Alan Freed


Albert James "Alan" Freed was an American disc jockey. He also produced and promoted large traveling concerts with various acts, helping to spread the importance of rock and roll music throughout North America, including popularizing the term "rock and roll".
In 1986, Freed was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His "role in breaking down racial barriers in U.S. pop culture in the 1950s, by leading white and black kids to listen to the same music, put the radio personality 'at the vanguard' and made him 'a really important figure'", according to the executive director.

Early years

Freed was born to a Welsh-American mother, Maude Palmer, and a Russian Jewish immigrant father, Charles S. Freed, in Windber, Pennsylvania. The 1930 Federal Census has the Freeds living at 550 East Seventh Street in Salem, Ohio, with Charles listing his place of birth as Alsace-Lorraine and his language Lithuanian. Freed attended Salem High School, graduating in 1940. While Freed was in high school, he formed a band called the Sultans of Swing in which he played the trombone. Freed's initial ambition was to be a bandleader; however, an ear infection put an end to that dream.
While attending Ohio State University, Freed became interested in radio. Freed served in the US Army during World War II and worked as a DJ on Armed Forces Radio. Soon after World War II, Freed landed broadcasting jobs at smaller radio stations, including WKST ; WKBN ; and WAKR, where, in 1945, he became a local favorite for playing hot jazz and pop recordings.

Career

Freed was the first radio disc jockey and concert producer who frequently played and promoted rock and roll; he popularized the phrase "rock and roll" on mainstream radio in the early 1950s. The term "rock and roll" already existed in the early 1940s, but it remained obscure. For example, one of the term's earliest uses was by a music critic and record reviewer for Billboard named Maurie Orodenker. In the May 30, 1942 issue of Billboard, in his review of the song "Rock Me" by Thomas A. Dorsey , Orodenker described the vocals of Sister Rosetta Tharpe as "rock-and-roll spiritual singing."
Several sources suggest that he first discovered the term on the record "Sixty Minute Man" by Billy Ward and his Dominoes. The lyrics include the line, "I rock 'em, roll 'em all night long", however, Freed did not accept that inspiration in interviews, and explained his view of the term as follows: "Rock 'n roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm".
He helped bridge the gap of segregation among young teenage Americans, presenting music by black artists on his radio program, and arranging live concerts attended by racially mixed audiences. Freed appeared in several motion pictures as himself. In the 1956 film Rock, Rock, Rock, Freed tells the audience that "rock and 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."

WAKR Akron

In June 1945, Alan Freed joined WAKR in Akron, Ohio, and quickly became a star announcer. Dubbed "The Old Knucklehead", Freed had up to five hours of airtime every day on the station by June 1948: the daytime Jukebox Serenade, the early-evening Wax Works and the nightly Request Review. Freed also had brief run-ins with management and was at one point temporarily fired for violating studio rules and failing to show up for work for several days in a row.
At the height of his popularity in 1948, Freed signed a contract extension with WAKR that included a non-compete clause inserted by owner S. Bernard Berk, preventing Freed from working at any station within a radius of of Akron for a full year. Freed left WAKR on February 12, 1950, and after one program on competing station WADC several days later, Berk and WAKR sued Freed to enforce the clause. Freed repeatedly lost in court, even after appealing his case to the Supreme Court of Ohio; Berk's successful implementation of the non-compete is now recognized within the industry as a model for broadcasters regarding on-air talent contracts.

