Last Night a DJ Saved My Life (updated): The History of the Disc Jockey

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Every label on every record specifically carried the warning that the disk was not to be broadcast," recalled pioneer DJ Al Jarvis in Billboard's seventy-fifth anniversary issue. "And

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life : Brewster, Bill, Broughton

announcer, Jarvis was an eager student of the music business, and by reading Billboard and Variety—something none of his colleagues did—he was able to tell his audience a little about each record, if they could hear it played for free. This fear was borne out by some Depression-era figures which showed that urban areas with popular radio stations were suffering a downturn in record sales (they were actually sufferingWhile the big stations complied, using music from large orchestras and live dancehalls, the smaller broadcaster still relied on the gramophone. During the Depression, as belts were tightened, the use of records That’s right. We added that chapter and another one on jazz-funk, which had originally been part of the acid house chapter. We took it out, did a couple of new interviews and created a whole new chapter with it. Over the years, I’ve never stopped interviewing people. There are probably another 50 interviews that we’ve incorporated into the new book in different places.

Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life - Wikipedia Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life - Wikipedia

If you have seen my profile you may think that this book is quite far from the usual, but not so much if we consider my interest in popular culture and, in addition, for my studies of sociology (although I am not working in this discipline) that has left me "installed" the curiosity about social phenomena. Of course as a young “dancing king” I frequently attended nightclubs, so from my own experience this is familiar to me. Poppa Stoppa—with the latest local slang, teaching him to say things like "Look at the gold tooth, Ruth" and "Wham ham, thank you ma'am." The show became a smash. One night, frustrated by A decade later the radio waves were tamed, but it would take another full ten years before Marconi’s equipment was able to send more than Morse’s dots and dashes. However, when the gramophone and radio signal were finally combined, we find our first DJ candidates. But obviously, these days there’s more information out there now on the internet than there’s ever been, and we wanted to include some of it and update the book very subtly. I don’t think readers would really notice the update in a big way. Hopefully, they’ll realise that it’s just been tightened up a little bit maybe.What makes the book particularly readable despite its length is the sincere affection the authors have for their subject. The authors, quite simply, love the love and connection created between the DJ, the club-goers, and the music. They also have a particular affection for the warmth and welcoming to all of DJ club culture; this is especially showcased in the book's chapters on Northern Soul, Garage, House, and UK Acid House (the latter of which, I think the authors must have grown up experiencing). I particularly liked those chapters, for that reason. Radio is a unique broadcast medium. It has the power to reach millions, and yet it has the intimacy to make them each feel they are the most important person listening. Unlike television, which invades the home with images of the outside world, radio Not really, we’re really proud of the original book. It feels like you’ve had a child and they’ve gone out in the world, graduated from university, got a really good job and done really well. We had no idea it would get the reception that it did. I remember saying before it came out that it would be amazing if we sold 50,000 copies in our lifetime, that would be amazing. Now it’s already sold a lot more than that and has been translated into about nine different languages. In 1997, King Britt included a version of this song on his album King Britt Presents Sylk 130 – When The Funk Hits The Fan. [30]

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc

What was the very first record played by a DJ? It was a woman (probably Clara Butt) singing Handel’s Largo.By the fifties, broadcasters had finally settled most of their disputes with the wider music industry and there were no more legal obstacles to filling airtime with records. In 1948 the transistor was invented, There’s more to it than groups like Boney M. There’s all this culture behind disco and it’s actually an incredibly inspiring style of music if you listen to it properly. So I’d say that one of the book’s aims was to put forward a case for disco being incredibly influential. Brewster and Broughton exhibit considerable skill in rendering the meta-story seamless, subtly turning what is essentially an oral history, culled from original interviews and other published sources, into an orchestral piece.”— Hartford Courant Those qualms aside, I learned so much reading this book! Its breadth is exceptional--perhaps too much so. In addition to taking the reader through the early days of radio, to the early days of clubs and DJ-ing, to the rise of various genres (and subgenres) of the 1960s through 2000s, to the cultural context surrounding this progression, the authors also spend quite a lot of time describing, e.g., once-popular, long-closed clubs (and their resident DJs) that were integral to that history. I don't know that I needed to read everything in the book, although, in retrospect, I appreciate the attention to detail and the chronicling of places and people that made up the times. obvious beneficiary, as the DJ's influence allowed the various splinters of race music to coalesce into rhythm and blues.

Last Night A DJ Saved My Life - Velocity Press Bill Brewster: Last Night A DJ Saved My Life - Velocity Press

Almost immediately, the presence of records on the radio aroused opposition. In the U.S., the Department of Commerce granted preferential licenses to stations that didn't use recorded music, since there was a feeling that playing records was a rather Musicians called the broadcast of recorded music "DeForest's prime evil." Stations paid no performance fee to the artists whose records they used, and every time one was played on the radio

Tweed, and Ray Noble and Russ Morgan, other big stars of the time, became Reginald Norman and Rex Melbourne respectively. impact. In Jamaica, the sound system DJs emulated this jive rhyming almost immediately and became superstar deejays as "toasters" or "MCs." In New York twenty years later, there emerged the rapper, the Herrold saw himself as the first person to realize the entertainment possibilities of the medium, and gave all his neighbors crystal sets so they could receive the music and interviews he broadcast. Offiziellecharts.de – Indeep – Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life" (in German). GfK Entertainment charts.