The history of radio disc jockeys covers the time when gramophone records were first transmitted by experimental radio broadcasters to present day radio personalities who host shows featuring a variety of recorded music. For a number of decades beginning in the 1930s, the term "disc jockey", "DJ", "deejay", or "jock" was exclusively used to describe on-air personalities who played selections of popular recorded music on radio broadcasting stations. The term "disc jockey" first appeared in print in a 1941 issue of Variety magazine, although the origin of the term is generally attributed to American radio news commentator Walter Winchell who used it to describe radio presenter Martin Block's practice of introducing phonograph recordings to create a Make Believe Ballroom experience for radio listeners. The term combined "disc", referring to phonograph disc records, and "jockey", denoting the DJs practice of riding the audio gain, or alternately, riding a song to success and popularity. Culminating in the "golden age" of Top 40 radio, from approximately 1955 to 1975, radio DJs established a style of fast talking patter to bookend three minute pop songs. Unlike the modern club DJ who mixes transitions between songs to create a continuous flow of music, radio DJs played individual songs or music tracks while voicing announcements, introductions, comments, jokes, and commercials in between each song or short series of songs. During the 1950s, 60s and 70s, radio DJs exerted considerable influence on popular music, especially during the Top 40 radio era, because of their ability to introduce new music to the radio audience and promote or control which songs would be given airplay.
1900s to 1950s
In 1892, Emile Berliner began commercial production of his gramophone records, the first disc records to be offered to the public. The earliest broadcasts of recorded music were made by radio engineers and experimenters. On Christmas Eve 1906, American Reginald A. Fessenden broadcast both live and recorded music from Brant Rock, Massachusetts. In 1907, American inventor Lee de Forest broadcast a recording of the William Tell Overture from his laboratory in the Parker Building in New York City, claiming "Of course, there weren't many receivers in those days, but I was the first disc jockey". Ray Newby, of Stockton, California claimed on a 1965 episode of CBS I've Got a Secret to be regularly playing records on a small transmitter while a student at Herrold College of Engineering and Wireless in San Jose, California in 1909. Elman B. Meyers started broadcasting a daily program in New York City in 1911 consisting mostly of recorded music. In 1914, his wife Sybil True broadcast records borrowed from a local music store. In 1917 Captain Horace Donisthorpe, who was training radio operators for the British Army near Worcester, England, made unofficial broadcasts as engineer from a field. At first his wife Gertrude spoke into the microphone to Captain Donisthorpe alone, but later she broadcast to army camps nearby playing gramophone records. In 1967, she spoke about these experiments in a BBC radio programme called "Scrapbook for 1917". The first official British DJ was Christopher Stone, who in 1927 convinced the BBC to let him broadcast a program consisting of American and American-influenced jazz records interspersed with his ad libbed introductions. One of the first woman disc jockeys was Halloween Martin. She was on WBBM (AM) in Chicago, as early as 1929, hosting a morning program she called the "Musical Clock." She played up-beat songs, gave the time and temperature, and read the latest weather. Martin's morning radio show format was uncommon in the late 1920s. In 1935, American radio commentator Walter Winchell used the term "disc jockey" (the combination of disc, referring to the disc records, and jockey, which is an operator of a machine) as a description of radio announcer Martin Block, the first announcer to become a star. While his audience was awaiting developments in the Lindbergh kidnapping, Block played records and created the illusion that he was broadcasting from a ballroom, with the nation's top dance bands performing live. The show, which he called Make Believe Ballroom, was an instant hit. Block was notable for his considerable influence on a records popularity. Block's program on station WNEW was highly successful, and Block was described as "the make-all, break-all of records. If he played something, it was a hit". Block later negotiated a multimillion-dollar contract with ABC for a syndicated nationwide radio show. The earliest printed use of the term "disc jockey" appeared on August 13, 1941 when Variety published "... Gilbert is a disc jockey, who sings with his records." By the end of World War II, disc jockeys had established a reputation, as "hitmakers", someone whose influence "could start an artist's career overnight". In the early radio age, broadcasters used "live" orchestras as well as prerecorded sound. Content typically included comedy, drama, news, music, and sports reporting. Most radio stations had an orchestra or band on the payroll. The Federal Communications Commission also clearly favored live music, providing accelerated license approval to stations promising not to use any recordings for their first three years on the air. Many noted recording artists tried to keep their recorded works off the air by having their records labeled as not being legal for airplay. It took a Federal court ruling in 1940 to establish that a recording artist had no legal right to control the use of a record after it was sold. Disputes with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) and the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) affected radio DJs during World War II. ASCAP and AFM cited the decline in demand for live appearances of musical artists due to the proliferation of radio disc jockeys playing recorded music. The disputes were settled in 1944.
1950s to present
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