Gene Nobles
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Gene Nobels | |
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Born | August 3, 1913 Disc Jockey |
Gene Nobles (August 3, 1913 – September 21, 1989) was an American radio disc jockey who attained fame on Nashville radio station WLAC from the 1940s through the 1970s by playing rhythm and blues music.
Career
Nobles was a former carnival barker,
Nobles is credited with introducing artists such as Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Little Richard, to a wider audience. Before Nobles' breakthrough programming, R&B artists were usually only heard by African-Americans, who attended their performances at nightclubs on the so-called Chitlin' Circuit and purchased their records in black-owned stores. Some conservative whites (especially segregationists) opposed the broadcast of such music, but many others purchased the R&B records and danced to them.[2]
In the early 1960s, Nobles drew complaints by listeners and
Nobles battled arthritis most of his adult life. When he had to take time off, Bill "Hoss" Allen often filled in for him. By the mid-1960s, Nobles, like the other disc jockeys, began to tape his programs to air in the evening time slots. He continued to do this until his retirement, which varying sources have placed between 1972 and 1974.
Nobles had a long association with
Personal life
Nobles was married to Eleanor Broadwater, who received a writing credit for the Dale Hawkins song "Susie Q", made popular in 1968 by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Famous phrases
Nobles developed slang phrases which he used frequently. Some of the more famous included:
"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 name of the town where Randy's Record Shop was located
References
- ^ publicradio.org, A Century of Music on the Radio
- ^ Wes Smith, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s (Longstreet Press, 1989, pp. 85, 100)
External links
- WLAC Radio: The Unofficial Webpage Archived 2006-06-23 at the Wayback Machine - station history
- airchecks