ALAN FREEDRecords began to replace live performance as the main way to hear—and sell—music. And labels recognized that popular disc jockeys could influence sales.
In 1950, there were approximately 250 disc jockeys in the U.S. By 1957, the number had grown to over 5,000. The increase was partially due to the sheer amount of new records being produced, both by major and indie labels. As the name suggests, a disc jockey was responsible for sorting through all these releases (naturally, the sorting was influenced by payola). These on-air personalities had so much clout with younger listeners, Time magazine called them the “poo-bahs of musical fashion and pillars of U.S. low- and middle-brow culture.”
Aware of their rising status, jocks established flat rate deals with labels and record distributors. A typical deal for a mid-level DJ was $50 a week, per record, to ensure a minimum amount of spins. More influential jocks commanded percentages of grosses for local concerts, lavish trips, free records by the boxful (some even opened their own record stores), plus all the time-honored swag. As Cleveland DJ Joe Finan later described the decade, “It was a blur of booze, broads and bribes.”
As payola escalated, Variety and Billboard did lengthy features, calling for reform and government intervention (to its credit, Billboard wrote, “The cancer of payola cannot be pinned on rock ’n’ roll”). ASCAP was also vocal in their opposition to payola, using it as a means to lambaste their competitor BMI. At the time, the larger ASCAP represented the old guard of mostly white composers from the Tin Pan Alley days. BMI was associated with the young, racially mixed writers of R&B and rock ’n’ roll, as well as indie labels such as Aladdin, King and Chess. By the mid-’50s, BMI single releases outnumbered ASCAP’s by almost two to one. The older organization cried foul, accusing BMI of promoting payola.
Freed looks over a subpena.With the threat of losing their licenses, some radio stations took the precaution of firing disc jockeys who might put them at risk. In November 1959, in closed and open sessions before the U.S. House Oversight Committee, 335 disc jockeys from around the country admitted to having received over $263,000 in “consulting fees.”
That figure was only the tip of the payola iceberg (before the hearings, Phil Lind, a DJ at Chicago’s WAIT had confessed that he had once taken $22,000 to play a single record). The trial heated up when the two most influential jocks in the country took the stand.
Freed faces the House Investigation CommitteeWhy did the committee single him out? Freed was abrasive. He consorted with black R&B musicians. He jive talked, smoked constantly and looked like an insomniac. Clark was squeaky clean, Brylcreemed, handsome and polite. At least on the surface. Once the grilling started, Freed’s friends and allies in broadcasting quickly deserted him. He refused—“on principle”—to sign an affidavit saying that he’d never accepted payola. WABC fired him, and he was charged with 26 counts of commercial bribery. Freed escaped with fines and a suspended jail sentence. He died five years later, broke and virtually forgotten.
Dick Clark during House Hearing
Chairman Harris called Clark “a fine young man.”Previous to the trial, Dick Clark had wisely divested himself of all incriminating connections (he had part ownership in seven indie labels, six publishers, three record distributors and two talent agencies). He got a slap on the wrist by Committee chairman Oren Harris, who called him “a fine young man.” As Clark told Rolling Stone in 1989, the lesson he learned from the payola trial was: “Protect your ass at all times.”
As the Payola hearings got under way in February 1960, the public was treated to tales of a lavish disk-jockey convention in Miami bought and paid for by various record companies. One disk jockey, Wesley Hopkins of KYW in Cleveland, admitted to receiving over the course of 1958 and 1959 $12,000 in “listening fees” from record companies for “evaluating the commercial possibilities” of records. Another DJ named Stan Richard, from station WILD in Boston, also admitted to receiving thousands of dollars from various record promoters, and though like Hopkins he denied letting such fees affect his choice of which records to play on the air, he also offered a vigorous defense of Payola, comparing it to “going to school and giving the teacher a better gift than the fellow at the next desk.”
But what explains the involvement of Congress in this issue? Technically, the concern of the Harris Committee was abuse of public trust, since the airwaves over which radio stations broadcast their signals are property of the people of the United States. However, 1960 was also an election year, and Rep. Harris and his colleagues on the Subcommittee were eager to be seen on the right side of a highly visible “moral” issue.
A payola check made out to FreedThe loophole in the legislation was that it didn’t say anything about “undisclosed payments.”
And so payola has continued, taking various forms - everything from a line of coke to the services of an independent promoter to a spot ad masquerading as just-added song – while playing duck and cover with the law. But maybe it’s worth remembering what a commissioner of the FCC said in the mid-1970s: “Hell, there’s payola in every industry. It’s common knowledge that most products and services are sold not just on their interest quality. I mean, payola is just an American Business practice.”
Some materials found on this page were originally published by the following: Mental Floss, New York Daily News, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
