Soul on the Air #9: Fat Daddy, 1966

Play Music - Share Audio - Paul "Fat Daddy" J...

It's high time that another installment of "Soul on the Air" make its way on the blog, and this 20-minute slab of sockin' soul power comes from Baltimore's WWIN, with the ebullient Paul "Fat Daddy" Johnson doing his thing. I'll defer to this great profile of Fat Daddy for info about the DJ, which includes some additional aircheck clips and MP3s of two 45s featuring Johnson's jive ("Downtown With the Fat Man" has to be heard to be believed). I've heard quite a few motormouth DJs over the years, but Fat Daddy's rapid-fire rhyming and scatting are amazing.

This aircheck is from the morning of July 1966. The announcer's spiel sets the stage right away: "if you missed any of the action on the last part of the Fat Daddy Soul Morning Show, brother, you missed a lot!" Fat Daddy then proceeds to spin Solomon Burke, Nancy Wilson, the Five Stairsteps and others while pushing his high-octane patter and giving a big "soul kiss" to the Baltimore listening audience. The commercials are cool, too, and they include a soulful plug for Salem menthol cigarettes and the "Golden Oldie Album," a joint venture between WWIN and Roulette Records (many radio stations used their record industry connections to create compilation LPs plugging the station and its jocks - I have a WVON Christmas premium in my record collection like the one advertised here). It's a great aircheck, but it's unfortunately too short!