Download The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the '50s and '60s AudioBook Free
The warfare was won. Ike was at the White House. The world was as smart as Pat Nixon's towel coat. It was the '50s, and every young was a Wally Cleaver or a Betty Anderson. Then something took place. Those submissive students of Miss Brooks and Mr. Peepers became rowdy rebels. Ed Sullivan had to dump the opera personalities and Chinese acrobats and present them Elvis. What caused the change? Rock-'n'-roll and the men who brought it over the airwaves into homes and vehicles. In The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Move, Wes Smith examines the phenomenon of the AM deejays who captivated a generation and helped establish the counterculture that has permanently changed the landscape of American youngsters. Broadcasting on impulses that often come to across half the continent, these men - Alan Freed, Dick Biondi, Hunter Hancock, Zenas Sears, Jocko Henderson, John R. Richbourg, Gene Nobles, Hoss Allen, and Wolfman Jack port - developed followings as committed as those of the personalities whose details they performed. Their devoted listeners would lie in darkened sleeping rooms for hours each night, transported from rural isolation, urban stress, adolescent awkwardness to a location spun from the heady electric power of music and mesmerizing deejay lingo. Wally greased his head of hair, Betty began smoking, and Woodstock was only a decade away. Smith takes a close take a look at nine of the men who made this happen and explores the reasons for their impact and its sustained results on the generation whose lives still unfold to the soundtrack laid down by these platter-spinners of the youth.
