Alan Freed

You used to.

In 1957, Alan Freed, who invented the term rock and roll, as you know.

Yeah.

had to go on the radio at the top of every hour and go, this is blah, blah, blah, Cleveland, Ohio.

We'll take a break and be back.

Murph tells us this date, 1955, Alan Freed's first anniversary rock 'n' roll party kicked off at the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn, New York.

This is where Chuck Berry originated his famous duck walk.

The reason for it was to hide wrinkles in his pants, he said, but it became so [laughs] popular he had to do it all the time, and he did it for his hit, "Maybelline." Bob Codaro back with you on the program.

It was his walkout music.

In 1954, former Cleveland DJ Alan Freed made his New York debut on WINS radio.

And while he sometimes gets credit for being the first white radio DJ to play R&B or music by black artists, he was not the first.

Earlier white disc jockeys like Gene Nobles and John R. on WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee, and also Dewey Phillips on WHBQ in Memphis, Tennessee, had been heavily programming black R&B records for mainstream Southern audiences since the late 1940s.

Alan Freed's huge contribution was greatly helping to popularize the music and the phrase rock and roll, which was originally black slang for sex, and bringing it to the dominant New York City media market and helping to make it go worldwide.

In 1955, Chuck Berry performed his very first duck walk by accident.

While playing at the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn, New York, as part of the aforementioned Alan Freed's Rock and Roll Spectacular concert, Chuck Berry improvised his signature stage move.

He later revealed that his rayon suit had wrinkled while he was traveling, and he squatted low in order to conceal the travel lines in the suit from the audience, accidentally creating an iconic rock hallmark.

And they talk about that.

Even Alan Freed, the one that put rock and roll to this kind of music, he was a DJ of race music.

and he loved all that music, and then even he making Chicago a first convention of people, and all Pachucos arrived, that was in the 40s, and they came up with the story there.

Well, all the story is because Pachuco, my father told me the story that his father burned his pachuco.

Yeah, great gentleman.

Then on WINS, which is now, of course, WINS 1010, a news station, you had Alan Freed and Murray McKay, who claim to have invented the term rock and roll.

And then over on WNEW, which had been WMGM, you had my friend Ted Brown.

McDonald's is putting value back on the menu.