A term first used in the early 1950s to describe those presenters who played and helped select the popular hits of the day for broadcast. The rise to prominence of the disc jockey went together with the growth in the early 1950s of a teen-based market in the USA for first ‘race’ then ‘rock-n-roll’. One of the most influential disc jockeys of this period was the entrepreneur Alan Freed, whose radio show ‘Moondog’s Rock’n’roll Party’, begun in 1951, helped introduce black rhythm and blues to a mainstream white audience. Not only did Freed play the records but he put forward a definite identity of his own, so beginning the era of ‘personality radio’. Disc jockeys such as Bob ‘Wolfman Jack’ Smith in the 1950s, Emperor Rosko in the 1960s and John Peel in the 1970s became performer-presenters, the latter becoming a sort of mordant anti-hero. From the 1950s onwards disc jockeys began to invent their own slang and catch-phrases, and became vital factors in the promotion of new industry product. Their power was apparent from the beginning, as the ‘payola’ or ‘pay for play’ scandal of 1959–60 showed. This practice involved influential DJs being given a co-writing credit in exchange for playing the record on their shows. Although deemed illegal, ‘payola’ had the advantage of popularizing records from small independent labels. The industry later developed a network of legitimate promoters to push records from individual labels on to radio playlists. In the 1980s and 90s the pre-eminence of the DJ was challenged by the VJ (Video Jockey), the presenters on cable and satellite music shows such as Music Television (MTV), a medium which borrowed heavily from the successful format of pop radio.
S. Barnard: On The Radio: Music Radio in Britain (Milton Keynes, 1989)
R. Shuker: Understanding Popular Music (London, 1994)
B. Longhurst: Popular Music and Society (Oxford, 1995)
DAVID BUCKLEY