonna be the swingingest show of this or any year, and we want to tell you right now that it's a show for everybody.

>> Altschuler: Blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos, whoever made up that melting pot of New York could come together in solidarity in the music, have no color lines or race lines whatsoever.

♪♪♪ >> Henderson: I was rapping then; Jocko, the Ace from Outer Space with a rocket ship.

Whenever I said "Eee-tiddly-ock.

Ho, this is the Jock and I'm back on the scene with the record machine, saying ooh, bop-achoo, how do you do?"

They'd say the same thing right back at me.

My listeners and I had a love affair.

I loved the ground they walked on.

You get a little closer to the radio here.

Cynthia?

Come on, now.

Get up close.

[kissing sounds] >> Biondi: Let me name the guys that I think made rock 'n' roll; Jerry Blavat.

>> Blavat: We've got a jam session going for you for the rest of the evening.

Started out as a dancer on Bandstand.

I always had a love for show business.

I'm Jerry Blavat.

>> Dick Clark: And what do you do, sir?

>> Blavat: Geator with The Heater.

♪ The Geator with The Heater, Heater bringing all the records ♪ I am one with my audience; happiness, sadness, loneliness.

I'm attuned to where they've been...

The man's name is Mr. Jackie Leroy Wilson.

...because I was there.

And if you were watching Bandstand you know the kids from Philadelphia were doing a dance called the 81.

The group "Candy and the Kisses" out of Philadelphia.

It's a carbon copy though of "In My Lonely Room."

Talking, moving, relating what the music is about to the audience.

Now I'm looking for a record that follows suit with that energy.

So I am now going to cue that up, going to the other turntable.

Now I'm looking for a stinger which I can segue.

>> ♪ So if you want to have some fun ♪ >> Blavat: When I'm alone with all of my music I am in another world.

>> ♪ 'Cuz it's so fine, and the people smile ♪ ♪ Do it one more time ♪ >> This is Chuck Berry and you're on the go with the hottest show on the radio with The Geator with The Heater, the Boss with the Hot Sauce, my main man Jerry Blavat.

Let's go!

>> Blavat: The rhythm beat is there.

You're on the go like my buddy Chuck Berry did say with the hottest show on the radio.

Coming out of this.

It is coming from a heart, not a research chart, and this is the question... >> Do you like good music?

♪ ♪ That sweet soul music?

♪ >> Blavat: My rhythm is always on that board.

It's shuffling.

So it's constant movement, constant rhythm.

That's how I get my pacing.

>> ♪ Ah, going to a go-go ♪ ♪ Dancin' with the music ♪ ♪ Oh yeah, oh yeah ♪ ♪ Spotlight on Lou Rawls y'all ♪ >> Blavat: Reaching out to Wildwood, New Jersey.

Reaching out to each and every one of you out there listening to The Geator with The Heater.

>> Stewart: You trusted Jerry Blavat so much you didn't care what they were.

As long as Jerry put it out on the radio that's all that mattered.

>> ♪ Dear Mr. DJ, play it again ♪ >> Fabian: The DJs in my area that helped me out, besides Dick Clark, that was on television, was Joe Niagra, Hy Lit.

>> ♪ Hyski O'Rooney McVautie O'Zoot ♪ >> Hello there, all my beats, my beards, my Buddhist cats.

>> Biondi: You'd go all around the country.

>> This is Moore's and the boy Harv here.

The Boy Next Door on WPGC, Good Guys Radio.

>> ♪ Go, go, Good Guys radio ♪ ♪ We go together, play it again ♪ >> Steinberg: Detroit.

You know, this is a city of industry.

So I started talking about it on the radio.

First thing I started doing, saluting all the blue collar workers of America.

All of my blue collar workers, all of you who earn your bread by the sweat of your brow, I want you to know that you are somebody.

You're responsible for the wheels of the world going around.

They were so glad that somebody was really communicating with them that they said, "Okay, I'm your representative at Ford.

I'm your representative at Chrysler."

I said, "Fine.

Tell me what's going on."

So there was a guy, he had this little loan shark business going on.

He said, "Tell everybody that they're getting their vacation pay."

So I said to all the women, "These guys are getting their vacation pay, they're not telling you they're getting their vacation pay, so you go in to the factory and you stand there and you - when he comes out, you get there and say, I want this vacation paycheck."

And the guys got so mad, would just say, "I don't like her."

They just turned on me.

But the women just loved me.

But that's the power of radio.

>> ♪ All the flat top cats with their rock 'n' roll queens ♪ ♪ Just a rockin' and a rollin' in their red and blue jeans ♪ ♪ All around the world, rock 'n' roll is here to stay ♪ >> Southern California's number one disc jockey, Art Laboe.

>> Art Laboe: I was the first DJ on the West Coast to play rock 'n' roll.

You know, people used to cruise Hollywood Boulevard and the first shows were launched from this drive-in at Sunset Boulevard and Cahuenga, just a few blocks from Hollywood High School.

Kids would come after school and request songs.

And Ricky Nelson was going to Hollywood High School at that time.

He would come to the drive-in every day and be on the air with me.

You know, crowds.

I mean, you couldn't even get near the drive-in to stop traffic.

>> ♪ Clap for the Wolfman ♪ ♪ He gonna rate your record high ♪ >> Whoa, baby, this is Wolfman Jack, comin' at you on the big X, XERF in Mexico.

>> ♪ Clap for the Wolfman, you gonna dig him 'til the day you die ♪ >> Lonnie Napier: The reason that Wolfman wanted to be on border radio, he always had this dream like it was the biggest stage in the world, as far as a radio guy goes.

And it was, 250,000-watts of power, sky skip that went all the way around the globe.

>> Wolfman Jack: Oh, hey, man, listen, you're diggin' the Wolfman Jack Show.

>> Napier: If you wanted to be in radio, that was the biggest stage for a radio person that you could be on, they didn't have satellite then.

>> Laboe: He would do his Wolfman Jack, "Hey, Baby," you know.

The minute he was off the air, he'd say, "Well, Art, what are we gonna do now?"

I mean, it was two different people.

>> Napier: Whenever he wasn't Wolfman Jack he could do business as Bob Smith.

So he would go out in public, sell advertising.

They'd ask Bob Smith about this Wolfman character, what he's saying on the air, stuff like, "Are you naked?

Are your little peaches sweet?"

>> Wolfman Jack: I ain't got no pants on at all.

>> Napier: He wouldn't do any kind of personal appearances for the longest time.

Nobody knew who he was.

They didn't know if he was a Mexican, if he was Italian, if he was a Black guy.

>> The Wolfman is everywhere.

>> Freed: "American Graffiti" projected Wolfman Jack as a major force in culture.

It had a tremendous impact on radio.

