Alan Freed, J. Edgar Hoover, racial integration

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, October 14, 1999

TELEVISION REVIEW

Alan Freed: The Man Who Knew It Wasn't Only Rock 'N' Roll

By BERNARD WEINRAUB

HOLLYWOOD -- Ask anyone under 30 about Alan Freed, and the response is
probably a blank stare. After all, the legendary disc jockey died in
obscurity and poverty in 1965 after a tumultuous career in which he
introduced "rock 'n' roll" to the world and broke racial barriers.

With his triumphs he also dealt with crushing setbacks and crises as the
center of the great payola scandal of the late 1950s and a target of J.
Edgar Hoover and the FBI, partly because rock-and-roll seemed so
threatening. His world fell apart. He died at 43 of uremic poisoning.

"The fact is, many young people today aren't aware of who he is and what he
had done," said Lindy DeKoven, executive vice president for movies and
mini-series at NBC. "But the story of his life -- what he did, the risks he
took, the barriers he broke and his downfall -- is remarkable."

The two-hour television drama, "Mr. Rock 'n' Roll: The Alan Freed Story,"
is to be broadcast on NBC on Sunday at 9 p.m. NBC has found something of a
niche with splashy musical dramas about the '50s and '60s: in the last few
years such shows as "The Temptations" and "The Sixties," have drawn large
audiences, including many teen-agers.

The new film, which stars Judd Nelson as the disc jockey, is an adaptation
by Matt Dorff of the 1991 book "Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early
Years of Rock and Roll" by John A. Jackson. It was directed by Andy Wolk.

The film includes appearances by '50s teen idols like Fabian and Bobby
Rydell (who play fathers outraged at the "evils" of rock-and-roll) and
abundant musical sequences that use the original recordings of such
performers as Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and the
Crickets, the Moonglows, Jackie Wilson, Bo Diddley, and Bill Haley and the
Comets.

"This obsession with youth culture we see now is a direct legacy of Alan
Freed," said Dorff. "He believed that teen-agers needed a culture of their
own, and he gave them the kind of music that they could claim as theirs and
theirs alone. He was also colorblind -- he loved the beat, he loved the
people who made the music, and the fact that they were black made no
difference to him."

Freed -- whose real name was Aldon James Freed -- was a Cleveland DJ
playing mainstream music in 1951 when he eavesdropped on a group of black
and white teen-agers who were dancing to a new music that made them want to
"jump." He played this new black music at midnight nightly and it became a
sensation. Freed soon went on the air as Moondog at WJW in Cleveland. The
next year, at the Moondog Coronation Ball, considered the first rock
concert, 20,000 fans crashed the 10,000-seat capacity Cleveland Arena. The
dance was canceled.

By 1954 Freed was hired by WINS in New York City, and his career and fame
took off even as he tangled with radio stations, television networks and
the music business over playing the so-called black music.

"He was really the one that brought black rhythm-and-blues into mainstream
American society, and he made a lot of enemies because of that," said
Jackson, a retired elementary school teacher in Farmingdale, N.Y., who has
written other books on rock. "Here was this white guy bringing blacks and
whites together to dance in the 1950s. It was unheard of.

"He was also very emotional, outspoken, and said and did what he felt
without considering the consequences," said Jackson. "He had enemies within
the music business establishment, which was pushed aside by rock. And the
FBI had a file on him because of the power he commanded and because he was
so close to black performers."

Near the peak of Freed's career, in 1957, ABC gave him a nationally
televised rock 'n' roll show that was canceled after Frankie Lymon, the
black performer, danced with a white girl on the show and enraged Southern
affiliates.

Personal demons shadowed Freed. He was a workaholic, he was a womanizer, he
couldn't hold his marriages (three) together, he was volatile. He began
drinking heavily. "He ultimately fell because so many people wanted to see
him fall," said Jackson. "He helped his enemies."

What finally brought down Freed was payola, the practice in which disc
jockeys routinely received cash from song pluggers to play a record.
Jackson noted that, at the time, only New York and Pennsylvania had laws
against payola. The system, he said, was legal in other states as long as
the proceeds were reported to the IRS.

"A lot of guys lied," said Jackson. "He stood up and told Congress that
everyone took payola. He said that what's payola to you is the same as
lobbying to me. He told Congress that. He didn't know when to sit down and
be quiet." In 1962, Freed pleaded guilty to two counts of commercial
bribery and was fined $300. His career was over, and his personal life slid
under the weight of alcoholism. . .


Louis Proyect

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