Fired for Integrity: Alan Freed Loses His Radio Job

Alan Freed, the disc jockey who had popularized the term "rock and roll" and built his career championing Black rhythm and blues music to white audiences, was fired from WABC-AM radio on November 21, 1959, after refusing to sign an affidavit denying he had accepted payola. The practice of record companies paying disc jockeys to play specific songs had been an open secret in the radio industry for years, but the congressional hearings of 1959 singled out Freed with a ferocity that many observers attributed to his role in promoting racially integrated concerts and programming at a time when much of the entertainment establishment preferred strict segregation of musical genres along racial lines. Dick Clark, who hosted American Bandstand and faced similar allegations, cooperated fully with congressional investigators, divested his financial interests in record labels and music publishing companies, and emerged from the hearings largely unscathed. Freed refused to play along. He would not deny what the industry had been doing openly for decades, and the industry punished him for it. He was indicted on commercial bribery charges, pleaded guilty to two counts, and was fined $300. The Internal Revenue Service then pursued him for tax evasion on the unreported payola income. Freed spent his remaining years in declining health, drinking heavily, and working at increasingly obscure radio stations far from the national spotlight he had once commanded. He died in Palm Springs on January 20, 1965, at age 43, virtually penniless and largely forgotten by the industry he had helped create. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, twenty-one years after his death.