Gene Nobles

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Gene Nobles (born August 3, 1913, Hot Springs, Arkansas; died September 21, 1989, Nashville, Tennessee) was an American radio disc jockey who attained fame and notoriety from the 1940s through the 1970s for playing rhythm and blues and music on Nashville radio station WLAC.

Nobles, a former carnival barker, bingo dealer, and announcer on several small Southern radio stations, staked his claim to fame by becoming the first Euro-American personality to play popular African-American music on a regular basis, some time before early rock-and-roll jockeys such as Alan Freed and even his fellow WLAC announcers "John R." (Richbourg) and Bill "Hoss" Allen. The threesome, along with veteran radio man Herman Grizzard, produced lengedary evening and late-night shows, featuring R&B, soul music, and gospel music, that African-Americans and Euro-American teenagers greatly enjoyed, well into the early 1970s.

Nobles is credited with exposing Euro-American audiences for the first time to artists such as Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Little Richard, among many others. Before his breakthrough programming, R&B artists were known almost entirely to African-Americans only, who purchased their records in black-owned stores and heard their performances at nightclubs on the so-called "Chittlin' Circuit." Despite resistance by conservative whites to public broadcast of the songs, many others defied their strictures to purchase, and dance to, them.

According to a book by Wes Smith, "The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s" (Longstreet Press, 1989), Nobles had a reputation for gambling at horse tracks and drinking while on air, two pastimes still frowned upon by many in the mid-20th century. Neither of these vices apparently caused him any trouble with station management, unlike some of his peers. His only brush with career jeopardy came in the early 1960s over a suggestive reference he made while reading a commercial for sponsor White Rose Petroleum Jelly, an incident that drew the ire of FCC officials. Up to that point, he used double entendres to punctuate the records he played and accentuate his ironic, sarcastic sense of humor on-air. However, one deejay who replaced "Hossman" Allen for several years in the early 1960s did not escape so easily when he made a similar remark on air; WLAC fired "Hugh Baby" Jarrett after receiving an FCC reprimand and complaints from some of its advertisers.

Unfortunately, Nobles battled arthritis most of his adult life; Allen often filled in for him while he recuperated. By the mid-1960s or so, Nobles, like the others, began taping his programs for airing in the evening time slots; he continued to do this until his retirement in 1974 or so. When he and the others worked their one-to-two-hour shifts live, they would often gather a crowd together in their downtown Nashville office building to engage in voyeuristic activities aimed at a nearby hotel, according to Smith in his book.

Nobles had a long association with Randy Wood, founder of Dot Records and Randy's Record Shop in nearby Gallatin, Tennessee (later in Los Angeles). Wood sponsored Nobles' program for many years.

[edit] Famous Phrases

Nobles developed slang phrases for frequent use in his presentation. Some of the more famous include:

"Jerks/fillies" --boys/girls.
"From the heart of my bottom"--a suggestive inversion of the traditional testimony to sincerity.
"That's G-A-double L-A-T-I-N, folks"--spelling the address of Randy's Record Shop for non-residents of the Middle Tennessee area who might otherwise misspell it