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First female DJ?

...obviously, this guy never thought of Jean Ruth, who worked for KFEL Denver and the Armed Forces Radio Service on "Reveille with Beverly," or Iva Toguri, the Radio Tokyo "Zero Hour" DJ wrongly convicted of treason as "Tokyo Rose," or the infamous "Axis Sally" Mildred Gillars of Radio Berlin, all during WW2...
 
At least in the modern top 40 era on a major market station, I'd think it would have been the late, great Yvonne Daniels on WLS.
 
At least in the modern top 40 era on a major market station, I'd think it would have been the late, great Yvonne Daniels on WLS.

I do remember her I beleive in the late 60's / early 70's on WLS.
First woman "jock" I worked with was in 1975 at WRUN in Utica, a pretty hot station at the time. Her name was Phyllis. She was a bartender at our local watering hole. One night she came over and slammed my beer down and informed me I wasn't as big a hotshot as I thought I was. She had worked at her college radio station and her high school radio station too. Not only that but she went to high school with my program director and worked with him at the high school station. So I asked why didn't she apply work at WRUN. As I remember, she said that a_ _hole would never hire me. I went to work the next day and told the boss about the incident the night before. He said, sure I remember her, have her call me. She did and started on the air the next weekend. It was a real top 40 station and she sounded great. I don't know of any other female top 40 jock on the air in the Northeast at that time. Phyllis worked there a couple years and then moved south. The last I heard she was working for a magizine. I don't know if she ever continued her broadcasting career. Too bad if she didn't because she did a great job
 
This is a tough one. There were certainly many female voices on the radio since its inception...

But the modern DJ era...that's another story. Yvonne Daniels was certainly right there at the beginning. I also remember seeing a special about the late NBC anchor/reporter Jessica Savitch doing AM top40 in the mid to late 60's. I believe in Atlantic City, or nearby.

Great topic, though.
 
searadiofreak said:
I also remember seeing a special about the late NBC anchor/reporter Jessica Savitch doing AM top40 in the mid to late 60's. I believe in Atlantic City, or nearby.
Click to expand...

...Savitch's radio work was at WBBF Rochester, while she was a student at Ithaca College. Her family had roots in the Atlantic City area...
 
Savitch's radio work was at WBBF Rochester, while she was a student at Ithaca College. Her family had roots in the Atlantic City area...

Yes, she did work at WBBF. She was known as "The Honeybee" strictly as a novelty.
I believe she had a short Sunday night airshift. At least, that's the only aircheck I heard of her. But at the time, she was certainly a pioneer and BBF should be credited with giving her a shot. I know Jack Palvino, the P. D. at he time, (and later part owner of WVOR & WHAM) donated a lot of materials to St John Fishers College. There may be more airchecks of her there.
 
gr8oldies said:
At least in the modern top 40 era on a major market station, I'd think it would have been the late, great Yvonne Daniels on WLS.
Click to expand...

Was that the overnight/graveyard shift lady who called herself "Queen of Rock" on the air??? Great voice,heard her when I graduated high school in 1973

I also remember Allison "Nightbird" Steele doing a pre-recorded album rock program for the National Guard around that same time frame..She was also at WNEW-FM in NYC.

Another great voice was Cindy Spicer on the former WDJX in Xenia in the late 70s/early 80s..she and Kim Faris on the former WJAI (later WGTZ)were probably the first female jocks on the air in Dayton at that time.
 
Sie Holliday was a top 40 DJ at KRLA starting in 1962, and is credited with being both the first female DJ in Los Angeles, and first female in LA to work morning drive. After jocking solo for awhile, she was one of the cast of wacky characters on Emperor Bob Hudson's KRLA morning drive show in the mid 60s, and contributed to the Credibility Gap satirical news broadcasts in the late 60s on that station with Harry Shearer (an actor, star of his own NPR radio show, and half of the voices on the Simpsons), Michael McKean, and David L. Lander. Holliday left KRLA in 1976, and jocked at MOR station KMPC fo awhile. She died last year at age 75 - her obit says she left radio in 1978 to care for her ailing mother in Kansas.
 
Ann Wagner WFBM radio in the fifties.

It was said, but I cannot confirm, that Memphis TN had a station with nothin but lady DJs back in the early sixties. The call letters WHER (her, get it?) ;-)

Mike
 
On WDIA in Memphis, the first real black radio station, there was a very popular woman, who's name I cannot remember, although I recently saw an interview with her on A&E. She may not have been the first, but certainly one of the very first women to be on.
 
I loved Yvonne Daniels on 'LS. Anyone know when she started? And where did she work previous? What a fantastic voice, tailor-made for WLS...one of the few female voices that sounded even better with reverb!!!
 
There are some early top 40 pioneers that I haven't seen on this board.

How about Shana at KFRC in 1974, later moved to KHJ in 1977 before moving on to AOR.

Also Alex Hayes was a great late night female jock in NYC on WPIX for a year or two, also beginning in 1974.
 
