Last night a dj saved my life book pdf

Despite optimistic predictions, the booming market in transcriptions died off soon after the war, largely because of the rising popularity of the personality disc jockey. Gilbert is a disc jockey, who sings with his records.

As well as its obvious reference to a horse rider, it can suggest someone capable of skilful maneuvering, a man of the people, or a trickster. The DJ was jockeying his records—maneuvering them with skill—but he was also seen as jockeying, as in hustling , his place in the world.

Added to this, the DJ was held back for many years by the tendency towards ever more neutral announcing. The networks and their advertisers preferred characterless, functional announcing, which they saw as more professional.

They provided their local affiliate stations with transcription discs that included clipped, sterile introductions, further reducing the role of the local announcer. For a while it looked as if the DJ would never be much more than a characterless gramophone technician.

There was a massive expansion in the market and most of the new stations were independent of the stuffy networks. They were competitive, programming to appeal to regional tastes, and they relied mostly on records for their music.

This kind of broadcasting definitely needed disc jockeys. As a result there was a need for snappy talkers to sell up the virtues of chewing tobacco and patent chest tonic. A few talented jocks started to show just how profitable their shows could be. 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 the transistor was invented, and a radio receiver could now be cheap and portable. And around the same time, society invented the teenager. All these factors combined to encourage the rise of the charismatic, fast-talking disc jockey.

The postwar world was going to be a very different place, and records on the radio would play a huge part in making it so. Martin Block was the first real star among disc jockeys, one of a handful of successful characters who paved the way for the rapid postwar rise of the DJ. He started as a salesman, advertising various wares and playing records in between from a loudspeaker truck traveling up and down Broadway, until the police and local store owners shut him up.

He rushed out to the Liberty Music shop round the corner, returned with five Clyde McCoy records and played them back to back to make it sound like a live broadcast from a dancehall, complete with introductions that made it seem like he was actually chatting to McCoy, a Louisiana bandleader.

By the end of the week the ad had drawn 3, responses. In just four months his unscripted, easygoing style, combined with music solely from records, netted him four million listeners, and the show was extended to two and a half hours.

Advertisers were now lining up. It was won by a band led by a young man named Glenn Miller. Though just the staff 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, while his cozy, friendly style won him plenty of listeners. From the early thirties his Make Believe Ballroom was broadcast six hours a day and became very successful.

However, Jarvis enjoyed nowhere near the runaway success of Block, who would become number one in radio for nearly a quarter of a century with the exact same show.

By , Martin Block was the make-all, break-all of records. If he played something, it was a hit. In , while already under a multimillion-dollar contract with ABC, he was able to syndicate his show for nationwide broadcast.

This netted him a massive two million dollars. Block had considerable insight into the power of his profession. And sales are sure to reflect the airing of the disc. He then watched Block put it straight onto the turntable. This was the first example of a label servicing DJs en masse.

And we published a little newspaper in which we ran their pictures and biographies. By the end of the war, radio DJs had started to enjoy much greater respect. In the fifties and the sixties, radio DJing would become a fully accepted profession, an integral part of the music industry.

I want to make hits. Billboard adopted it in The biggest impetus in the rise of black music came from the post-war expansion and localization of radio. In the newly competitive market, smaller stations, independent of the national networks, had become the norm. Together with the jukebox, which was serving a similar localized role, DJs and radio gave an incredible boost to the fortunes of less mainstream music and the smaller record labels on which it was released. In Ebony could only find sixteen blacks employed in the U.

Their presence was a beacon for the black communities, important examples of black success in what was then a very white world. He sounded black. They knew he was and most of us were proud of the fact. 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 prominent black community leaders.

The audience reaction was so good he was hired straight away. Within three months he had been employed by two other radio stations as well, working hour days as he drove between D.

Today he is the chairman of a whole group of U. The increased presence of black Americans on radio exposed an entire culture which had previously been closed to whites. There was the music, of course, but the way many of these DJs spoke would also have a huge influence, both on future disc jockeys and on music in general. Jocko, and similar loons, showed that the radio DJ could be a creative artist in his own right, not just a comedian or a companion but a vocalist, a poet.

The other move that the jive-rhyming DJ took was to change color. Rhythm and blues was too good to remain a black secret for long and as the fifties dawned, certain musically adventurous white DJs started to add it to their playlists.

By a quarter of the best-selling U. This move was accelerated by the dramatic commercial success of some of the new black stations, exemplified by WDAI in Memphis, since the first black-owned radio station, which, as well as being the home of DJs B.

King and Rufus Thomas he of the Funky Chicken , was extremely profitable. In adopting this subversive music, the white DJs also started adopting black slang.

