ALAN FREED

Coined "Rock and Roll"

Disc jockey Alan Freed is credited with naming rock and roll, and further shaped the early days of the new, popular music.

Freed was born Albert James Freed on December 21, 1921 in Winder, Pennsylvania to Charles Freed and Maude (Palmer) Freed. In 1933 the family moved to Salem, Ohio. While still in high school, he played trombone in a band called the Sultans of Swing. But neither performing music, nor this kind of music, would make him famous.

Freed went into broadcasting, getting his first job at WKST in New Castle, PA. He followed that as a sportscaster at WKST in Youngstown, Ohio, and as a disc jockey at WAKR in Akron, Ohio in 1945. In 1949 he moved to Cleveland for WXEL-TV. He was shortly back on radio, however, as he played rhythm and blues records on WJW radio, calling himself "Moondog". His show was called the Moondog Rock 'n' Roll Party, and programmed black rhythm and blues music for a predominently white teenage audience. The term Rock 'n' Roll would continue to be used by Freed for what was then rhythm and blues, and the term would eventually catch on. He called it that because he said "It seemed to suggest rolling, surging beat of the music." Credited as the first "rock concert" was the 1952 Moondog Coronation Ball, though it was closed when the Cleveland Arena was overrun by about twice its 10,000 person capacity.

Freed refused to play "covers', which were remakes of black music by a white person or group, intended to make the music "acceptable" to a white audience. He insisted on playing the original Black performers' versions. In 1954, he moved to New York and WINS radio. In January of the next year, he promoted a show of black rhythm and blues artists as rock 'n' roll artists, and the phrase was entered into the media and popular culture. Freed did much to bring this formerly black music to a white audience, and also to integrate the audiences and performers. It was still a very segregated time.

Freed continued popularizing the music with his famous all-star stage shows at Brooklyn's Paramount Theater, as well as through movies and television. He was given his own TV show on ABC in 1957, but when Frankie Lymon (a black performer) danced with a white girl, some of the network affiliates were so enraged the show was cancelled. Then in 1958, he had a show in Boston where some violence occurred outside the arena, and Freed was accused of inciting a riot. The charges were dropped, but WINS decided not to renew his contract. He moved to WABC radio and also hosted a local television show, but these woud soon end as well.

In 1959 there was a huge scandal in the record industry, where radio stations and disc jockeys were accused of taking money from record companies to play their records and try to sell more copies of certain records. Freed had received some payments, but even though he insisted the payments were for consultations and that he never played a record he didn't like, he was fired from his New York jobs. His reputation was ruined, and so was his bank account as he went bankrupt.

Freed had short tenures at KDAY radio in Los Angeles and WQAM radio in Miami, but he was unable to return to New York and had lost his reputation. He began to drink heavily, and died in Palm Springs, CA, on January 20, 1965. He had been married three times -Betty Lou Bean in 1943, Marjorie Hess in 1950, and Inga Boling in 1959. The first two marriages had ended in divorce.

Freed was in the original group of inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, and the Radio Hall of Fame in 1988.