By Marci Cohen, Head, Music Library, Boston University Libraries (retired)

During my recent visit to Memphis for the Association for Recorded Sound Collections conference, a recurring name came up at Graceland, Sun Studio, the Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum, and in the opening plenary by Memphis music historian Robert Gordon: Dewey Phillips. The notable repeated facts about him: 1) He was not related to Sun Studio founder and producer Sam Phillips. 2) He was the first DJ to play Elvis Presley on the radio. 3) He was crazy. He was so important to the promulgation of Memphis’s early contributions to rock and roll that Sun Studio had his radio control room from WHBQ preserved in their museum when the station’s home in the Chisca Hotel was dismantled. Not only did they transport the turntables, microphone, and sound board, they also retained the evidence of his strongly-held opinions: his habit of literally smashing records to pieces if he didn’t like them.

This story highlights the importance of radio DJs who used that broadcast medium to introduce listeners to new and exciting sounds. Especially in the early days of rock and roll, while physical spaces remained racially segregated, the airwaves brought freedom. Bold DJs like Phillips, Alan Freed in Cleveland, and Philadelphia’s Jerry Blavat played records by both black and white artists. Even when stations maintained segregated playlists, their broadcasts were available to listeners of all races, breaking down walls.

Later radio DJs may not have been as socially revolutionary, but they were vital in developing artists’ careers. In The Cars: Let the Stories Be Told (Da Capo, 2025), author Bill Janowitz describes the crucial role Maxanne Santori played in the Cars’ career. As a DJ on Boston’s WBCN, she went out on a limb and aired their first demos, “Just What I Needed” and “My Best Friend’s Girl,” in March, 1977. Requests poured into the station, which got them signed to Elektra Records. A few years prior, she broke another local band, Aerosmith, by playing “Dream On” early and often. Although she was best known for having her ear to the ground in Boston, spinning the J. Geils Band before they became a rock radio staple, she was also a notable initial supporter of Bruce Springsteen, paving the way for all these artists to conquer the nation’s airwaves. As Janovitz describes her impact with the Cars, it was “a magically rare instance where someone who wielded enough influence and independence at a station that was still free from top-down corporate straitjacketing, with enough faith in a song and band, and bold enough to push it” (p. 98). She was so important to the band’s success that they thanked her when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

Meanwhile in the UK, John Peel was becoming a radio legend for a career built on championing new music. Peel may be best known in the U.S. by intrepid record store shoppers for the BBC radio sessions bearing his name. Peel died unexpectedly at 65 in 2004, so his widow Sheila Ravenscroft completed the biography he had started, John Peel: Margrave of the Marshes (Chicago Review Press, 2007). Always an enthusiastic music fan, Peel began his radio career in Texas in the 1960s before returning home to England, where the freedom he found with an offshore pirate radio station meshed with the freedom that rock musicians were finding with the LP format at the end of that decade. Peel landed at the BBC after the pirate stations were shut down, and he spent decades spinning new music he loved. He was an early proponent of punk, and his shows were springboards for unsigned artists such as Billy Bragg. He famously aired the Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks” twice in a row because he was so besotten with the track, and he was a stalwart supporter of odd and spiky Manchester band the Fall, whom Peel described as “always different, always the same.”

A recent guest on the Sound Opinions podcast, Minneapolis radio DJ Mary Lucia discussed her book What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To (University of Minnesota Press, 2025). In the 1990s, she was exposing bands such as Oasis, Elastica, and Pulp, but she faced diminishing freedom in programming, initially at a commercial station but even continuing when she jumped to a non-commercial station. She lamented the disappearance of the individual DJs’ tastes and their ability to help new artists break out.

Radio, like many industries, has become more homogenized, holding sway to market research. But there are other forces at work. As radio executives are quick to point out when challenged on their unadventurous playlists, they aren’t in the music business, they are in the advertising business. Any music that is too unfamiliar risks alienating listeners; if they tune out, ad dollars go down. In the 1980s, as FM free-form rock ossified into the classic rock format, MTV broke young UK acts like Adam Ant as they scrounged to fill their airtime with videos. Another factor is the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which deregulated the industry and allowed conglomerates to own more stations. One former DJ told me that he’d been trained to make his patter emphasize how local he was; he left the profession when the edict changed to avoid localization so his shows could easily be syndicated elsewhere. The result was standardization and predictability.

Radio’s diminished ability to expose new music reflects changes in listening habits at the turn of the millennium with artists forging new paths to listeners. Moby scored a big hit with his 1999 album Play (Mute) by licensing songs for use in commercials. “Pink Moon,” the title track from Nick Drake’s 1972 album (Island) found an audience via its use in a 1999 Volkswagen ad, 27 years after the album’s release and 25 years after Drake’s death. The initial ad campaign for Apple iPod, colorful and stylish with dancing listeners in silhouette, helped launch the careers of bands like Jet. Record labels saw more opportunities to expose artists via inclusion on the soundtracks for youth-oriented shows like The O.C. Music supervisors became the new tastemakers.

But the shift to streaming media has made the biggest difference in recent years. Internet-only radio stations showed initial promise in breaking down barriers to entry for both DJs and the artists they play, but music licensing fees under the Music Modernization Act of 2018 stifled that channel. Artists like Lil Nas X and Steve Lacy have blown up on TikTok with radio support lagging behind, and former Disney kid Olivia Rodrigo kicked her music career into high gear by going viral on the platform with “Driver’s License” (Sour, Geffen, 2021). Although people are still listening to terrestrial radio in their cars, younger people are more likely to choose streaming apps. Spotify’s algorithm-fueled playlists are especially popular with their users, but “Playlisting also rewards ‘vanilla’ music – that’s a huge downside,” says one senior music industry executive. While streaming app playlists offer convenience, the data-driven selections lack personal, human taste. As the adage goes, "The best DJs don't play what you ask for; they play what you didn't know you wanted."

Check out the Spotify Playlist here: