November 21, 1959: Alan Freed is fired by New York radio station WABC. More than any other disc jockey, he was a symbol of rock and roll. Now, more than any other disc jockey, he becomes a symbol of "the Payola Scandal."
Aware of their rising status in the new era of rock and roll, disc jockeys established flat rate deals with labels and record distributors. A typical deal for a mid-level DJ was $50 a week, per record, to ensure a minimum amount of spins -- about $506 in 2022 money. More influential jocks commanded percentages of grosses for local concerts, lavish trips, free records by the boxful, plus all the time-honored swag. Some even opened their own record stores. As Cleveland DJ Joe Finan later described the decade, "It was a blur of booze, broads and bribes."
As payola escalated, the weekly "trade publications" Variety and Billboard did lengthy features, calling for reform and government intervention. To its credit, Billboard wrote, "The cancer of payola cannot be pinned on rock 'n' roll." Though they may have been thinking about their own skin: Rock and roll (or "rock 'n' roll") meant big sales, and thus big money, for them, too.
ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) were also vocal in their opposition to payola, using it as a means to lambaste their competitor, BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.). At the time, the larger ASCAP represented the old guard of mostly white composers from the Tin Pan Alley days. BMI was associated with the young, racially mixed writers of R&B and rock and roll, as well as indie labels such as Aladdin, King and Chess. By the mid-1950s, BMI single releases outnumbered ASCAP's by almost 2 to 1. The older organization cried foul, accusing BMI of promoting payola.
Fingers pointed and words flew over payola, but it wasn't until the TV quiz show scandals of 1958 that the government got seriously involved. Once the "Do you now, or have you ever... ?" questions began, the jig was up.
With the threat of losing their licenses, some radio stations took the precaution of firing disc jockeys who might put them at risk. In November 1959, in closed and open sessions before the U.S. House of Representatives' Oversight Committee, 335 disc jockeys from around the country admitted to having received over $263,000 in "consulting fees." That figure was only the tip of the payola iceberg: Before the hearings, Phil Lind, a DJ at Chicago station WAIT, had confessed that he had once taken $22,000 to play a single record.
The trial heated up when the two most influential jocks in the country took the stand. Alan Freed and Dick Clark both played important parts in the rise of rock and roll. Freed embodied the incendiary spirit of the music more than Clark, refusing to play white cover versions of black songs, such as Pat Boone's version of Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti." And, though they both denied ever accepting payola, it's almost impossible to imagine two young, popular jocks not succumbing to a little temptation. Guilty or not, it was Freed who ended up taking the fall for DJs everywhere.
Why did the committee single him out? Freed was abrasive. He consorted with black R&B musicians. He jive-talked, smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, screwed like a rabbit, and looked like an insomniac. He was also Jewish, and this was the 1950s. Clark was Protestant, squeaky-clean, Brylcreemed, handsome and polite. At least, on the surface. (It was the quiz show scandal's comparison of Herbert Stempel and Charles Van Doren all over again.)
Once the grilling started, Freed's friends and allies in broadcasting quickly and cowardly deserted him. He refused -- "on principle," he said -- to sign an affidavit saying that he'd never accepted payola. WABC, who took him on after WINS fired him in 1958, fired him, and he was charged with 26 counts of commercial bribery.
Freed escaped with fines and a suspended jail sentence. But he drank himself into commercial oblivion and health crisis. He died on January 20, 1965, only 43 years old, broke and virtually forgotten. He would not be "rediscovered" until the early 1970s, when the nostalgia wave for the 1950s got underway.
Before the trial, Clark divested himself of all incriminating connections. He had part ownership in seven indie labels, six publishers, three record distributors and two talent agencies. He got a slap on the wrist by the Committee's Chairman, Oren Harris, who called him "a fine young man." (A Democrat from the Southern State of Arkansas, he never would have said that of Freed.)
As Clark told Rolling Stone in 1989, the lesson he learned from the payola trial was: "Protect your ass at all times." Surprisingly candid words from the man who eventually became known as "The World's Oldest Teenager."
Congress amended the Federal Communications Act to outlaw "under-the-table payments and require broadcasters to disclose if airplay for a song has been purchased." Payola became a misdemeanor, with a penalty of up to $10,000 in fines and one year in prison.
The loophole in the legislation was that it didn’t say anything about "undisclosed payments." And so payola joined the cockroach and the Republican Party on the list of things that, despite changing times, always manage to survive and come back.
*
November 21, 1959 was a Saturday. Baseball season was over. The college football season was reaching its climax, with the 8-day rivalry week starting on this day. These were among the games played:
* Number 1 Syracuse beat Boston University, 46-0 at Nickerson Field in Boston. 'Cuse went undefeated, led by sophomore running back Ernie Davis, who, 2 years later, would become the 1st black player to win the Heisman Trophy.
