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The
Original
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Jocko's
"Rocket
Ship
Show"
Climb aboard.
"It's the
hottest show on the radio!"
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 Although
the expression, "Blast from the Past" was apparently invented by
Murray the K,
Jocko, "The Ace from Outer Space," was blasting off in his virtual
rocket ship and landing it in our radios for many years before Murray
ever saw a microphone or the inside of a broadcast studio. Our space
traveler always
opened "the fastest moving show on the radio" with the sound of the rocket blast that he said would "make
your
liver quiver" and usually something like this:
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 "Hey, there, all you Daddy-Os and Mommy-Os,
welcome aboard the big 'Rocket Ship Show.' It’s your engineer, Jocko,
your Ace from Outer Space, way up here in the stratosphere, back on the
scene with the record machine, sayin’ oop-pop-a-doo and how do you do.
Close the hatch, and prepare to blast. Well, eee tiddle dee dock. This
is the jock. Great
Googamooga,
Shoogabooga."
(Click to read about
the origin and meaning of "Googamooga.")
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Jocko
Henderson was anything but an
Alan Freed
imitator or a duplicator, but rather to us he was an originator; he was unique. We
viewed (or heard) him as probably the most innovative, spirited, entertaining and overall cool of
all the early New York City jocks. But
was he really original?
Check
this out (but don't forget to come
back here.)
His career started in
his home town of Baltimore, but it was in Philadelphia, beginning in 1953, that
he first took on the name, "Jocko" and began talking over (and often directly to) the records, rolling his
Rs, and
in a style that would later influence countless
other disc jockeys (and decades later, the rap music genre), rhyming
everything he said.
And he
was the first DJ to do radio broadcasts commuting back and forth daily
between two cities (Philadelphia in the afternoons
and New York at night). Jocko opened doors for black DJs everywhere
like no one else.
Beginning in 1954, we found Jocko
broadcasting on his
"Rocket Ship Show" in his own brand of rhyming jive patter (for which he is now
widely acknowledged as the father of rap music)
every weekday night after 11 p.m. (when both Alan Freed and
Peter Tripp signed off the air) toward the top of the dial at 1280 WOV (later known as "WADO Radio,"
beginning in 1959 when Jocko went head-to-head with then
newcomer,
Murray, "the K").
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Like
Alan Freed, Jocko also appeared on TV (his
TV "Rocket Ship Show" ran for about a year
beginning in 1958 on New York's
channel 13) and hosted live stage shows in New York City, in his case, beginning in 1956 at Loew's
State theatre on Broadway and later at the world famous Apollo theatre in
Harlem.
Jocko lived out his later years with little
or no
hoopla, just an occasional radio appearance, for example, on a short series
of tribute shows on WCBS-FM (New York's
oldies station) from 1989 to 1991, and briefly during that period for two hours a week in
Philadelphia, where he had lived most of his life. On July 15, 2000, Jocko died quietly
in that city at the age of 82.
Jocko's memory was honored in
2004 by his induction in the Broadcast
Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame, but as of this writing, he has not
yet been given the national
recognition he so richly deserves. |
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Program booklet cover from Jocko's first
stage show, New York City, 1956 |
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Although rarely seen by most
of his radio fans and then, usually in a space suit
(therefore, barely recognizable), Jocko was a pretty slick and snappy guy as you
can see in this ad for Eagle Clothes (of
Brooklyn, New York) with Jocko modeling at the peak of the civil rights movement
in 1964, one of the
earliest men's clothing ads that featured a black
model.
Click below for more memorable Jocko New York radio
Rocket Ship Show
airchecks
(audio clips):
Two of these feature seemingly endless dedications,
similar to
Alan
Freed's. (But who knows who started that
trend?) They are rather large files, so
give them some time to download.
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Copyright
© 2006-2008 by Howard B. Levy and
1960 Sailors Association Inc.
All rights reserved.
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