History of DJs
In was in the year, 1934, that Walter Winchell coined the term disc jockey. The history of DJs could be said to have first begun at that moment.
History of DJs
The first device to record sound was invented in 1857 in France. In some ways, the history of DJs really started at that moment. The expression was a combination of the word disc referring to the early disc records and jockey which meant an operator of a machine. Regular recorded music first began to be played live on the air as far back as 1910. There were announcers who played recorded music, reported news, talked about sports events, and narrated dramas.
It is in 1934, that the news commentator, Walter Winchell first coined the term disc jockey. He used it in reference to one of these early radio announcers named Martin Block. Block was really the first of these early announcers to become an actual star. It was during the time that the American public was eagerly awaiting news of the Lindberg kidnapping and were staying glued to their radios. Block was playing recorded music from disc records. The music was mostly ball room dancing music.
It was in 1943, in the midst of World War II, that English disc jockey, Jimmy Savile, introduced the first on air DJ dance party by playing jazz music over the air. In 1947, he became the first DJ to use dual turntables in order to play almost continuous music. In that same year, the Whiskey-a-go-go opened in Paris, France. It was the first discotheque or disco which took its name from the fact that it used recording discs for music rather than live onstage bands.
The 1950's was the Golden Age of DJs. Radio announcers began taking their turntables to outdoor sock hops and dance parties to play recorded music. In 1955, Bob Casey, who was one of the popular sock hop DJs began using a two turntable portable player to provide almost continuous music to these affairs. It was during this time that DJs were becoming extremely powerful in the music industry because of their control over what music would be played on air and which music was not played. It was common for artists and recording studios to pay the DJs to play and promote their music.
The whole system of payola led to a big scandal by the end of the 50's. In the process the reputation and careers of several well known DJs such as Alan Freed were destroyed. The result was a Federal Law that outlawed payola. Actually, radio stations could be paid to play music, but they had report it on air and call it sponsored music. This led to the development of the top 40 format of today, where stations tended to play the same songs repeatedly. Program directors at the radio stations had control over which songs were played. The DJs continued to rely on personality and popularity to promote themselves and the music.