WJW Cleveland

In the late 1940s, while working at WAKR, Freed met Cleveland record store owner Leo Mintz. Record Rendezvous, one of Cleveland's largest record stores, had begun selling rhythm and blues records. Mintz told Freed that he had noticed increased interest in the records at his store, and encouraged him to play them on the radio.
In 1951, having already joined television station WXEL in the middle of 1950 as an announcer, Freed moved to Cleveland, which at from Akron was within the range of the still in force non-compete clause. However, in April, through the help of William Shipley, RCA's Northern Ohio distributor, he was released from the non-compete clause. He was then hired by WJW radio for a midnight program sponsored by Main Line, the RCA Distributor, and Record Rendezvous. Freed peppered his speech with hipster language, and, with a rhythm and blues record called "Moondog" as his theme song, broadcast R&B hits into the night.
Mintz proposed buying airtime on Cleveland radio station WJW, which would be devoted entirely to R&B recordings, with Freed as host. On July 11, 1951, Freed began playing rhythm and blues records on WJW. While R&B records were played for many years on lower-powered, inner city radio stations aimed at African-Americans, this is arguably the first time that authentic R&B was featured regularly on a major, mass audience station. Freed called his show "The Moondog House" and billed himself as "The King of the Moondoggers". He had been inspired by an instrumental piece called "Moondog Symphony" that had been recorded by New York-based composer and street musician Louis T. Hardin, known professionally as Moondog. Freed adopted the record as his show's theme music. His on-air manner was energetic, in contrast to many contemporary radio presenters of traditional pop music, who tended to sound more subdued and low-key in manner. He addressed his listeners as if they were all part of a make-believe kingdom of hipsters, united in their love for black music. He also began popularizing the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music he played.
Image:Moondog poster.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Concert poster for the Coronation Ball
Later that year, Freed promoted dances and concerts featuring the music he was playing on the radio. He was one of the organizers of a five-act show called "The Moondog Coronation Ball" on March 21, 1952, at the Cleveland Arena. This event is now considered to have been the first major rock and roll concert. Crowds attended in numbers far beyond the arena's capacity, and the concert was shut down early due to overcrowding and a near-riot. Freed gained notoriety from the incident. WJW immediately increased the airtime allotted to Freed's program, and his popularity soared.
In those days, Cleveland was considered by the music industry to be a "breakout" city, where national trends first appeared in a regional market. Freed's popularity made the pop music business take notice. Soon, tapes of Freed's program, Moondog, began to air in the New York City area over station WNJR 1430, in Newark, New Jersey.

New York stations

In July 1954, following his success on the air in Cleveland, Freed moved to WINS in New York City. Hardin, the original Moondog, later took a court action suit against WINS for damages against Freed for infringement in 1956, arguing prior claim to the name "Moondog", under which he had been composing since 1947. Hardin collected a $6,000 judgment from Freed, as well as an agreement to give up further usage of the name Moondog. Freed left the station in May 1958 "after a riot at a dance in Boston featuring Jerry Lee Lewis". WINS eventually became an around-the-clock Top 40 rock and roll radio station, and would remain so until April 19, 1965, long after Freed left and three months after he had died—when it became an all-news outlet.
Earlier, in 1956, Freed had hosted "The Camel Rock and Roll Dance Party", so named for the sponsor Camel cigarettes. The half hour program headlined Count Basie and his Orchestra and later Sam The Man Taylor and His Orchestra, and featured weekly rock n roll guests such as LaVern Baker, Clyde McPhatter and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. The radio program was also referred to as "Alan Freed's Rock 'n' Roll Dance Party" on CBS Radio from New York.
Freed also worked at WABC starting in May 1958 but was fired from that station on November 21, 1959, after refusing to sign a statement for the FCC that he had never accepted payola bribes.
He subsequently arrived at a small Los Angeles station, KDAY and worked there for about one year.

Film and television

Freed also appeared in a number of pioneering rock and roll motion pictures during this period. These jukebox musicals were often welcomed with tremendous enthusiasm by teenagers because they brought visual depictions of their favorite American acts to the big screen, years before music videos would present the same sort of image on the small television screen.
Freed appeared in several motion pictures that presented many of the big musical acts of his day, including:
Freed was given a weekly primetime TV series, The Big Beat, which premiered on ABC on July 12, 1957. The show was scheduled for a summer run, with the understanding that if there were enough viewers, it would continue into the 1957–58 television season. Although the ratings for the show were strong, it was suddenly terminated. The Wall Street Journal summarized the end of the program as follows. "Four episodes into The Big Beat, Freed's prime-time TV music series on ABC, an uproar was caused when African-American artist Frankie Lymon was seen on TV dancing with a white audience member". Two more episodes were aired but the show was suddenly cancelled. Some sources indicate that the cancellation was triggered by an uproar among ABC's local affiliates in the South.
During this period, Freed was seen on other popular programs of the day, including To Tell the Truth, where he is seen defending the new "rock and roll" sound to the panelists, who were all clearly more comfortable with swing music: Polly Bergen, Ralph Bellamy, Hy Gardner and Kitty Carlisle.