"There are some early top 40 pioneers that I haven't seen on this board.
How about Shana at KFRC in 1974, later moved to KHJ in 1977 before moving on to AOR.
Also Alex Hayes was a great late night female jock in NYC on WPIX for a year or two, also beginning in 1974."

I think these 2 haven't been mentioned because they have no claim to being "first." As I mentioned in an earlier post, Sie Holiday started at KRLA in 1962, but you could probably find one or two female DJ pioneers back a decade or more before Sie. I remember when Shana premiered at KFRC - I believe she was definitely the first female DJ for the Big 610.
 
searadiofreak said:
I loved Yvonne Daniels on 'LS. Anyone know when she started? And where did she work previous? What a fantastic voice, tailor-made for WLS...one of the few female voices that sounded even better with reverb!!!
Click to expand...

I remember Yvonne on WYNR in about 1961 in Chicago when McLendon flipped it to a Black leaning contemporary station (1390)... she was already a known name in the market then.
 
Lkeller said:
"There are some early top 40 pioneers that I haven't seen on this board.
How about Shana at KFRC in 1974, later moved to KHJ in 1977 before moving on to AOR.
Also Alex Hayes was a great late night female jock in NYC on WPIX for a year or two, also beginning in 1974."

I think these 2 haven't been mentioned because they have no claim to being "first." As I mentioned in an earlier post, Sie Holiday started at KRLA in 1962, but you could probably find one or two female DJ pioneers back a decade or more before Sie. I remember when Shana premiered at KFRC - I believe she was definitely the first female DJ for the Big 610.
Click to expand...


Not Top 40, but in the 50's to 60's period, there were many many stations running Holiday Inn's Dolly Holliday show overnights. Dolly, who was really Dottie, had been on all-female station WHER in Memphis prior to that. I don't recall the time frame, but it is probably searchable... I found this...

WHER went on the air in 1955 as an early experiment in all-women's programming. Located at 1430 on the AM dial, WHER featured a female on-air staff, but it was owned by three businessmen: Sam Phillips of Sun Records, Roy Scott, and Kemmons Wilson, the founder of Holiday Inn. WHER called itself "a thousand beautiful watts." The Memphis Sunday Times heralded it as "the nation's first successful all- girl station."
 
MACK184 said:
On WDIA in Memphis, the first real black radio station, there was a very popular woman, who's name I cannot remember, although I recently saw an interview with her on A&E. She may not have been the first, but certainly one of the very first women to be on.
Click to expand...

http://www.shemadeit.org/meet/biography.aspx?m=125 has a bio on Jean "The Queen" Steinberg, of WDIA, who became a station owner in Detroit later in her life
 
David, I was going to mention Steinberg, but you beat me to it. :)

Martha Jean "The Queen" Steinberg came to Detroit at WCHB-AM in 1963. In Detroit at least, she was the first female air personality to move beyond the "homemaker hints" type show that women usually hosted in those days. Eventually she went to WJLB-AM but got blown out in 1980 when the station moved from 1400 AM to 97.9 FM. Steinberg took control of 1400 AM in 1982 and changed its calls to WQBH, "Queen Broadcasts Here." She became the sole owner of WQBH in 1997 but passed away just over two years later, and her daughter Triniere continued to run the station until selling in 2004 to Salem, who converted it to the right-wing talk format it now runs as WDTK.

Growing up in the Detroit area in the '80s and '90s, I remember WQBH as sort of the black version of WJR - a full service station with a little bit of everything: R&B (AC Urban music and soul oldies), jazz, gospel music and preaching, and talk. Even after Steinberg's death, they continued to air daily reruns of her old broadcasts.

According to the book Rockin' Down the Dial, Steinberg's show on WDIA was called "Premium Stuff," but she had such a sexy, sassy persona that the term "Premium Stuff" came to refer to her as much as, if not more than, the R&B records she played. The book, which is about the history of Detroit radio, devotes a whole chapter to Steinberg.

Also, progressive rock station WABX (now WYCD) had a female DJ in the late '60s/early '70s named Ann Christ (pronounced with a short "i" as in "fist," not as in "Jesus Christ"). Aside from Ann Christ, Detroiters had to pretty much wait until the late '70s/early '80s to hear female DJs on rock or Top 40 stations, such as Rhonda Hart (R.I.P.), Kim Carson, and Karen Dalessandro.

Let's not also forget the talented women behind the scenes, like Rosalie Trombley of CKLW.

I've also read that there were some stations in the '60s that employed an all-female air staff, though the announcers were hired more for their sex appeal than for their talent as announcers. WSDM(whatever the calls were, I believe it was the station that is now WLUP) in Chicago was one of these stations (a jazz station, according to Rockin' Down the Dial), and one of its DJs was Linda Ellerbee (now of "Nick News" fame). I've also heard that CHIC-AM/FM in Toronto (the AM is now dark, the FM is now CFNY) had an "all-girl" air staff around the same time.
 
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