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Tom Donahue
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tom "Big Daddy" Donahue (May 21, 1928 – April 28, 1975), was a pioneering rock and roll radio disc jockey (DJ).
Donahue's career started 1949 on the east cost at WTIP in South Carolina and continuing at WIBG in Philadelphia and WINX in Maryland, before moving to San Francisco in 1961 after the the payola scandal involving Alan Freed and Dick Clark.
Donahue re-invented himself, first as a DJ at Top Forty station KYA (now KOIT) in San Francisco, and then to run a record label, open a psychedelic nightclub, and produce concerts at Cow Palace and Candlestick Park with his partner, Bob Mitchell.
He wrote a 1967 Rolling Stone article titled "AM Radio Is Dead and Its Rotting Corpse Is Stinking Up the Airwaves" which also lambasted the Top Forty format. He subsequently revamped the foreign language station KMPX into what is considered to be America's first alternative "free form" radio station on the largely ignored FM band, playing non-commercial music by album-oriented bands. In 1972 he moved to role of general manager at KSAN where he encouraged playlists of music from different eras and genres interspersed with political commentary.
Donahue, and his DJ wife Raechel, formed further free form radio stations KMET and KPPC in Los Angeles.
He died from a heart attack in 1975.
Donahue was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 as a non performer, as one of only three disc jockeys to receive that honor.