My Radio Sho Was Good 2 Me!

I was driving home today and I was listening to the syndicated Michael Baisden show on WDAS-FM... my radio station of choice since 1974 and I'll get back to that in a minute. He was talking about his mentoring program and how he used his radio show as a bully pulpit to help get Barack Obama elected and to fight for justice for the Jena Six. What he said that got to me was how black radio doesn't seem to have that activist spirit anymore. It got to me because I remember how important radio used to be, not only to me but to my entire community.

In Philly, there was always WDAS, from the time I can remember. They had legendary jocks like "Butterball", who is still around, believe it or not; Georgie Woods, "The Man With The Goods"; Carl Helm; Jimmy Bishop, "The Lovvvvve Man!"; his now ex-wife, Louise Williams Bishop, who today is a State Representative and in ministry; and the man who I believe was the first rapper, "Doctor" Perry Johnson... "I said yum yum, gimmee some... Don't stop, don't stop, don't block the Doc!" Jocko Henderson was a little before my time, but I'm sure my cousins remember... "EEEE tiddly yock... ouuu I'm the Doc and I'm back on the scene wit' my record machine sayin' ouuu papa dooo, how y'all do? This is Jocko baby!" And, last but certainly not least, Harvey Holiday with the "oldies" on Sundays. Soul classics.

These were local guys, neighborhood guys... and guys who kept you up on what was happening in your community. When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X came to Philly, they stopped at WDAS to talk to Georgie Woods and they stopped at their rival station WHAT to talk to "The Mighty Burner". These were just jocks to the untrained eye or ear, but they were diplomats to the black community. They got people out to support the Civil Rights Movement in the south and they got people out a decade later to support Hardy Williams in his bid to be the city's first black mayor.

You felt like you knew these guys (and, you did) because it was nothing to see Georgie Woods at the Uptown in North Philly introducing The Temptations, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, The Jackson Five, The Ojays, Billy Paul, Jerry Butler, The Intruders, Wilson Picket, The Delfonics, and all of those great soul acts of the past.

That was the WDAS of my childhood and by childhood I mean, the first 14 years of my life. By the time I was 16 years old, I discovered that WDAS had a "sister" station on my FM band. It was called "black rock" and it was way different than the station I just described. They played album cuts.

Donny Hathaway, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Isaac Hayes were creating some incredible experimental soul music back then. Cuts weren't the typical three minutes you would hear on a top-ten single. Cuts were from 8-10 minutes long and sometimes, even longer. For those of you who are in your mid-late 40's, remember how long Isaac Hayes' "I Stand Accused "actually was? I wondered if I could hold a girl's attention that long in a conversation without singing at some point.

This station played the long cuts. Not only that, they played albums by white artists that I might not have ever heard of otherwise. It was here that I heard the Rolling Stones "Sympathy For The Devil" (a song I long believed was about me). I first heard two Philly guys named Hall & Oates on this station, as well as Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers. Music wasn't as segregated and formatted as it is now. Also, a black guy from Newark, NJ (which according to my grandfather, was one of the funkiest places on earth... though, I doubt he meant that the way I took it) named George Clinton birthed three groups... Funkadelic, Parliament, and Bootsy's Rubber Band that were producing music like nobody had ever heard at the time.

New bands like Earth, Wind & Fire, War, and Mandrill were just starting out and it was here that their first works were broken. I could go on and on... I sat up in my room from midnight until whenever, drifted off to sleep, and heard history and magic. It was incredible and I took it all for granted. I thought it would always be that way and never end. So, let's fast forward to today...

I still listen to WDAS FM, more out of loyalty and nostalgia than anything else. It in no way resembles the station I described to you above and it's no longer locally owned. It's now owned by communication conglomerate "Clear Channel", which owns about five other stations in the city. Seventy percent of it's programming is syndicated... you've got Donnie McClurkin from 5:00-6:00am; The Steve Harvey Morning Show 6:00-10:00am; then, you get a local jock, Patty Jackson, until 3:00pm; and then, it's the Michael Baisden Show from 3:00-7:00pm. From 7:00pm-midnight you have another local jock, Tony Brown, followed by another syndicated show, "I Heart Radio" from midnight-5:00am. They play classic R&B and Neo Soul, but my wife will tell you, the playlist doesn't deviate for close to five days until a slight change is made.

It's like that with all radio now. If you want to hear new artists, especially Neo Soul, R&B, and Hip-Hop, you have to go to satellite radio or the internet. And, that's a shame because my little cheap $40.00 radio used to break all of the new music I needed to hear for a long time, including hip-hop in the 1980's and 90's. In the words of Public Enemy's Chuck D, "Who stole the soul?"