The Day The Music Cried: The Way It Was, 19 May

1960---He coined the term, was often considered its father, and his signature signoff was, "This is not goodbye, it's just good night." But while innumerable commentators fretted about rock and roll corrupting the day's youth, they now must think they should have worried about it corrupting its promoters.

Alan Freed and eight other disc jockeys are accused of accepting payola---payments to guarantee certain records getting played---after the U.S. House Oversight Committee has spent a year examining whether such payoffs (gifts, cash, both) really existed, the House committee reputedly having been prodded by the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP).

. . . Though a number of deejays and program directors were caught in the scandal, the committee decide to focus on Freed. Freed's broadcasts alliances quickly deserted him. In 1959, WABC in New York asked him to sign a statement confirming that he had never accepted payola. Freed refused "on principle" to sign and was fired.

Freed was the only deejay subpoenaed by the Oversight Committee and refused to testify despite being given immunity. Trial began December, 1962 and ended with Freed pleading guilty to 29 counts of commercial bribery. Though he only received a $300 fine and 6 months suspended sentence his career would be over.

Forced to leave New York Freed worked briefly at KDAY (owned by the same company that owned WINS) in 1960, in Los Angeles, but when management refused to let him promote live rock & roll shows Freed left the station and returned to Manhattan to emcee a live twist revue. When the twist craze cooled he hooked on as a disc jockey at WQAM (Miami, FL). Realizing that his dream of returning to New York radio was just that, Freed's drinking increased. The Miami job lasted only two months.

---From "Alan Freed."

By 1964, he will be indicted for income tax evasion, by which time he is hospitalised with uremia, the penalty for the heavy drinking into which he fell following his original troubles, and he will die penniless in January 1965.

His ethics would be questioned often enough. (Like many in the day, he claimed songwriting credits as possible promotional payoffs; he was also accused of underpaying talent who appeared in his famous rock and roll spectacular shows and tours before the payola scandals.) But no one could or would really question Alan Freed's rock and roll heart.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

1929: SUSPECTING THE KINGFISH IS EMBEZZLING---Andy (Charles Correll) has precisely such a suspicion after he noticed how particularly well the Kingfish's wife has been dressing lately . . . and, after the Kingfish handed him a new---and possible illegally written---lodge bylaw, on tonight's edition of Amos 'n' Andy. (NBC.)

Amos: Freeman Gosden. Writers: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll.

1941: MODEL WIFE---Dick Powell and Joan Blondell---whose marriage in real life was in trouble when they made the sleeper film hit---reprise their roles as a couple whose marriage is kept secret from her boss, who frowns on working married women . . . and happens to have his own thing for her, provoking trouble enough between husband and wife, on tonight's edition of Lux Radio Theater. (CBS.)

Additional cast: Fred MacKaye. Host: Cecil B. DeMille. Adapted from the screenplay by Leigh Jason.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1870---Wright Kramer (actor: Showboat), Somerville, Massachussetts.