The notorious Second Annual International Radio Programming Seminar and Pop Music Disk Jockey Convention, which became synonymous with “Babes, Booze and Bribes,” was held at the glamorous Americana Hotel in Bal Harbour, Florida, outside of Miami Beach on May 29-31, 1959, sponsored by Todd Storz, owner of WDGY, and creator of the Top 40 radio format. It was the Memorial Day Weekend.

 

2,500 jocks came down to listen to speakers, make contacts, and get educated about how to make their programs better.  Ha!  The liquor flowed like… wine, prostitutes (local and imported) were on call, and the record companies were giving away cars, trips, and who-knows-what-else to curry favor with the men who could make or break a song.  Sessions were hosted by individual record companies; for example, Saturday breakfast was sponsored by Atlantic Records, co-hosted by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler themselves.  Alan Freed was on the program, as was our own Charlie Boone, who was working in Fargo at the time.   Other big-name jocks included Robin Seymour, Gordon McLendon, and Al “Jazzbo” Collins.

 

When they arrived at the convention, the DeeJays  were each handed a million dollars in “play money” by RCA so they could begin gambling with it.  For every visit they paid to the company’s hospitality suite where “liquid refreshments” were available for free, they received another $5,000 in scrip.  On Memorial Day, in exchange for the play money, RCA auctioned off a stereo set, a color TV, $500 worth of clothing, a trip for two to Europe, and a Studebaker Lark.  (The Last Sultan: The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun, by Robert Greenfield)

 

The Pavek Museum of Broadcasting has a copy of the program, and the list of entertainers was phenomenal:

• Peggy Lee and George Shearing, who made the LP “Beauty and the Beat!” during one of the cocktail parties
• David Seville and Julie London, who hosted a Saturday afternoon cocktail party
• Count Basie and Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, an odd combination, at a dance and barbeque

 

On Saturday night there was a three-hour All Star Show emcee’ed by the “Daddyo of the Disk Jockeys,” Martin Block, who was presented with a huge cake in recognition of his 25 years in the business.  Keynote speaker at the banquet and show was former Tennessee Governor Frank Clement, who stressed the importance of DJs in forming public opinion.  Performers at the extravaganza were:

• Pat Boone
• Cathy Carr
• Chris Connor
• Vic Damone
• Alan Dean
• Connie Francis
• Johnny Horton
• Peggy Lee
• Lou Monte
• Patty Page
• The Playmates
• Lloyd Price
• Connie Russell
• Jimmy Rodgers
• Jack Scott
• George Shearing
• Dodie Stevens
• Gary Stites
• Kirby Stone Four
• Jesse Lee Turner
• Caterina Valente
• Andy Williams

 

As the jocks were on their way home, readers of the Miami News were reading the famous headline on the first page:  “For Deejays: Babes, Booze And Bribes,” written by Haines Colbert.  Some excerpts:

 

• [DJs] were given the greatest buttering-up since Nero was persuaded he was a fiddle virtuoso.
• There was constant praise for the apparently unbelievable talent required to put a record on a turntable, play it and sell it to all those wonderful people out there in radioland.
• One promotion man said, “You can buy some of them with an air-conditioner; some with money and some with a girl.”
• “A lot of these guys think they’re gods. You hardly can blame them, either.”
• “We put out one record sung by a kid with no voice and no reputation. We spent $100,000 on the promotion – most of it entertaining disc jockeys – and it got into the [top] 10 in four weeks.”
• “I would guess that the payoffs to the disc jockeys in one form or another run to well over $1,000,000 a year.”
• “It’s a lousy situation, but I don’t see how anything can be done about it. As we tell them all the time, without the disc jockeys we’re dead.”

 

The event was such an ostentatious public demonstration of the overwhelming power wielded by the nation’s disc jockeys  as well as the outrageous lengths to which record companies would go to service their every need that the ensuing “media frenzy” over what was characterized as a full-fledged orgy caught the attention of the Legislative Oversight Subcommittee of the U.S. House Interstate Commerce Committee.  (The Last Sultan: The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun, by Robert Greenfield)

 

In February 1960, on the heels of the rigged quiz show scandal, the subcommittee began hearings into payola, the practice of paying disc jockeys to play a records.  On May 19, 1960, Alan Freed, the program director and WINS, and five other disc Jockeys, were arrested for taking payola.  Freed, who had practically invented rock ‘n’ roll, saw his career destroyed, as did many other disk jockeys who had been following a practice that had gone on for years.  He died five years later at the age of 44.

 

Dick Clark survived the scandal only by agreeing to divest himself of his personal record business interests.