Three Legends of Detroit Black Radio

Flint, Michigan wasn't a pretty place. Detroit was bigger, but that doesn't always equal nicer. Fortunately, there was radio to soften the tough personas of these two cities.

Everyday life, even that far north, in the Sixties, was still to some extent segregated. There were the white, and black, parts of town; boundaries defined by certain streets and factories and the Flint River; places you simply didn't go if you weren't the right color. On the radio dial, there were black stations and white stations. Flint's, and Detroit's, large black populations meant that those playing current singles dipped deeper into the jazz and rhythm and blues charts. There were also stations that played "good music" (as opposed to the stuff I listened to), whose positioners implied that the music their competitors played was something other than good. The distinction was still black vs. white.

To a kid who grew up out in the country, Flint seemed like it was on the other side of the world. Detroit may as well have been in the next galaxy. Radio waves shortened those distances. Three legends of black radio, the equals of any deejays in any PBS documentary, shattered the boundaries.

ERNIE DURHAM - WBBC Flint / WJLB - WDET Detroit

. . . ooo-wee, it's Frantic Ernie D for thee! My darlin' my dears, please lend me your ears, and dig these sounds that go around, sounds so neat, sounds oh so sweet, sounds to rock ya, roll ya, satisfy your soul, ya hear?

Author, poet, and Sixties activist John Sinclair, who grew up in Davison -- right outside Flint -- tells the story of how, when the call came to play baseball in the sandlot down the street, he would sometimes tell his friends no, he had to stay in and listen to Ernie D count down the week's top ten records.

Ernie Durham started on Booth Broadcasting's WBBC. The bosses at WJLB -- for owner James L. Booth -- decided that anyone with a following the size of his, who could sell that much of his sponsors' products, belonged in Detroit. For a while, he worked at both stations, before freeways, when the 100 mile round trip commute was all on surface streets.