Denied an on-air position merely because of his race, Winslow was hired for a most extraordinary job. He was to train a white DJ to sound black. One night, frustrated by his behind-the-scenes existence, Winslow snuck a turn at the mic.

The white negro disc jockey was an extremely successful invention, eventually leading to the zaniness of such star DJs as Murray the K and hundreds of other wacky talkers. The very name comes straight from the title of a radio show, and the music itself was nothing more than what was previously called rhythm and blues, which in any case, as we have seen, owed its emergence largely to the rise of localized radio and the black disc jockey.

The man who changed the name, and who did more than anyone to popularize the music, aroused such controversy in doing so, that he would be investigated by the U. The Cleveland Arena held 10, people and Freed had initially worried that he might not recoup his money. However, by P. Within weeks he was the dominant force on radio there, attracting a huge, racially mixed audience for his uncompromising black music in Cleveland, his constituency had been overwhelmingly black.

The black middle classes thought it would simply reinforce negative stereotypes, with its low-brow, even obscene lyrics promoting an image of black people as gamblers and drinkers keen on promiscuity. Oblivious to such criticisms, Freed ploughed on, using the advantages of his color to promote this nascent black form in a way in which most blacks had been prevented from doing. By his show was syndicated across the entire U.

Alan Freed was not the first person, black or white, to play rhythm and blues on the radio, but he was certainly the most prominent. In an era of Cold War paranoia, and following the shattering revelations about the fixing of popular TV quiz shows, the government decided to turn its attention to radio. With the rise of broadcasting and the growing profitability of the black and ethnic music which BMI had championed, ASCAP saw its position dramatically eroded. Out of spite, it spurred the government to sniff around the financial workings of radio.

At the end of a Congressional hearing into payola was inaugurated. Naturally, there was plenty to investigate: DJs often accepted money and gifts from record labels. Some even had interests in publishing companies and labels themselves. Despite the moralistic outrage, payola was nothing new.

It had existed even before records. FBI Director J. The broadcast of forbidden black sounds to excitable white teenagers was seen as revolutionary and profoundly dangerous. In retrospect, the investigation was less an enquiry into financial misdeeds, more a crusade against the unrestricted influence of the disc jockey, here personified by Freed. A girl interviewed outside one of his shows was in no doubt as to why he had been removed.

Freed, arrogant and complacent to the last, admitted accepting payments from United Artists, Roulette and Atlantic Records and distributors Cosnat and Superior. Clark had a financial interest in many of the songs he played on Bandstand. He owned a bewildering array of intertwined music companies, and admitted to owning the copyrights to at least songs. He was hardly pursued, was never charged, and even had his sworn statement reworded so that he could sign it without perjuring himself.

Because of his love of black music, Freed was a far more appealing target. Although Freed had brief stints at other radio stations, his career went into steep decline after the hearings.

Not satisfied with his payola conviction, the authorities went after him for tax evasion. In response to a constant barrage of investigation and character assassination, his drink problem quickly escalated and he died on January 20, from complications brought about by alcoholism.

The obituaries largely concentrated on his ignominious departure from the public eye rather than his considerable influence on popular music. For having such influence, Freed paid dearly. He was a clear example of how much power a DJ can wield, and an even clearer example of the lengths to which the establishment will sometimes go to curb that power. They did, however, raise the profile of a format known as Top In the wake of payola, the idea of selecting records scientifically and not according to the whims of some corrupt disc jockey had great appeal for station proprietors and their advertisers.

Slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising. If you continue browsing the site, you agree to the use of cookies on this website. See our User Agreement and Privacy Policy.

See our Privacy Policy and User Agreement for details. Submit Search. A compilation album of the same name was released with the book. The album contains various clips ranging from s reggae to Handel 's Largo , the first song to reach radio airwaves, in. Last Night a DJ Saved My Life was the first comprehensive history of the disc jockey, a figure who has become a powerful force shaping the music industry—and since its original publication, the book has become a classic.

Em breve no Brasil author review of last night a dj saved my life Firstly, we feel that it is indeed an exhaustive history of the disc jockey and, in turn, of dance music itself. Your email address will not be published. Home what and about quotes love your life free read you how the with for pdf movie book.

Starting as little more than a talking jukebox, the DJ is now a premier entertainer, producer, businessman, and musician in his own right. Superstar DJs, from Junior Vasquez to Sasha and Digweed, command worship and adoration from millions, flying around the globe to earn tens of thousands of dollars for one nights work. Increasingly, they are replacing live musicians as the central figures of the music industry.

In Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, music journalists Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton have written the first comprehensive history of the mysterious and charismatic figure behind the turntables -- part obsessive record collector, part mad scientist, part intuitive psychologist of the party groove.