PAVING THE WAY....DJ & BLACK RADIO HISTORY Pt3

The Birth of Live DJing (1940s-1950s) 

Following World War II, DJs moved from the radio studio to live social events, replacing expensive live bands with recorded music. 

• First Dance Party: In 1943, Jimmy Savile hosted the first known live DJ dance party in Otley, England, playing jazz records.
• Continuous Play: Savile also claimed to be the first to use twin turntables (welded together) in 1947 to eliminate silence between records.
• Jamaican Sound Systems: In the late 1950s, Kingston''s ghettos developed "sound systems"-massive mobile setups where a "selector" played records and a "toaster" chanted rhythmically over the beats, planting the seeds for hip-hop. 

The Technical Revolution (1960s-1970s) 

The 1970s transformed DJing into an artistic discipline through new techniques and specialized hardware. 

• Beatmatching: In the late 1960s, Francis Grasso pioneered beatmatching at NYC''s Sanctuary, using two turntables and specialized mixers to transition between songs seamlessly.
• The First Mixer: In 1971, engineer Alex Rosner built "Rosie," the first mixer specifically designed for DJs, which included cueing capabilities through headphones.
• Hip-Hop & Turntablism: In 1973, DJ Kool Herc invented the "breakbeat" technique by isolating percussive sections of records and looping them across two turntables. This era also saw the accidental invention of scratching by Grand Wizzard Theodore in 1975.