John R.
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John R. (born John Richbourg, Manning, South Carolina, August 20, 1910; died February 15, 1986, Nashville, Tennessee) was an American radio disc jockey who attained fame and notoriety in the 1950s and 1960s for playing rhythm and blues music on Nashville radio station WLAC.
Richbourg was arguably the most popular and charismatic of the four announcers who produced nightly programs from the late 1940s until the early 1970s showcasing popular African-American music; later rock music jockeys such as Alan Freed, Wolfman Jack, and countless others mimicked his speech idioms that simulated the street language of blacks heard in the mid-twentieth century. This highly stylized approach to on-air presentation of both music and advertising earned Richbourg significant adulation from the average listener and the radio industry, but it also created identity confusions, particularly for him and co-worker Bill "Hoss" Allen, who many thought were actually African-American themselves. Strangely enough, both men used the mystique to their commercial and personal advantages until the mid-1960s, when their racial identity as Euro-Americans became public knowledge, along with that of Gene Nobles and Herman Grizzard, the two other nighttime WLAC jockeys.
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[edit] Early history
Richbourg, a descendant of French Huguenot ancestors, originally went to New York City as a young man to work as a theater actor. Because of the Great Depression and a subsequent lack of audiences, he shifted to voice work on radio soap operas. After tiring of the instability of life as an actor, Richbourg decided to return to his native South Carolina, where he obtained a job announcing at WTMA in Charleston. After a year there, he moved to the station where he would obtain a national reputation, WLAC, in 1942. From 1943 to 1946, during World War II, Richbourg served in the U.S. military, and returned to Nashville permanently upon discharge.
[edit] From newscaster to "hep cat"
At first, WLAC assigned Richbourg to the news desk, where he read bulletins. However, when Gene Nobles took an extended vacation from the station sometime in the late 1940s, Richbourg filled in for him. Richbourg followed Nobles' lead in playing artists such as Otis Rush, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, men who performed what Richbourg later termed "cornfield" blues music. Despite some vigorous protests from annoyed white listeners, African-Americans responded with enthusiasm and began to write him letters. Because many of the fans who wrote in were either illiterate or semi-literate at best, they invariably misspelled Richbourg's surname; therefore, to remedy the problem, he shortened his on-air moniker to "John R."
By the mid-1950s, John R., as he was now known, actually began attracting Euro-American listeners again--the young, who often listened to his and the others' programs without their parents' knowledge, let alone approval, as an act of adolescent rebellion, a movement that would gain critical mass and create hysteria attacks among assorted authority figures. As ground-breaking R&B and early rock performers like Chuck Berry and Fats Domino found their earliest radio exposure on his program, Richbourg became a profoundly influential figure in the fledgling but growing black-music trade. He would later capitalize on his reputation by becoming a manager to several artists, a sometime record producer, and later entrepreneur in Nashville's booming studio industry, which, despite its national reputation as a center for country music, has always sported facilities devoted to soul, R&B, and gospel.
However, Richbourg may have gained his longest-enduring broadcast reputation as a pitchman who ad-libbed copy for advertisers, using "down-home" phrasing (e.g., "Now, friends, I know you got some soul. If you didn't, you wouldn't be listenin' to ol' John R., would ya? I'll tell you something, friends. You can really tell the world you got some soul with this brand-new Swinging Soul Medallion"--a jewelry pendant made by an Alabama-based company). The products he sold on his shows were often exotic or unusual in and of themselves--baby chicks from a Pennsylvania hatchery, family Bibles, hot-rod mufflers, and so on. Most of these, of course, were marketed to an African-American clientele, which was universally believed by advertisers to be more gullible than white consumers. According to a book by Wes Smith, "The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s" (Longstreet Press, 1989), most of those products turned out to be inherently defective and/or scams, but few irate customers ever sought action against the station or manufacturers, unlike people in today's litigious climate. One perfectly legitimate sponsor, which bought time on one of Richbourg's two hours each evening, was Ernie's Record Mart, owned by a record label entrepreneur who specialized in recording local Nashville R&B acts.