>> Napier: The people really believed in their jocks back then.

You know, you had your favorite jock in a town.

You had the guy that was your guy, your icon.

>> WJBK radio, AM and FM in Detroit.

The Terry Knight show.

Jack the Bellboy here until 1:00 AM this coming morning.

>> Here in the wealthy and justly unpopular, lychee nut grower, Gary Owens Program, from now till 9:00.

>> B. Mitchel Reed, 22 in front of the hour, WMCA, 68 degrees.

Tonight we will review the brand new albums; Fats Domino Sings Mozart, Mozart Sings Fats Domino.

>> Hi, everybody.

This is Tommy "Doctor Jive" Smalls with your Jeris Pick Hits of the Week.

Through the courtesy of Jeris Antiseptic Hair Tonic for men who want that just bothered look.

>> Ben Fong-Torres: Boss Radio, KHJ in Los Angeles, conducted a poll one time of teenagers, and they asked kids, "What were the most important influences in your life?"

And the poll results were, number one was God.

Number two was disc jockeys, and then number three, something called parents.

I'm not sure what that meant to kids, but that was the result.

I'm kind of surprised that God came in first, frankly.

>> 61 degrees.

The Dick Biondi Show, let's be happy.

Here's the first of our oldies as we celebrate the third anniversary of WLS.

♪ Happy birthday to all the jerky bosses ♪ Stingy, cheapskates, wouldn't even give us coffee and cake.

Music is about what every kid goes through.

If you're a teenager and you find a guy or a girl, it's the same thing, your hormones start working, you love this guy, you don't love this girl.

And that's what it was all about in the '50s; "Peggy Sue," "Last Kiss," somebody died, Presley's song.

The greatest song ever about teenagers was Presley's, "You see the way he kisses you, the way she holds your hand.

I was the one that taught her how."

Every time a guy got dumped by a girl, he called me up and say, "Play this song for so and so," the guy the girl was going with.

Well, there were several incidents during my career where I had problems with bosses.

There was one everybody talks about.

My boss came by and was going to sit in the studio with me, and he was just a pain in the butt, to be very honest.

So he said, "Well, all right, I'm getting out of here, I can't stand you.

I'm going down to the movie."

And I jumped on the air and I just said, "My boss is going downtown to the movie.

He's been bugging me here.

He's driving a gray Impala convertible.

If you see it, throw a rock at it."

And somebody did, right through the windshield.

>> Bo Diddley, we got his record, played it on a Thursday, on Friday it was off the shelves.

>> Hey, you got the latest record by Bo Diddley?

>> I want one.

>> ♪ Please, Mr. DJ, play it again ♪ >> Rick Shaw: Record manufacturers could not afford to buy the time that we give them for free to expose their product on the radio.

They couldn't afford it.

So it's very important that they have the highest level of working relationship with the people who are in charge of deciding which records are gonna get played on the right radio stations at the right time.

>> Joe Finan: They would send artists in to appear at the dances I had.

And I had this kid, Frankie Lymon, you know, he was 14 years-old.

>> ♪ So listen boys and girls, you need not be blue ♪ ♪ Life is what you make of it, all depends on you ♪ ♪ I know because I'm not a juvenile delinquent ♪ >> Finan: And I'd go out and say, "Now here he is, from Roulette, Frankie Lymon, that 14 year-old..." And this kid, this little kid comes out, and he's walking by me, and they're screaming and they're on their feet.

And as he walks by me he looks up at me and he says, "I'm 15."

♪ No, no, no, I'm not a juvenile delinquent ♪ [Applause & cheering] >> Lymon: Bye-bye.

>> Boone: Time after time, because the DJs declared my record a hit, it became a hit.

>> Dewey Phillips: I understand "Whole Lotta Shakin'" sold about a 1,500,000.

Is that right?

>> Jerry Lee Lewis: I believe so.

>> Phillips: You know what's been worrying me here for the last three or four weeks, what the heck are you gonna get me for Christmas?

>> Lewis: Well, I hadn't thought too much about it, Mr. Phillips, but you can't never tell what I'm liable to come up with.

>> ♪ Please, Mr. DJ, play it again ♪ >> I saw television sets being given.

>> It was a silver set.

>> I saw booze, crates of liquor.

>> A ring.

>> A girl here, a trip to Vegas there.

>> I even saw a wedding being paid for.

>> $100.00 here.

$500.00 there.

>> Approximately how much would you have to give a disc jockey for him to, as they say in the trade, give your record a ride?

>> A couple of hundred dollars.

>> Bingo!

Your record's on the radio.

>> We have another Payola record.

FCC catches up with me, I'm gone, you know.

>> Here it is, one of the greatest numbers.

It's going to be one of the hottest cotton pickin' numbers in the country in about three weeks, what it says already in Memphis.

Great Balls of Fire!

Hit it!

>> Henderson: I took Payola just like everybody else.

It was the acceptable thing to do.

>> Boone: Because it was offered so freely by many record companies, they still only took money generally to play records they liked.

>> Henderson: I would never take money for a record I didn't like, 'cuz if I didn't like it, I wouldn't play it.

Period.

>> ♪ V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N in the summer sun ♪ >> I told my wife, "I've gotta go to this convention, they've asked me to speak on public service."

Headline on the front page was, "Bribes, Broads and Booze."

>> Booze, Broads and?

>> Bribes.

>> Brides -- Brides?

>> Biondi: No, you're talking about Booze, Broads and Bribes down in Miami.

It was infamous.

There was no question about it.

>> ♪ We're on vacation ♪ >> Boone: I just came in as a singer, sang my songs, thanked everybody and got out.

>> ♪ V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N ♪ >> Biondi: I was in Buffalo.

>> They didn't invite me, I'm sorry.

>> You know they flew hookers from Vegas, L.A., New York.

>> ♪ We're gonna hug and kiss, just like this ♪ >> One of the first calls we got was from the Colonel and he wanted to know if we'd come over, if I'd come over and have a drink with him.

Just a couple of businessmen, a disc jockey, and Elvis' manager.

He wasn't going to let anybody outdo him.

So he brought this girl in from Amsterdam.

He said, "Of course you know these are the best [deleted] in the whole world," and I said, "Oh, no kidding."

>> ♪ We're on vacation and the world is ours ♪ [thunder] >> Rock 'n', at that time, was becoming so big that something's got to be done about this new music.

>> Chris Gilson: Major advertisers in the 1950s shunned rock radio.

A General Motors, or a Sears, would listen to rock 'n' roll music and they'd hear teenagers, no buying power.

This left rock radio a sitting duck for a very powerful enemy that wasn't going away, which was ASCAP, the giant music publishing company.

>> Rock 'n' roll was being published by a new publishing company called BMI.

