Mar 9, 2014 6 min read

Although he’s rarely mentioned in history books, Pittsburgh disc jockey Porky Chedwick, who died March 2, was an integral part of America’s civil rights movement.

It’s not an exaggeration.

History recounts the movement in terms of historical figures or specific incidents. Pop culture’s influence on the civil rights movement is primarily limited to notations about Nat King Cole unsuccessfully attempting to be the first major black entertainer to host a variety show, or a decade later, Diahann Carroll becoming the first black female to star in a comedy series.

History seldom, however, explains how radio transitioned from Pat Boone and the McGuire Sisters to Little Richard and Bo Diddley. If it examined that cultural phenomenon, Porky Chedwick would be a major player.

The difficulty in explaining Chedwick’s influence to a younger generation is threefold:

1. Today, many young people don’t associate radio with discovering new music. Songs aren’t played on the radio without extensive research on their acceptability to mass audiences. By the time they’re added to play lists, they’re already ancient to true music fans.

2. Today’s disc jockey is totally removed from the disc jockeys of Chedwick’s era. Through the mid-1960s, a disc jockey’s music selections reflected his personality. Today, a computer spits out a predetermined play list.

3. The concept of radio in the late 1940s and ’50s is completely foreign to most people. Radio was generally a white person’s medium with music by white artists only. A rare exception was made for a black artist who was compatible with the white music (Nat King Cole, for instance). Black music, or race music as it was called then, was relegated to black clubs and jukeboxes. Should a great dance song or ballad emerge, it was quickly re-recorded by white artists to be played on the radio.

Chedwick changed all of that. To be sure, he wasn’t part of a national trend of disc jockeys pushing for mass appeal acceptance of black music. He was a lone ranger.

When I interviewed Chedwick for the first time in 1979, he admitted that race equality didn’t factor into his rebel stance.

“I had to be different than the other disc jockeys,” he said of playing black music on the all-white WHOD, which became WAMO. “There was no point in playing the same songs everyone else was playing, so I decided to play what I liked: black music, which I dubbed rhythm and blues. I realize now that (picking that music) was a bad idea, but at the time I thought it creative. That was the key, being creative.”

Chedwick didn’t even frequent the black clubs where the music was being played. “I used to go into a record store in Homestead and ask them if they had any old records. They’d give me the records by black artists because they were just gathering dust since no one would play them.”

Even though Chedwick was playing the music mostly to draw attention to his show, he got reeled into the racial issue.

“At first, the reaction to those records was totally negative. Pittsburgh was very conservative and didn’t like loud, boisterous music and was rather bigoted about black music, too,” he said. “They especially didn’t like the idea of a white man playing black music.”

Chedwick said he was a victim of racial slurs for about four years, at which point the reaction flipped to positive. “The negative letters kept coming from the same people, so eventually I asked them why they kept listening if they hated the music so much,” he said.

At the same time Chedwick was getting black music on the public airwaves, he was creating another phenomenon – “oldies music” – as much of the music he culled from record-store bins was already past its prime. When the smaller black record companies realized what he was doing, however, they began sending him new releases as well.

Anyone who ever met Chedwick – and I talked with him on several occasions – will surely agree that he never intended to lead a revolution. He was a gentle soul who simply loved to play music and, early in his career, draw attention to himself.

One also suspects he never fully realized the prejudices he was facing. In that same 1979 interview, he told me that he sponsored a dance with a new group of four black girls in the early ’60s. He and the group were booed off the stage. The group? It was an early incarnation of the Supremes.

For a time, Chedwick, on the 250-watt WAMO, was outdrawing powerhouse KDKA and KQV during his air shift. He said he knew he had made it when he heard one of his songs played on KQV. Truth be told, Chedwick should have known he had made it long before then. When he took his music on the road, he drew thousands of people. He was the first disc jockey to sell out the Civic Arena with his show. And he created traffic jams, when, in an ill-fated gimmick, he told listeners to “stop your car and get out and dance.” And they did.

Other radio markets took note of Chedwick and the burgeoning popularity of black music with white audiences and slowly rhythm and blues was integrated into pop music.

When Chedwick died last week, dozens of black performers past and present credited him for their successful careers.

While Chedwick’s on-air persona was funny and boisterous with slogans such “Platter-pushing papa” and “Daddy-o of the rad-io,” off the air he was unassuming, if not unaware of his important place in music history.

“The reason I’ve lasted as long as I have,” he said, “isn’t the talent as much as the sincerity. It’s not an ego trip; it’s because I want to make (listeners) happy. I play the records for them. I needed the ego trip when I started out. I don’t need it now.”

For the first time since 1958, no black artist hit No. 1 on the pop charts in 2013. Without Porky Chedwick’s influence, that statistic might not have been an anomaly.