Alan Freed

Freed was born to a Russian-Jewish immigrant father, Charles S. Freed, and Welsh-American mother, Maude Palmer, in Windber, Pennsylvania. In 1933, Freed’s family moved to Salem, Ohio where Freed attended Salem High School, graduating in 1940. While Freed was in high school, he formed a band called the Sultans of Swing in which he played the trombone. Freed’s initial ambition was to be a bandleader; however, an ear infection put an end to this dream.

While attending the Ohio State University, Freed became interested in radio. Freed served in the Army during World War II and worked as a DJ on Armed Forces Radio. Soon after World War II, Freed landed broadcasting jobs at smaller radio stations, including WKST (New Castle, PA); WKBN (Youngstown, OH); and WAKR(Akron, OH), where, in 1945, he became a local favorite for playing hot jazz and pop recordings. Freed enjoyed listening to these new styles because he liked the rhythms and tunes.

Freed is commonly referred to as the “father of rock ‘n’ roll” due to his promotion of the style of music, and his introduction of the phrase “rock and roll”, in reference to the musical genre, on mainstream radio in the early 1950s. He helped bridge the gap of segregation among young teenage Americans, presenting music by African-American artists (rather than cover versions by white artists) on his radio program, and arranging live concerts attended by racially mixed audiences. Freed appeared in several motion pictures as himself. In the 1956 film Rock, Rock, Rock, Freed tells the audience that “rock and roll is a river of music which has absorbed many streams: rhythm and blues, jazz, ragtime, cowboy songs, country songs, folk songs. All have contributed greatly to the big beat.”

In 1945 Alan Freed joined WAKR and became a local favorite, playing hot jazz and pop recordings. The radio editor for the Akron Beacon Journal followed Freed and his “Request Review”.nightly program of dance. When he left the station, the non-compete clause in his contract limited his ability to find work elsewhere, and he was forced to take the graveyard shift at Cleveland’s WJW radio where he eventually made history playing the music he called “Rock and Roll.”

In the late 1940s, while working at WAKR (1590 AM) in Akron, Ohio, Freed met Cleveland record store owner Leo Mintz. Record Rendezvous was one of Cleveland’s largest record stores, who had begun selling rhythm and blues records. Mintz told Freed that he had noticed increased interest in the records at his store, and encouraged him to play them on the radio.In 1951, Freed moved to Cleveland and, in April 1951, he was under a non-compete with WAKR. However, through the help of William Shipley the RCA distributor in Northern Ohio, he was released from his non-compete and joined WJW radio on a midnight radio program sponsored by Main Line, the RCA Distributor and Record Rendezvous. Freed peppered his speech with hipster language and with a rhythm and blues record called “Moondog” as his theme song, broadcast R&B hits into the night.

Freed also appeared in a number of pioneering rock and roll motion pictures during this period. These films were often welcomed with tremendous enthusiasm by teenagers because they brought visual depictions of their favorite American acts to the big screen, years before music videos would present the same sort of image on the small television screen.

Freed was given a weekly primetime TV series, The Big Beat, which premiered on ABC on July 12, 1957. The show was scheduled for a summer run, with the understanding that if there were enough viewers, it would continue into the 1957–58 television season. Although the ratings for the show were strong, it was suddenly terminated after four weeks. During the second episode, black singer Frankie Lymon had been shown dancing with a white girl from the studio audience: the incident caused an uproar among ABC’s local affiliates in the South and “would allegedly lead to the show’s cancellation”.

During this period, Freed was seen on other popular programs of the day, including To Tell the Truth, where he is seen defending the new “rock and roll” sound to the panelists, who were all clearly more comfortable with swing music: Polly Bergen, Ralph Bellamy, and Kitty Carlisle.

Freed went on to host a local version of Big Beat over WNEW-TV in New York City until late 1959, when he was fired from the show after payola accusations against Freed surfaced.

In 1958, Freed faced controversy in Boston when he told the audience, “It looks like the Boston police don’t want you to have a good time.” As a result, Freed was arrested and charged with inciting to riot, and was fired from his job at WINS.

Freed’s career ended when it was shown that he had accepted payola (payments from record companies to play specific records), a practice that was highly controversial at the time. There was also a conflict of interest, that he had taken songwriting co-credits (most notably on Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene”), which entitled him to receive part of a song’s royalties, which he could help increase by heavily promoting the record on his own program. In another example, Harvey Fuqua of The Moonglows insisted Freed’s name was not merely a credit on the song “Sincerely” and that he did actually co-write it (which would still be a conflict of interest for Freed to promote).

Freed lost his radio show on WABC, and was later fired from the station altogether on November 21, 1959.He also was fired from his television show (which for a time continued with a different host). In 1960, payola was made illegal. In 1962, Freed pleaded guilty to two charges of commercial bribery, for which he received a fine and a suspended sentence.

Because of the negative publicity from the payola scandal, no prestigious station would employ Freed, and he moved to the West Coast in 1960, where he worked at KDAY/1580 in Santa Monica, California. At this time Freed introduced Jerry Moss to Gil Friesen, who was referred to as “the ampersand in A&M Records”.In 1962, after KDAY refused to allow him to promote “rock and roll” stage shows, Freed moved to WQAM in Miami, Florida, but that association lasted two months. During 1964, he returned to the Los Angeles area and worked at KNOB/97.9.

Freed died in a Palm Springs, California hospital on January 20, 1965, from uremia and cirrhosis brought on by alcoholism; he was 43 years old, and was initially interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. In March 2002, Judith Fisher Freed carried his ashes to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. On August 1, 2014, the Hall of Fame asked Alan Freed’s son, Lance Freed, to permanently remove the ashes, which he did.The Freed family later announced the ashes would be interred at Cleveland’s Lake View Cemetery.

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