And all of a sudden, BMI was having the hit records on the charts.

>> Gilson: ASCAP had slid to number two, and its management was shopping this explanation that rock 'n' roll music was so bad that the only way it could possibly get airplay was if the independent record labels were paying off the disc jockeys to spin their records.

>> Lance: It was an election year.

>> People looking for votes who happened to be in office.

>> Gilson: So they went to Congress with this notion and they found a sympathetic ear in Oren Harris, head of the very powerful Oversight Committee which had just investigated TV quiz shows and found that some of them were rigged.

Now they were hunger for more headlines.

Oren Harris fit ASCAP's needs to a "T".

>> No one is so naive to believe that any company is going to voluntarily pay out funds to someone just because that he might be listening to a record.

>> This was a guy who distained rock 'n' roll, he called it rot music.

He was a champion of the segregation of the South.

Instead of taking on the record companies, they went after the DJs.

>> Steinberg: And so many disc jockeys, both black and white, they brought them down.

>> The Payola investigations, the kangaroo court, that was nothing more than "Vote for me, I'm nobler than the rest of the world."

>> Finan: Representative Harris, by the time he was finished, I thought I must be public enemy number one.

And my wife, tears streaming down her face, and I said, "Oh, my God."

It was the worst time in my life.

I wasn't angry until I got outside.

I came down here with the full intention of freely cooperating and helping this committee in what I thought their work was, that to establish points of departure for new legislation.

After cooperating freely before the same committee, I was pilloried and termed pathetic by Chairman Oren Harris.

>> Lance Freed: I've seen documents from Hoover himself.

This guy is dangerous.

We gotta do something to quiet this down, and perhaps there's a way that we can get to him.

>> Jerry Stewart: Because not only was he breaking down these racial barriers, he was breaking down the economic barriers.

>> Finan: And they wanted to bring them down, and they did.

>> I think Alan Freed was not treated fairly.

>> Biondi: It wasn't right.

>> Lance: He went down and testified, and at that point he was already in trouble because he was asked, you know, if he had ever accepted a gift to play a record, and he said, "Sure.

Haven't you guys accepted gifts for things that you've done for people in your district or your constituents?"

None of that really went down very well.

Dick Clark appeared at the same hearing.

>> ♪ Gather 'round cats and I'll tell you a story about how to become an All-American boy ♪ ♪ Buy you a guitar and put it in tune ♪ ♪ You'll be rockin' and a rollin' soon ♪ >> Finan: I really got crazy when I watched him handling Clark.

I thought they were gonna give him the Medal of Honor.

>> Clark: I frankly admitted to the committee that I have, as countless other entertainers have, invested in numerous enterprises aligned with the broadcasting and music industry.

I heave mentioned to them again and again, and now in public, under oath, I have never taken Payola.

Thank you.

>> Dick, do you see anything legally or morally wrong with what you've done?

>> Clark: None whatsoever.

>> Lance: He made rock 'n' roll safe for America, my dad didn't make it safe.

When my dad went back to New York after those hearings, the heat was on.

[camera flash] [camera flash] [camera flash] [camera flash] WABC was a network station, they came to him and said, "Sign this affidavit that says you've never, ever accepted a gift of any kind, at any time, to play records.

That you don't have any publishing interest, you don't - you never got any benefit from the records you played."

And he said, "Why I can't sign this."

And they said, "Well, then you're fired."

>> Freed: To our wonderful friends here, and all of you out there, for your great loyalty, this is not goodbye, it's just goodnight, and we'll see you soon.

Thank you.

>> Lance: There were kids all around him, I remember in tears, saying, "We love you, Alan.

We love you.

What are we gonna do without you?"

And he said, "You guys made this music.

This is yours.

It's up to you to keep it going."

>> Freed: If I'm guilty of anything, I'm guilty of being present at the birth of rock 'n' roll.

>> Lance: And within two weeks his house - our house was seized in Connecticut by the Internal Revenue Service.

We weren't even allowed to go in and get our clothes.

>> And they passed the Payola law, which basically says though shalt not take money to play music on the radio.

[camera flash] >> Lance: I'd like him to be remembered not for the controversy, but just as a good man who really had good instincts and who loved what he did, and it happened to affect a lot of people in a really positive way.

>> Blavat: The FCC said, "Now, you have to designate somebody to be a watcher."

So they brought program directors in.

>> Bruce Kelly: A program director has a really nice hair cut and a really nice suit and everything is just perfect with the chart numbers and the research is just perfect.

And everything is like a big giant block of government cheese and Styrofoam.

And it's just pretty to look at, it's horrible to listen to.

>> ♪ I like songs that are radio-friendly and I like to hear them when they're never ending ♪ ♪ My DJ plays it once or twice every hour ♪ ♪ And sometimes when I'm dangling down in the shower ♪ ♪ Oh, I love my radio ♪ >> There were two guys who owned radio stations; Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon.

And as legend has it, they met in a bar and they're sitting there having a couple beers, saying how are we going to fight television?

Television can make pictures but radio can't.

What are we going to do?

And one of them says after about 45 minutes of this conversation, "Do you realize they keep playing the same song over and over?"

>> Over and over again, and they went over and looked at the jukebox, and guess what?

There were only 40 records in it.

>> They said, "Hey, let's try that on the radio."

>> And boom, a money machine was born, called Top 40 Radio.

>> ♪ Listen, won't you lend us an ear?

♪ ♪ Your 40 favorite tunes are here ♪ >> Top 40 Radio actually began in the early 1950s, but became even more important after Payola, because once you took the control out of the disc jockeys' hands into the program directors' hands about what music to play, it just became "Shut up and play the hits, buddy."

♪ I love my radio ♪ >> On my office door there it says, "Bill Gavin, Program Consultant."

It used to be that the disc jockey could pretty much program his own show with the records that he liked.

Most of your pop music stations now, called Top 40 stations generally, are controlled very much by a playlist, and this playlist is drawn up by a music director or a program director.

>> You had a list of 40 records.

You had to play those 40 records over and over.

You had an A list and a B list.

>> Gavin: And that's it.

Nothing else, no deviations at all.

>> I allowed the disc jockeys who worked for me at that time to play any two records of their own selection... >> ♪ My DJ plays it once or twice every hour ♪ >> And your name once an hour, no more, please.

>> ...Within the aforementioned policy.

>> Biondi: And that, of course, led to the demise of the personality disc jockey.

>> Rock radio became the establishment.

>> We became such a money pot.

We were a bank.

>> WABC has painted an REA truck solid gold and loaded it with hundreds of free prizes.

>> I know I just won.

>> Oh my gosh!

>> We did a lot of nutty things, crazy things.

>> The exciting DJ go-kart race is underway.

Rick Shaw hops in the first lead.

