Episode 5 - Alan Freed: Radio, Teenagers, and the Name "Rock 'n' Roll"

A kid who's supposed to be asleep, a radio turned down low, and a man hollering along with a record and
slapping time on a telephone book. He didn't write it, play on it, or even invent the name he hung on
it — but he's the one who carried it through the bedroom wall.

- The correction up front: Freed did not invent the music and did not coin the phrase — "rocking and rolling", it runs from sailors to spirituals to Trixie Smith (1922) to a 1942 Billboard review of Sister Rosetta Tharpe

- From Salem, Ohio and the Sultans of Swing to Akron radio and a lost non-compete fight
- Leo Mintz and Record Rendezvous — the Cleveland record-store owner who saw white teenagers crowding the listening booths and sponsored the show
- The Moondog  show on WJW (1951), the telephone book, and the competing stories of where "rock and roll" came from
- Radio as infrastructure: television empties out radio, Black-appeal stations go from 4 to 400, disc jockeys from 250 to 5,000, and independent labels need airplay
- The Moondog Coronation Ball (March 21, 1952): 10,000 seats, 20,000-plus people, doors down, show stopped
- New York: WINS, the Moondog lawsuit, "Rock and Roll Party," the Brooklyn Paramount, the movies, the teenage audience
- Listening Spine: Wynonie Harris "Good Rockin' Tonight"; Ruth Brown "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean"; Joe Turner "Shake, Rattle and Roll"; Chuck Berry "Maybellene"; Little Richard "Tutti Frutti"; Bill Haley "Rock Around the Clock"
- Covers, crossover, and who got paid — Freed played the originals, and also took a writer's credit on "Maybellene"
- The Big Beat TV show and Frankie Lymon; Boston, 1958; the payola hearings, Dick Clark, the 1962 plea and $300 fine; death at 43
- The Blues Progression: rhythm and blues records were the foundation; radio is how they reached everybody — and what each new label cost the people who made the music