Many credit John R. as a jockey who launched the careers of artists such as James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and other popular soul acts of the 1960s. Despite the challenges against the popularity of earlier R&B by newer Euro-American performers such as Elvis Presley and The Beatles, Richbourg never backed down from his policy of playing mainly African-American artists, permitting mainstream pop on his program only when Ernie's Record Mart required him to do so on a commercial.
[edit] The end years
WLAC continued with its somewhat schizophrenic program schedule, with news, feature programs, and some country and pop music in the daytime hours (when its signal only reached Middle Tennessee), and the beloved R&B shows after 8 p.m., when the clear-channel signal settled into the atmosphere, enabling the station to be heard throughout much of the North American continent and Caribbean islands, until about 1972. At that time, WLAC owners Life and Casualty Insurance Company of Tennessee brought in for the first time outside management, which instituted a Top 40 format in the daytime. More importantly for Richbourg and the others, though, the new bosses began to pressure them to start including songs from that playlist in their programs. In actuality, this was probably a ploy to nudge him (and Nobles) into retirement, as the program director obviously saw the nightly Soul/R&B shows as outmoded and inconsistent with the increasingly-fashionable rigid formats that most American radio stations had adopted, or were about to adopt, during that period.
Deciding not to succumb to the dictates of a ratings-driven system (Richbourg and the others sold their spots over the years on a "per inquiry" basis, meaning that they kept a commission for each item sold), he elected to step down on July 28, 1973, after some 28 cumulative years of association with the station. After his retirement, Richbourg continued to manage R&B singer Joe Simon and produce records from regional artists. Richbourg developed a reputation of generosity to struggling performers, often going so far as to lend them money without expecting repayment. This would, unfortunately, haunt the disc jockey as he battled health problems in the last years of his life.
[edit] A legend gets help from his friends
By 1984, Richbourg was dying from lung cancer. At the behest of his wife, Margaret, singer Jackey Beavers, a longtime associate, helped organize a benefit concert to help pay the radio personality's staggering medical bills. On the bill of the March 26, 1985 show, held at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry House, were numerous artists who owed their careers to John R.'s broadcasts: James Brown, B. B. King, the Neville Brothers, Rufus Thomas, The Tams, The Coasters, gospel singer Bobby Jones (who at the time hosted a local TV program), and Beavers himself. Wes Smith remarked in his book that James Brown gave one of the best performances of his career at the event.
Sadly, of course, it was not enough to save Richbourg from the effects of many years of smoking, and he died almost a year later. Ella Washington, an artist who was a favorite of John R., sang gospel numbers at his funeral, in a fitting tribute to a man who shaped that genre and its secular cousins.
[edit] Aircheck recordings
After retiring, Richbourg issued cassette tapes featuring reconstructions of his shows, along with the music. Some of these are still circulating among traders, as are "bootleg" recordings from the radio broadcasts themselves. Further, the Country Music Hall of Fame, in conjunction with an exhibit it staged in 2004 highlighting Nashville's R&B music industry and its intersection with the better-known country business, released a two-volume set titled "Night Train to Nashville," featuring recordings Richbourg and the others played on their shows between 1945 and 1970. On each CD, one of John R.'s airchecks can be heard.
[edit] Famous phrases
"You know"--Richbourg said this phrase constantly throughout his programs
"Lord, have mercy, honey, have mercy"--frequent greeting to open the show
"Talk your trash!"--announced over records with suggestive lyrics
"It's Program Ten time"--the name of the part of his show not sponsored by Ernie's Record Mart; origins unknown
"That record is a honey/a gas/a smasheroonie/hittin' and gittin'"--record is climbing up the popularity charts
"That's a good thing"--same meaning as above
"I've got to flap my lips a little here"--meaning he has to interrupt the music for a commercial
"I want you to hear what he/she's talkin' about"
"Ernie's Record Mart, Nashville, Tennessee, and ONLY Nashville, Tennessee, nowhere else in the world! They got them records galore at that store"--reminder to listeners/customers of the store's correct address
"It's all on record"--disclaimer that the show used recordings instead of live in-studio performances; Richbourg used this for many years after the general public caught on to that fact