>> From students, parents, faculty, can you elect your principal the WABC Principal of the Year?

>> Truckloads of votes came in.

The first count we had was - ready?

20 million!

>> Gavin: The whole orientation of Top 40 programming is that it gives the large bulk of the record play to the records that are proved to be popular favorites.

>> Many, many vanilla coated records came out by a whole vanilla bunch of people who knew that vanilla was selling this year.

>> This piece of plastic is a bit of frozen emotion and actually we're communicating by way of plastic to the public of America.

[cash register bell rings] >> Biondi: It was a rough time.

>> Disastrous.

>> Top 40 sucks.

[applause] [gunshots] >> I was chosen to bring the station back to rock 'n' roll after we'd been playing kind of tribute music, mournful music, after the death of JFK.

I said, "There's no way I can make nice, make you feel good about what's happened a week or so ago.

But life must go on."

>> Steinberg: It almost died, until the people from London, England decided to come and make it live again.

>> Biondi: Nobody even knew who they were.

I played them in '63 here, and the phones rang, said, "Take that crap off the air and play the Beach Boys."

>> I'm on the air at 2:00 AM and we get a special delivery package from Capitol Records.

I put it on, 30 seconds into the song, the phones explode.

I mean, across the board, they're all going.

"Who is that?"

"What is the name of that group?

What's this song?

Where'd that come from?"

That never happened before.

It has never happened since.

>> ♪ We love you Beatles ♪ ♪ Oh yes we do ♪ >> WA-Beatles-C proudly presents these Beatles spectacular sounds.

>> The Beatles in person show at Shea Stadium.

>> There were about 10,000 kids in the street in Manhattan.

They all were listening to us on the air, waiting for Ringo or Paul or George or John, somebody to come to a window of their suite just so they could get a glimpse.

And when I said, "Would you sing along with this jingle," and 10,000 kids with this little tiny, looks like a pack of cigarettes to their ears, started singing... >> ♪ Your world looks great with 77 WABC ♪ >> The cops thought that they had all gone mad.

>> The Beatles were going from one car to another.

My father was like the fifth guy in the line of four.

And a security person tried to stop him and George Harris turned around and said, "Oh, it's alright he's the fifth Beatle."

>> This is Murray The K socking it to you as the fifth Beatle.

>> ♪ Oh, Beatles we love you ♪ >> Beatles: ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ >> If you as an American teenager are offended by statements from a group of foreign singers, which strike at the very basis of our existence as God fearing, patriotic citizens, then we urge you to take your Beatle records, pictures and souvenirs to the pickup point about to be named.

And on the night of the Beatles appearance in Memphis, August 19, they will be destroyed in a huge public bon fire in a place to be named soon.

Stay tuned to Rocky for further developments.

>> Peter Fornatale: That first generation that was indelibly marked by Elvis, and then the Beatles, arrived at their college campuses.

We brought our own approach.

>> Sometimes they call themselves the Protest Generation.

They say, "Make love, not war."

>> I believe that some of the disturbances on the campus are not the result of too much discipline.

I think that they are like the small child that's stomping his feet and what he really wants is a parent to take him in hand and shake him and let him know what the guidelines are.

In this way we could also give them a banner to follow, a cause to believe in.

>> ♪ Look what's happening out in the streets ♪ ♪ Got a revolution ♪ ♪ Hey, I'm dancing down the streets ♪ ♪ Got a revolution ♪ >> M.L.

King: Yes, we on the move and no wave of racism can stop us.

We on the move now.

>> ♪ Our generation got old ♪ ♪ Our generation got soul ♪ ♪ This generation got no destination to hold ♪ >> Fornatale: The Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement, the Sexual Revolution, then the opening of the FM band.

>> ♪ You gave them all, those old time stars ♪ ♪ Through wars of worlds invaded by Mars ♪ ♪ You made them laugh, you made them cry ♪ >> Richard Neer: AM radio didn't even acknowledge the Vietnam War, they would just blithely go on and play their happy little tunes and everything was hunky dory.

>> Lee Abrams: AM radio, whose playbook was written in 1955 and 1956, was still there.

It was black and white radio in a Technicolor world.

>> Carol Miller: I mean, the guys on the air were all like entertainers and goofy.

>> This is Arnie "Woo-Woo" Ginsburg broadcasting live from the Surf Ballroom Nantasket just outside of Boston.

>> Miller: There was nobody I could really relate to.

♪♪♪ >> Abrams: I actually went to a Hendrix concert, and everybody there was, you know, looked like the Hendrix crowd, and on comes to the stage, it was like "Bobby Magic from all-American Boss Tiger Radio."

The guy comes out with a crew cut and a bow tie and a picture of a happy tiger holding a microphone, winking at you.

It was right out of a Carlin video -- "Hey, everybody.

Hey, Jimi Hendrix is here.

Everybody happy?"

"Boo, get off the stage."

People were - and it symbolized how totally uncool AM radio was, because this guy, five years ago, was the pied piper of teens.

>> Radio Announcer: The premier of the newest and most exciting sound on radio is happening now at WOR-FM, Scott Muni, for you.

>> Peter Altschuler: There was no format for FM, so they created it from whole cloth.

>> We'll have a lot of the features that you are going to participate with us, in, like selecting all of the new sounds in which you like best.

You'll hear lots of music.

>> FM gave disc jockeys an opportunity to play music that they wouldn't ordinarily have been able to get away with on AM.

>> Miller: You weren't going to hear album cuts on Top 40 Radio, for the most part.

So that was the main difference, is wow, you're gonna hear cuts from albums, albums you haven't heard yet.

>> ♪ Wild thing I think I love you ♪ ♪ But I want to know for sure ♪ >> Scott Muni: Corporations have to be in control, and they aren't happy unless they give you this, "Here's what we're playing."

>> Altschuler: And they thought that doing their market research and looking at the Arbitrons that they could get higher ratings if they went to a Top 40 pre-programmed format.

>> It's been a very, very groovy experience here at WOR-FM.

Tonight will be my last broadcast.

♪ Wild thing, I think you move me ♪ >> This is going to be my last night at WOR-FM, and that has to do with a group of consultants and what they're asking me to do.

I feel it would be very disrespectful and dishonest to you, and I don't see any other course.

>> Altschuler: Those were people who took pride in their ability to program their own shows, pick their own music, put together their own material and to turn to them and say, "What we hired you for is no longer what we want.

We want you to just say what you're told to say, play what you're told to play."

And to creative people, that was death.

>> ♪ Come on baby take a chance with us ♪ ♪ Come on baby take a chance with us ♪ >> Raechel Donahue: You know, if it hadn't been for Payola, Tom Donahue wouldn't have gone to San Francisco and there would have have been no FM revolution on the West Coast.

