Alan Freed!!

[DavidEduardo]

BS! Read the books David. Read the books. Dick Clark was guilty as hell, and lied. Freed took the fall. God, you act like you know everything.

I lived through the period as a broadcaster, followed the case in all the trades, and am willing to believe that there was not enough evidence to make a case against Dick Clark, while there was an extensive paper trail behind Freed plus witnesses.

At the time, Payola became the same kind of witch hunt that Elliot Spitzer initiated a few years ago... high profile, involving the media and music, and one that made government prosecutors look good. And the higher profile the potential conviction, the faster the career advancement of the prosecutor.

Since none of thus was "in the room" we are all entitled to look at the evidence and to make a decision as to how we view it. I happen to think that the initial success of finding dirt on Freed encouraged the officials to go after truly big fist... but they failed.

My opinion.

 

[DavidEduardo]

Freed took the fall.

"Taking a fall" implies some kind of shared knowledge and agreement, as in "I'm going to take the fall for you..."

Freed did not "take a fall" for Clark. There was enough evidence to get Freed, and not enough to successfully prosecute Clark.

Clark was accused due to his separate but potentially conflictive record company investments. He cooperated and sold those interests. Freed was called "uncooperative" and it was even found he had been "rewarded" with writing credits on songs (so he'd get royalties).

When the issue went to The Hill, the hearings revealed a cooperative Clark had done all that was asked of him. Freed had not, and was in denial.

Remember, at the time it was not illegal for a record company to be co-owned by a radio company (or vice versa). ABC had ABC Paramount Records. CBS had Columbia. RCA/NBC had RCA Victor. Chess had a station in Chicago... and there were others, including artists owning stations, right down to Flatt & Skruggs and Gene Autry.

 

[ixnay]

TIO much? Oh, and BTW David, we're all sinners.

I seem to have attacked someone's pet golden idol.

LOL!

I have no idols, golden, flesh and blood, or otherwise. Just Jesus.

You too are a sinner, David. As am I.

ixnay

 

[unitron]

... I side with Amstrong and not Sarnoff...

I take back every bad thought I ever had about you.

Except for the one about how could you have been suckered into voting for Tricky Dick.

Please tell me that was in '68 and not '72.

 

[TheFonz]

I felt the same way about voting for Richard Nixon, too. :-[

Thankfully you won't have to make that choice with Barrack Obama

 

[TheFonz]

Alan Freed is not even a cult hero. He was just a criminal who stole time from radio stations for his own gain.

Who's to say the time would have been used in a better way?

 

[TheFonz]

Alan Freed is not even a cult hero. He was just a criminal who stole time from radio stations for his own gain.

Today we would call him a lobbyist.

 

[DavidEduardo]

Please tell me that was in '68 and not '72.

I was thousands of miles away from a polling place in '68, and in '72 had just moved 4000 miles to Birmingham, AL, where sanity did not prevail at the time.

That's my excuse, and I'm sticking with it. :

 

[DavidEduardo]

Alan Freed is not even a cult hero. He was just a criminal who stole time from radio stations for his own gain.

Today we would call him a lobbyist.

Now that is funny. ;D

 

[firepoint525]

Alan Freed was over-rated. It was Dewey Phillips who "discovered" Elvis Presley, and was the first to ever play an Elvis Presley record on the radio (all the way through, at least*), and his Red Hot and Blue radio program was simulcast over local TV years before Dick Clark had American Bandstand.

(*Supposedly, WREC radio in Memphis had played a sample of an Elvis record even before Phillips ever did, but quickly yanked it off the air and dismissed it as "rubbish" or "garbage" or some such.)

Phillips is now in the newly created Tennessee Radio Hall of Fame, which he deserves to be. DooWopVault, if you ever do a program on Dewey Phillips, I would be sure to listen in. Wife is a big Elvis fan, too (an even bigger fan than me!), so I am sure that she would tune in, as well.

 

[ixnay]

If Freed had stayed clean, it would've been interesting to see how (or if) he could've cashed in on Beatlemania.

ixnay

 

[The King Bee]

I wonder...how much did ASCAP lobby against Freed and other announcers they saw as playing too much BMI-licensed music?

I understand that ASCAP considered moves against WLAC, Nashville's influential and powerful DJ's, but artists, labels, distributors, publishers and retailers got wind of this and threatened to pull all the ASCAP-licensed music from their catalogues and inventories if John R, The Hossman, Gene Nobles and the rest were hassled in any way.

Even the huge retail mail-order houses that advertised heavily on WLAC at night (Buckley's, Randy's and Ernie's Record Marts) told ASCAP to back off or they wgulartould restrict the amount of ASCAP-licensed songs in their six-record packages. My paternal grandparents ordered from these shops regularly.

BMI years earlier reached out to R&B artists, labels, writers and publishers (e.g. Arc Music, Progressive, Tiger, Dynatone, and two new ones who became huge...Jobete and East-Memphis) and has reaped the benefits ever since.

 

[DavidEduardo]

I wonder...how much did ASCAP lobby against Freed and other announcers they saw as playing too much BMI-licensed music?

Interesting question. I am not aware of any licensing issues coming out of Freed's radio shows, which were limited to a certain daypart on local stations in Cleveland and, later, New York.