With a man who knows his city.

A Black History Month Series

Born: 1927

Died: 2005

Handle: “The Guy with the Goods”

Career: Spent the bulk of his career at WDAS, where he first played music, then in late-career became a talk show host. Woods was as much an activist as deejay: he helped organize the “March on Washington” and went on the air to urge calm during the city’s ‘64 riots. He was known to scrap the music format when the spirit moved him and talk directly to the community; at other times, he would break into song, favoring spiritual and gospel classics. His soul revue shows at the Uptown Theater at Broad & Dauphin became the stuff of legend—revues that included James Brown, Steve Wonder, the Temptations, the Supremes and many others. He was a sometime consultant to Dick Clark, advising him which records were popular in the African-American community. Woods also hosted a series of “Freedom Shows” at the Uptown and Nixon Theaters to raise money for civil rights activities.

Woods hosted a local TV show in the ’70s.

Highlights: Marched in Selma, Alabama, with Martin Luther King. First to break Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me.” Bestowed the “Ice Man” moniker on Jerry Butler. Credited with inventing the term “blue-eyed soul” in the ’60s as a way of letting the listening audience know when a record he was playing was by a white artist.

Quote: “You don’t need a contract with a radio station. You need a contract with your community.”

In his honor: Mural at 5531 Germantown Avenue.

Excerpt from a documentary-in-progress.

“It’s a misconception that children these days are losing interest in books. If that were true, we wouldn’t have published the number of books that we do every year and wouldn’t have made profits during the recession period last year!“

— Shantanu Duttagupta, Scholastic India

The Hindu

Super Bowl commercial, 2010
Via Ingrid Wiese, fb

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“When the Saints Go Marching In”
New Orleans street musicians

“A year of snow, a year of plenty.”

—French proverb

A Black History Month Series

Born: June 22, 1941

Where: Philadelphia

Died: November 9, 2006

College: Cheney State, 1964

First job: WDAS radio. (Bradley covered the ‘64 riots.)

Career: Covered the Vietnam War for CBS News, where he was wounded in 1973. First black White House correspondent for CBS News. In 1981, became “60 Minutes” correspondent, where he stayed for 26 years, covering over 500 stories.

Memorable “60 Minutes” stories: Interview with Timothy McVeigh, sex abuse in the Catholic Church, the Columbine High School shootings, the Mississippi murder case of 14-year-old Emmett Till.

Awards: Emmy Award (19 times), Peabody for African AIDS report “Death By Denial,” Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, Paul White Award, George Polk Award for Foreign Television and Lifetime Achievement Award from National Association of Black Journalists.

CBS colleague Bob Schieffer on Ed Bradley: “Ed Bradley was the coolest guy I have ever known… People just loved him. Ed always had a kid with him, a godson or someone’s child. God knows how much money he gave away to charity. He was the softest touch in town.”

Passion: Jazz. In Philadelphia, on WDAS, Bradley occasionally did stints as a jazz disc jockey, making $1.50 an hour spinning records by Coltrane, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday. Later in his career, he hosted “Jazz at Lincoln Center” on NPR.

Quote: “For me to be able to stand up in the Khyber Pass and say, ‘Boy, here’s little Butch Bradley from West Philly. Alexander the Great passed through here 2,500 years ago’—God, I mean, that’s a kick!”