Tom Donahue was one of the three disc jockeys that are actually in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, in the Big Hall, along with the other artists, and he's pretty much considered the Godfather of FM radio.

He said, "Top 40's dead and its rotting corpse is stinking up the airwaves," and he ought to know because he had just walked out on it.

He thought that it was so bubble gummy, and it was the same records over and over and over again, and it wasn't what people were playing at home.

One morning I woke up after an evening of all the disc jockeys who lived in the neighborhood, most of them unemployed, playing records for one another, album cuts.

Tom was already up, he had the phone book out and he was calling FM stations until he found one whose phone was disconnected, and he said, "Baby, give me my power tie and do my hair, we're gonna go paint the sky blue for somebody."

>> ♪ FM, AM where are you?

♪ ♪ You gotta be out there somewhere on the dial ♪ >> Ben Fong-Torres: To take over a radio station was not an easy feat, and it happened only because a station was going out of business and had no alternative, really, but to allow some people to come in and try something new.

>> Donahue: We went to KMPX.

We went in to replace the Portuguese Irish Hour.

They were in so much trouble they had to piggyback two languages together.

>> Fong-Torres: And when they came in to try something new, they absolutely broke all the remaining existing rules.

>> What we want to do is have everybody working together to make it as cool and groovy a trip as we can, and to make it as happy a party as we can.

>> This is Tom Donahue.

Raechel and I have really been having fun tonight.

>> Ray Manzarek: They were the first ones to play, like "The End," for instance.

Nobody would play "The End," but FM radio played "The End."

It's 11.5 minutes long.

Nobody but FM underground radio would play "Light My Fire."

So, without FM radio, without, you know, underground, hip FM radio, there wouldn't be any Doors.

>> This is KSAN in San Francisco.

Tom Donahue and Raechel, and lots of other people tonight, lots of friends, until midnight.

>> Jann Wenner: You know, any hour you wanted, any time day or night, we used to go over at night and just sit with the DJ, whoever was on the air, and smoke some pot and, you know, listen to some music - hey, why don't we play that one.

And it was like very social, a hangout for, you know, kind of an inside group of people.

And you never knew who was gonna be there, it might be some member of the Dead there.

>> Bob Weir: He just brought his record collection and started playing it on the air.

You could hear Buck Owens and Junior Wills and Igor Stravinsky all in the same hour.

And, you know, those were the golden, the golden years of radio, as far as I was concerned.

You know, everybody was listening to everything.

>> Grace Slick: Tom Donahue helped us.

He would play and promote the bands that he liked.

>> David Crosby: They played music 'cause they loved it, and you can make sort of a painting of a series of songs in the right order that will put people on a certain kind of trip, and that was the art of the disc jockey.

>> Scoop Nisker: Disc jockeys had the freedom to put together a box sonata and Jimmy Hendrix and, you know, come out with a Balinese gamelan music.

It was so beautiful.

They were collage artist, these deejays.

>> Donahue: Once we had the programming in place at KMPX, we realized we had to generate some revenue, and to do that, we had to get a salesman to sell time.

>> Chandler Laughlin: Well, I was in jail in Contra Costa County for a marijuana offense, and a partner of mine went to work for KMPX and recommended me as a potential employee, and Donahue wrote a letter to the judge and said, "If you'll let him out of jail, I'll put him to work."

>> Donahue: So Tom wrote this incredible letter and we bailed him out of jail, 'cuz as Tom pointed out, "If he can sell pot, he can sell time."

>> Dusty Street: I remember back in the good ol' days when we wouldn't take commercials on the air of products that we didn't agree with.

>> Laughlin: So we had lots and lots of head shops, fashion boutiques.

It's a little more abstract than being able to deal lids, but it's basically the same pitch.

If you've got a good product, you can make a lot of money.

>> Donahue: After KMPX was a success, the owner decided, well, we're gonna change everything.

I want everybody to wear a suit and a tie.

I'm gonna bring in some of my friends.

And then the checks started bouncing and it went on and on and on.

So we organized the Great Hippie Strike.

The Grateful Dead and Spencer Davis came down and played on flatbed trucks for our first night of the strike, and then when we finally left, Metro Media rescued us and they took us all in, and that was the beginning of KSAN.

>> ♪ The West is the best ♪ >> Fong-Torres: The community flocked over to the studio, not to get autographs or collect records or surveys or to win prizes, it was to express how important it was for them to have this new lifeline of radio.

>> Nisker: When the Indians took over Alcatraz Island, KSAN asked for donations of food and a boat.

Somebody gave us a boat and we took the food out to Alcatraz Island and we got rammed by a Coast Guard ship.

That was the first naval battle of the revolution sponsored by KSAN.

>> Fong-Torres: Whatever Tom Donahue did in San Francisco just had tremendous impact.

What he did was being heard by tape all over the country.

>> You'd flipped the dial and go over to FM and you'd hear a completely different kind of music and a completely different kind of commentary.

So you just -- it was a very sort of mellow, flowing kind of sound.

So much different than that staccato kind of, you know, dat-dat-dat-dat that was coming out of your AM radio.

>> Album by Procal Harum.

The album has been out actually about three or four months and didn't get nearly the amount of attention that I sort of thought it would because I think, in general, it's their best album.

We heard two tracks from the album, "Dead Man's Dream" and "Still."

There'll be more.

It's on A&M Records and the name of the album is "Home."

Little Steven Van Zandt: Slowed down, you know, got a little more conversational.

Got a little more stoned.

You know, man, can you dig it?

I mean, like, man, let me play some "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida."

>> Cousin Brucie Morrow: At first, when changes really started, I fought it.

I was not happy with the cool FM jock, "Hey, let's smoke that banana.

Here's a 20 minute cut."

That wasn't the kind of radio that I was used to.

I wanted to give away a car.

And we were afraid of what was happening, because we knew it was an end - it was an end of an era.

>> ♪ Are you listening?

♪ ♪ Are you listening to me?

♪ ♪ Can you hear me?

♪ ♪ Can you hear me clearly around the dial?

♪ >> There was so much exploding and happening at the same time, and FM fit perfectly.

>> WNEW-FM New York.

>> Scott had his ear to the ground -- Hendrix, Dylan, with bosses above him that were like, "What the hell is this rebellious, hippie, '60s thing?"

And he ended up making one of the most influential radio stations to this day that ever happened.

>> Well, I don't know about that.

>> Well, the great thing about WNEW I think was personalities.

You had Rosko, who was just the hippest of all trips.

>> Rosko: Want to take a mind excursion, baby?

>> And then at night they had Alison Steele.

>> We'll be broadcasting live, so you'll all be on the radio.

>> That is "My love" and that's Paul McCartney.

And we're at 15 minutes before 3:00.