* Number 2 University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) were idle.
* Rivalry: Number 3 Louisiana State University (LSU) beat Tulane, 14-6 at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Three weeks earlier, on a foggy Halloween Night, they were ranked Number 1, and beat Ole Miss, then Number 3. But LSU lost to Tennessee the next week, costing them the Southeastern Conference (SEC) title. When SEC Champion Georgia accepted the Orange Bowl bid, the Sugar Bowl set up an Ole Miss-LSU rematch, which Ole Miss won.
* Rivalry: Number 4 University of Southern California (USC) were upset by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), 10-3 at their shared home field, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. This loss cost USC the title of the Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU, forerunner of the Pac-12), a bid to the Rose Bowl, and a shot at the National Championship.
* Number 5 Texas were idle. They won the Southwest Conference title, but lost the Cotton Bowl to Syracuse, giving the Orangemen the National Championship.
* Number 6 Georgia were idle. They won the SEC title, which would normally have put them in the Sugar Bowl. Instead, they accepted a bid to the Orange Bowl.
* Rivalry: Number 7 Penn State lost to the University of Pittsburgh, 22-7 at Pitt Stadium in Pittsburgh.
* Rivalry: Number 8 Northwestern, unusually favored in this game, were upset by Illinois, 20-0 at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois. This was Northwestern's 3rd straight loss, after starting the season 6-0. Unlike the many flops of the Chicago Cubs, this is one Chicago-area flop nobody ever talks about.
* Rivalry: Number 9 Wisconsin beat Minnesota, 11-7 at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Wisconsin won the Big Ten Conference title.
* Number 10 Texas Christian University (TCU) beat Rice University, 35-6 at Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth, Texas.
* Rivalry: Number 14 Washington beat Washington State, 20-0 at Husky Stadium in Seattle. Washington won the AAWU title, and beat Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl.
* Rivalry: Number 15 Oregon were upset by Oregon State, 15-7 at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.
* Number 16 Iowa were upset by Notre Dame, 20-19 at Iowa Stadium (later Kinnick Stadium) in Iowa City.
* Rivalry: Number 20 Tennessee were upset by Kentucky, 20-0 at McLean Stadium in Lexington, Kentucky.
* Oklahoma beat Iowa State, 35-12 at Memorial Stadium in Norman, Oklahoma. Oklahoma won the Big Seven Conference title (Oklahoma State soon joined, making it a Big Eight), but were on probation, and couldn't accept the Orange Bowl's usual invitation to the league Champion.
* Rivalry: Missouri beat Kansas, 13-9 at Memorial Stadium in Lawrence, Kansas. As the 2nd-place team in the Big Seven (Oklahoma had beaten them), Missouri accepted the Orange Bowl's bid. Georgia beat them.
* Rivalry: Harvard beat Yale, 35-6 at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut.
* Rivalry: Maryland beat Virginia, 55-12 at Byrd Stadium (now SECU Stadium) in the Washington suburb of College Park, Maryland.
* Rivalry: Florida beat Florida State, 18-8 at Florida Field in Gainesville.
* Rivalry: Michigan beat Ohio State, 23-14 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.
* Rivalry: Purdue beat Indiana, 10-7 at the original Memorial Stadium (which was replaced by the current one the next season) in Bloomington, Indiana.
* Rivalry: Utah beat Utah State, 35-21 at Ute Stadium (later Robert Rice Stadium) in Salt Lake City.
* Rivalry: The University of California beat Stanford, 20-17 at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, California.
* Air Force were the only service academy in action, losing to New Mexico, 28-27 at Denver University Stadium in Denver. Army and Navy had the week off, preparing to play each other in Philadelphia. Navy won.
* And among New Jersey schools, Rutgers lost to Columbia, 26-16 at Baker Field in Upper Manhattan; while Princeton lost to Dartmouth, 12-7 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton.
There were 4 games played in the NBA:
* The New York Knicks lost to the Boston Celtics, 128-127 at the old Madison Square Garden.
* The Syracuse Nationals beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 116-107 at the Onondaga County War Memorial (now the Upstate Medical University Arena) in Syracuse, New York.
* The Minneapolis Lakers beat the Cincinnati Royals, 99-93 in overtime at the Cincinnati Gardens.
* And the Detroit Pistons beat the St. Louis Hawks, 109-107 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.
There were 2 games in the NHL. The Montreal Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. And the Boston Bruins and the Detroit Red Wings played to a tie, 3-3 at the Boston Garden. The New York Rangers and the Chicago Black Hawks were not scheduled.
And in English soccer, Arsenal, the North London team I would one day support, beat Chelsea, 3-1 at Stamford Bridge in West London.
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