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

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The American Federation of Musicians, a tight-knit closed shop union, declared the DJ to be the enemy of the musician and fought long and hard to prevent records being broadcast on radio. The AFM were aided in this by the Federal Radio Commission, who as Arnold Passman wrote, “attempted everything this side of public hangings to curb the practice.”

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

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life is a comprehensive history of DJing over the last century and how innovative techniques spawned new genres of music. It's also a testament to the artistic merit of DJing which is commonly despised by people who think that DJing is nothing more than playing one record after another, without any sort of musicianship or skill. DJing is, in fact, a momentous artistic force that has helped to define eras in musical culture. is somehow part of the place in which it is heard, and the voices and music it carries manage to create a strong feeling of community. Sociologist Marshall McLuhan called it the "tribal drum." Arnold Passman, and Annapolis and did shows in each. Today he is the chairman of a whole group of U.S. radio stations.The “invention” of Top 40 is much disputed (sales charts had existed since the days of sheet music’s supremacy). The most popular account relates that in 1950 Todd Storz, station owner of Omaha’s KOWH, was one day watching customers choose records from a diner jukebox. He noted that people wanted to hear just a few very popular songs over and over again. With the capacity of the jukebox in mind, Storz named the concept “Top 40” and applied it to radio programming with great success. WABC in New York adopted it in late 1960 and by 1962 was the city’s number one station. One of the first club culture chronicles, and arguably the first biography of the DJ as an artist, the impact that Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton’s Last Night a DJ Saved my Life had on music writing was seminal.

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life - The New York Times Web Archive Last Night a DJ Saved My Life - The New York Times Web Archive

Despite the early triumphs of such pioneers, radio had a long road to travel before it became anything we would now recognize. In its seventy-fifth anniversary issue in 1969, Billboard described the sleepy nature of the medium in the years before 1935. Explaining that the evening was taken up by broadcasts from ballrooms and symphony halls, the magazine described the rest of the day’s schedule. Starting chronologically, the foreword in the new edition is written by James Murphy. Hearing people in the industry talk about Murphy, phrases like ‘strong-willed’ and ‘only does things his way’ tend to come up. How did you manage to get such an elusive figure on board? The lyrics tell the story of a woman who is bored alone at home. She wants to speak to her man, but cannot reach him and considers leaving him, until a DJ plays a hot song and thereby saves her from a broken heart. In the second verse, she leaves home, but does not reach her destination. A riveting look at record spinning from its beginnings to the present day . . . A grander and more fascinating story than one would think.” — Time Out London plain old racism stop him, however. He bought time on the station through a white advertising agency, hovered outside the studio until just before his allotted slot, and then used his paid-for airtime to interview two prominentHerrold 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.

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

In the long term the payola scandals did little to erode the radio DJ's strength. They did, however, raise the profile of a format known as Top 40. In the wake of payola, the idea of selecting records scientifically and not according to the whims inferior style of broadcasting—mainly because live music gave far superior sound reproduction. In 1927 the industry's new governing body, the Federal Radio Commission, reemphasized that phonograph performances 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. "Andstyle as he spun American and American-influenced jazz. In 1957 Melody Maker declared, as it celebrated Stone's seventy-fifth birthday, "Everyone in Britain who has written, produced or compered a gramophone This book goes well with other music history books like Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang, and Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture by Simon Reynolds. There is a deep overlap between all three of these books which I found very satisfying. Allied to the musicians were the music publishers, then the most powerful part of the music industry. At the time of radio’s birth, sheet music was still the dominant popular musical commodity, and songwriters were the stars of the day. When the world started buying records instead of sheet music, however, power shifted away from the publishers and songwriters and into the hands of the record companies and recording artists. Allowing records on the radio would accelerate this shift, so the publishers fought it every way they could. This excellent book does what the title claims - it presents the history of the DJ from the very first time a record was played on a radio broadcast (in 1906) through to a century later when the revised edition of this book was released. In 1941 ASCAP demanded a royalty increase of nearly seventy percent. Broadcasters resisted the increase and ASCAP called a strike. This lasted from January to October. During this time, no ASCAP songs could be played on the radio.