At 3:00 Jim Scott comes your way.

I'm Murray The "K on WMBC Radio 66.

♪ Are you listening?

♪ ♪ Can you hear me clearly around the dial?

♪ >> J.J. Jackson: I started on a radio station called WBCN, which was very much attached to the sub-culture.

These kids would come by the station, and on this one particular time we had this kid, and she said, "You know, J.J., you want to smoke a joint?"

I'm on the air, I hadn't done that on the air, up until this time, but I'm figuring, "I can handle this."

[laughter] She gave me this joint and I remember, oh man, I was so high that they actually literally had to come in while I was in the chair and wheel me out.

Just wheel me out.

The switchboard lit up, people were, "Is he okay?"

We were part of the anti-war demonstrations.

We were part of the Civil Rights Movement.

We were out there in the streets doing it as well and urging people to take part in it.

It wasn't just, "Hey, man, you know, let's play this record so maybe you'll get laid."

Truthfully, it was a little bit of that, but... >> ♪ Are you listening?

♪ ♪ Are you listening to me?

♪ >> Jim Ladd: And I got into radio in the '60s listening to Tom and Raechel Donahue.

They put out the message as the community bulletin board, gave us a place to rally around.

This was the only place our listeners could get this information.

Couldn't get it from the 6:00 news, certainly couldn't get it from straight media.

>> The same musical vineyard in which you toil, how many are protest singers?

>> Um, how many?

>> Yes.

Are there many?

>> Yeah.

Well, I think there's about 136.

>> You say about 136?

Or do you mean exactly 136.

>> Uh, either 136 or 142.

>> Ladd: When we played "Blowing in the Wind," we meant it.

And we knew what song to follow it with, and what song to follow that with.

If you were listening to this music and you let that music get inside and work on you, and work on your heart, that'll change your mind.

What I do is look to the telephones, and when I see them light up, I've made that connection, and they know we're talking about a political subject or whatever, and they're calling in requests that add to the set of songs we're playing.

To me that's the ultimate community and a wonderful way to communicate.

>> Billy Boss: As David Spero would tell you, getting nervous and sweating, as he was reading the registration from people going into the draft.

When you heard that you knew that you were listening to something really real.

>> ♪ One of our DJs is missing ♪ >> Morrow: ABC sent me to Woodstock.

It was a - there was a love feeling about it.

They painted a flower on my cheek.

♪♪♪ I think that they were playing with me a little bit and they got a kick out of me.

Woodstock really opened up the so-called underground music.

>> Jed The Fish: Progressive radio to me meant anything can happen day.

>> ♪ And his skin is cold ♪ >> Carolyn Travis: The story was that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car crash three years earlier and replaced with a double, a guy named William Campbell, also known as Billy Shears, as in the one and only Billy Shears of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

But the frenzy really started on October 12 when a University of Michigan student called Keener FM and spoke to DJ Russ Gibb.

>> Russ Gibb: Who do we have here?

What's your name?

>> Tom on the line.

>> Gibb: Yeah, hello, Tom.

What's going down?

>> Tom: I was gonna rap with you about McCartney being dead.

What is this all about?

>> Travis: He asked Russ to play "Revolution Number Nine" backwards.

Russ was a little hesitant at first, but he did, and it was the first time the words "Turn me on, dead man," were heard on the radio.

More and more clues surfaced and pretty soon Beatles fans everywhere - and I was one of them - would take out our albums and we'd play them backwards and forwards, and fast and slow, and get out our magnifying glasses and look at the album covers for clues and call mysterious phone numbers.

>> There are numbers in the title of "The Magical Mystery Tour" that really come out if you really get very, very high and look at the front of the album, on some, you know, like mind-bending drug.

>> Travis: Nine days later, WABC overnight DJ Roby Yonge defied station policy and started talking about the rumors.

>> Yonge: The Beatle Paul may be dead.

I'm talking to 40 states right now, and I'll surely get fired if I say anything unusual.

But the fact is, folks, I've been fired anyhow.

>> Travis: They got over 350,000 calls.

♪ This is the end ♪ >> Yonge: And I'm not going to be cut now because its 12:39 at night and there is anybody standing by to cut the switch.

>> Travis: He was wrong about that.

>> Morrow: Well, the program director rushed in with an armed guard, ripped him off the air while he was on the air live.

>> Yonge: Please remember you heard it here first, in the middle of the night, okay, because I'm not gonna be around that much longer.

>> Morrow: And put Les Marshak on the air to substitute for Roby Yonge.

>> Les Marshak here, and, you know, we've been getting some phone calls regarding some speculating that Roby Yonge was doing earlier this morning.

Please be assured that those speculations are untrue.

They are untrue.

Please don't call, all right?

>> ♪ Can you hear me?

♪ ♪ Can you hear me clearly around the dial ♪ >> Morrow: AM and FM were two different camps.

FM radio was where the message was.

If you were angry and politically, you know, astute, you'd listen to FM.

>> Donahue: The FM station was the social, the musical and the political hub of San Francisco.

They just called it The Station.

And if we wanted to get 100,000 people out to protest the Vietnam War, we could do it in a heartbeat.

>> On the front of the bus we have the sign that we have just written on carelessly today.

That's the ultimate right to do, to steal your children from you.

It's like a joke, but it's a true joke.

>> ♪ We are volunteers of America ♪ >> We sent busloads of listeners to WNEW-FM down to the major rallies in D.C. >> Slick: Richard Nixon kind of stood out and we didn't like the war, we didn't like his politics.

I went to Finch College in New York.

Ten years later Tricia Nixon went to Finch College as well.

>> I'm really trying to change the world and make it a better place, not by going out and demonstrating, which really doesn't help much at all.

>> One, two, three, four, Tricky Dick stop the war!

>> Slick: It's such a small college that she had a party at the White House for all the graduates of Finch that she could reach.

And I got a letter in the mail that said, "Dear Grace, Would you care to come to tea at the White House?"

And I went oh-ho.

Oh, yes indeedy, with about 600 mics of acid in my pocket, because 600 mics can fit in your fingernail, and I'm an entertainer so I can gesture a lot, hold the tea in my left hand and gesture over Richard Nixon's tea cup and let the acid fall in the tea cup because it is tasteless.

But somehow I had the invitation, I was in line right in the front of the White House with the rest of the girls from Finch College, a security guard came over and said, "I'm sorry you can't go in."

And I said, "Well, I have an invitation."

He said, "Yes, but we've been told you're a security risk."

And I thought (snap) Darn!

Because he'd be like saying the walls are melting and stuff.

>> B. Mitchell Reed: There has been some sort of uneasiness amongst people because the FM industry is burgeoning.

It's really growing by leaps and bounds.

It is becoming the media for all sorts of things that are not allowed on the AM station.

>> ♪ Look what's happening out in the streets ♪ ♪ Got a revolution ♪ >> Donohue: The pressure was on from the Nixon administration.

>> ♪ Got a revolution ♪ >> Art Linkletter: Dozen of stations across this country have been playing material which is dangerous in my opinion, which is too explicit.

>> Morrow: Anybody who played drug related or records or music with drug content in it, their licenses would be looked at.

>> David Crosby: The problem is that the songs are offering an entire alternate set of values.

That's what frightens the people that control the FCC.

>> They maybe feel Washington breathing down their necks.

>> ♪ Glory hallelujah, His truth is marching on ♪ >> I think that rock 'n' roll people were part of what stopped the war, which then spread and spread and spread and spread.

>> Vin Scelsa: All the marketing guys looked and said, "Look at all the people there."

>> ♪ Baby Boomers ♪ >> Scelsa: We can market to them.

>> ♪ Don't mention about the color of the money, just keep it coming in ♪ >> Chris Gibson: Advertisers wanted to slice up this youth quake, as they called it, into smaller and more manageable segments.

>> Fong-Torres: The corporate suits began to study the audience, study the music and figure out how they could maximize the audience, and therefore of course advertising revenue.

>> Ladd: Then they brought in what are called radio consultants, selling these people their formats.

>> Gibson: And the radio consultant who was best known for innovating with this kind of research was Lee Abrams.

>> Abrams: You know, I think the problem with the whole research thing, it just got completely out of control.

>> Meg Griffin: And the case in point was when I was at a classic rock radio station, and I know they did a focus group that day, and they came back, and I said, "So, what did you learn?"

And one of the big wigs at that radio station told me a few things he had learned, and I said, "Well, did you by any chance test Bob Marley?"

And he said, "Yeah," because we weren't playing any and I really wanted to.

And I said, "And what happened when you tested Bob Marley?"

"Oh, it came back really positive."

So I said, "Oh, good, then we're gonna start to play some."

Now here's where it's faulty.

He said, "No, people just say they like Bob Marley because they think it's cool.

We'll just play Eric Clapton's version of "I Shot the Sheriff."

And I was, like, that's it.

>> Scott Shannon: It was a victim of the commercialization of the FM band.

That's what happened.

More competitive types of radio moved to the FM band and it was shut up and play the hits, shut up and play the hits, shut up and play the hits and don't interject too much personality, nobody wants to hear it.

>> Rick Dees: You think people want to listen to the same 10 songs over and over and over again?

Let me just tell you, because I'm in this business, it is not 10 songs, it's nine songs over and over and over again.

>> Jay Thomas: Once the AM formats moved to FM and played the same records over and over again, and did the time, the temperature and had all the stupid contests... >> A local disc jockey, Jerry St. James, took what he called the world's biggest Nestea plunge.

>> Thomas: ...They became just like AM, except the signal was clearer and better.

>> Ladd: And that's what ruined FM radio, because once they took over, the freedom was gone.

>> This is Tom Donahue and that's all for tonight.

>> Fong-Torres: It was the saddest chapter really in a lot of our lives to lose something so important to us.

>> Shadoe Stevens: Yeah, we've gone through these arcs of era of love, and then the era of resistance and fighting for what's right.

And then that's kind of coming to a conclusion, "Let's party."

>> ♪ On the radio, whoa oh, oh, oh, on the radio ♪ >> In economic terms, disco is what may have been the final nail in the coffin.

>> ♪ Don't it kind of strike you sad when you hear our song ♪ >> KC: I never felt that there was any anti-disco movement.

I think it started from that guy that did the promotion in Chicago.

>> Between games, Dahl was to lead the crowd in song and chants and then finish by blowing up a box of disco records.

>> Jackson: Wait a minute, if I walk into a club at 3:00 in the morning, I don't want to hear Tom Petty.

You know what I'm saying.

I don't want to sit down and think about the music.

It's all pelvic, man.

It's all - and I believe a lot of people that so-called hate disco, can't dance.

>> ♪ On the radio, whoa oh, oh, oh, on the radio ♪ >> ♪ You have the time ♪ ♪ You have the power ♪ ♪ You've yet to have your finest hour ♪ [gunshots] >> Vin Scelsa: We basically held a wake for John on the radio that night.

>> Richard Neer: We individually all wound up at the radio station, and that was sort of our hub for the next 24 hours of mourning.

>> Scelsa: With people calling in, expressing their sorrow, their rage, their shock, their reminiscences.

>> Neer: It was probably our finest moment in terms of the sense of community.

>> Bruce Kelly: 96X will now unite you with radio listeners across the United States, Canada, and the world.

Collectively, we will remember John Lennon, a man with a dream, a dream that one day the human race will find peace.

>> ♪ Video killed the radio star ♪ ♪ Video killed the radio star ♪ >> Jackson: MTV, in a lot of ways, I think help and hurt.

Musically, it gave the artists a way of getting their music exposed.

Unfortunately, and MTV is not to blame for that, is that suddenly then the way they looked became more important than what they had to say.

>> Ben Fong-Torres: So they were more open than radio was at the time to different genres of music, acts of different levels of renown, and that gave radio a little kick in the butt.

>> And, hey man, we were DJs again.

>> Wolfman Jack: Mercy!

All right.

>> Stevens: To create this circus-like atmosphere.

>> Woman on phone: Your elephant is loose again.

>> Jerry Young: Down to Detroit now, it's 28 over in Riverview, it's 27 on your FM with the Motormouth Terry Young.

It's 99.5, the Fox.

Another 15 in a row next.

>> Robert Murphy: Repeat after me this all-important phrase.

>> Tina Delgado is alive, alive!

>> And we're adding a lot of records and breaking a lot of new music, and the radio stations were outrageous and over the top.

>> Jed The Fish: KROQ was this loser station at the end of the dial, that the radio stations in Los Angeles just sort of ignored.

♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪ Oh yeah, that's right, disc jockeys are not supposed to sing.

This is Jed The Fish on KROQ-FM.

I don't know, it's something about not playing commercials for a full hour or something like that.

>> Raechel Donahue: I'm looking in the record library and I'm saying, "Rick James?

Rick James, Rick James?"

And Black Flag, and they're also playing Marilyn Monroe's "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," and they're playing all this weird stuff, and they're playing little drops of parrots going "Whack," and lines from Invasion of the Body Snatchers in between records.

It was crazy.

>> Back then, it was a true grassroots - with a lot of grass - radio station.

>> Dusty Street: When I went to KROQ once again I was given the freedom to play new music.

♪♪♪ The things that we were talking about over the air at KMPX in the '60s and early '70s were much different than what we were talking about in the '80s at KROQ.

But, once again, it was a social consciousness.

>> Ladd: In the '80s, Ronald Reagan deregulated the broadcast industry.

He removed a ruling from the FCC that said, "No one in America could own more than seven television and seven radio stations."

>> Scelsa: Look at what happened to radio after that.

And it became more and more homogenized, more and more corporately controlled.

>> Graham Nash: The world's media is owned by probably less than a dozen people.

They're right wing, they're conservative, they don't want protest music on their radio stations.

>> Linda Energy: I've worked for Clear Channel most of my career.

In the, you know, olden days, we got to program our own music, but then Selector came along and it started getting programmed into more of a black song, white rock ballad, black, white rock ballad.

So, basically, you're hearing the same eight songs just in a different order every day.

>> Crosby: But Somebody in Oshkosh is programming, you know, stations in L.A. And they have no idea what L.A. is, or who lives there, or what they want, or - and they don't care.

>> Stephen Stills: And they give us that playlist that runs all over the country and they all buy into it.

It's sort of like buying into the Gallup poll.

And it's this ridiculous -- it's for, you know, lazy people running late radio stations.

>> That was the death of this kind of radio as art.

Not the death of it as business.

Not the death of it as McDonald's -- "Do you want fries with that?"

But certainly as art.

>> ♪ Radio what's new ♪ ♪ Someone still loves you ♪ >> 3-2-1.

>> Morrow: How it works, how satellite works, this I do know from my Earth Science days.

The satellite is up there 20-some-odd thousand miles.

I mean, it's this amazing kick ass technology that just accepts 140 -- God, I don't know how many signals come out of this building, this Sirius.

I mean, every day they had channels which takes the signal from here, throws it up to a satellite 22,000 miles up, and this thing is traveling elliptically, which is kind of a good word, you know, it goes around, and then sends it back to Earth.

>> What is it, Professor?

>> Morrow: I have no idea how this thing works.

>> Right you are, Skipper.

I hope they understand.

>> Morrow: Because technology is very important, but it's secondary to the audience.

Every region has their own little heroes, their own little pockets of music that they love and grew up with that they haven't heard.

I have that music.

>> ♪ Radio is my life ♪ ♪ Satellite radio ♪ ♪ Satellite radio ♪ >> Van Zandt: Rock 'n' roll is not like the other types of music, you actually have see it and feel it and touch it.

Turn people on, that's how I grew up and got turned on.

I'm trying to pass that along, turn other people on.

>> Welcome my friends to the show that never ends, I'm Raechel Donahue.

You can call me Ms. Rae, and Buddy with me tonight because Ms. Rae.

Loves company.

>> Cooking with Pappy, the sassiest show on the radio.

>> I'm Meg Griffith.

Sirius disorder, why do we call it that?

Because we jump from one genre to another.

We just like to play stuff because we think it's good.

>> Madison: ...Radio does not play new music, they play crap.

Here on Sirius you're going to hear bands just squeal and moan and sound like Yoko Ono.

You're not going to hear that anywhere else.

>> Abrams: I remember radio from the '50s; it was magic.

You know, it was Theater of the Mind, it was just a wonderful experience.

It defined the American, you know, sonic experience.

Driving down the freeway, top down, listening to a great station, and you just don't hear that anymore.

And XM, again, our mission is to bring that back.

>> Bobby Bennett: On my station, for instance, I'm probably playing 300 Aretha Franklin records.

Not all at the same time, but, you know.

You're going to hear songs that Aretha made that nobody heard before.

People who bought her albums may have heard these songs, but people listening to the radio didn't.

>> Phlash Phelps: Lee Abrams, he said, "You know what we want you to do?

Re-create it like it's a '60s channel from the '60s."

So if you were in Chicago, we bring back WLS.

You get to hear that sound.

If you were in New York, you'll get to hear what it sounded like on WABC.

We bring back the old jingles.

We're doing it for you all over America.

Oh, we've got a new one for you.

How about for Michigan.

♪ Can you hear me?

♪ ♪ Can you hear me clearly around the dial?

♪ >> Donahue: Well, that's it for me, my little angels, I will see you next time.

So until then, then, remember, what we've learned from history is that we never learn anything from history.

>> Morrow: We went through a very good time with rock 'n' roll.

It gave audiences of different backgrounds, cultures, an opportunity to get together and look at each other, sit near each other, enjoy the same sounds of music and say, "Hey, you know, you're not so bad."

>> Griffin: As long as there are always a few that are willing to keep something going that is worth going, it's kind of like weeds; no matter how much chemical pesticide you put on it, we're still gonna find our way up through those cracks in the concrete.

We are.

>> Morrow: What's gonna be next?

Isn't this amazing?

What is going to be next?

>> Cousin Brucie.

>> Cousin Brucie!

>> Cousin Brucie.

>> Cousin Brucie.

>> Cousin Brucie!

>> ♪ The radios of the world are tuning in tonight ♪ ♪ Are you on the dial, are you tuned in right?

♪ ♪ One of our deejays is missing ♪ >> Announcer: A DVD of this show containing material not seen on public TV is available by ordering online or by phone.

A CD featuring music from the soundtrack is also available online at airplayrockradio.org or by calling 1-800-873-6154.

>> People really believed in their jocks back then.

You had the guy that was your guy, your icon.

>> ♪ Well, you were my favorite deejay since I can remember when ♪ ♪ You always played the best record ♪ ♪ You never followed any trend ♪ ♪ FM/AM where are you?

♪ ♪ You gotta be out there somewhere on the dial ♪ >> They put those little transmitter radios up under their pillows.

>> ♪ Are you ready?

♪ ♪ We're going 'round the dial ♪ ♪ Are you listenin'?

♪ ♪ Around the dial ♪ ♪ Are you tuned in?

♪ ♪ Around the dial ♪ ♪ Are you searchin'?

♪ ♪ Around the dial ♪ ♪ FM/AM where are you?

♪ ♪ You gotta be out there somewhere on the dial ♪ ♪ On the dial ♪ ♪ Can you hear me?

♪ ♪ Around the dial ♪ ♪ Are you listenin'?

♪ ♪ Around the dial ♪ ♪ Are you out there?

♪ >> And the pressure was on from the Nixon administration, they wanted to censor us already.

We were in trouble for drug lyrics.

We were in trouble for political lyrics.

We were in trouble for sex lyrics.

We got a complaint about "Why Didn't You Do It In The Road" by the Beatles, for heaven sake.

>> ♪ Are you out there?

♪ ♪ Around the dial ♪ ♪ Can you hear me?

♪ ♪ Around the dial ♪ >> Remember, at all times take a tip from the Big Boss with the big cat sauce and keep on rockin' 'cuz you'll find truly in life you really only rock once.

Good night y'all.