Spinning the Records of History:
The Magnificent Montague Ignites

by Frederick B. Hudson

On a hot August night in 1965, a disc jockey turned on his television set in his luxury apartment in Brentwood, a California suburb made famous during the O.J. Simpson trial. He saw flames leaping from buildings. Oh, a big fire. Then he heard it. A phrase he had uttered in small radio stations from Texas to Louisiana to Chicago and finally to Los Angeles. A phase that he threw into the mix of music and words as he tried to build his audiences' emotion to a crescendo. A burst of emotion fueled by dramatic monologue and matching instrumentals. When the intensity of the message reached its peak-he cried out to his loyal fans with transistor radios pressed to their ears. The magic words? BURN BABY BURN!

But now these words were not celebrating a buildup a sounds from such legends as Johnny Ace and Sam Cooke-they were yelled out as rioters threw their repressed anger at windows of a world that placed their ambitions on hold. The Magnificent Montague, the disc jockey who coined the phrase was astounded. He had never intended his slogan as a call for literal incineration.

Photo courtesy of the University of Illinois Press

But at the same time he was not surprised at the violence on his television. For during the years he had carved out a career in radio around the country, he had indulged a parallel passion: the search of manuscripts and other memorabilia that chronicled the history of his darker brothers and sisters of the African Diaspora.

This fascinating life of simultaneously using wit and guile to find listeners' hearts while seeking touchstones of black pain and glory is described in a new autobiography by the disk jockey/collector. It is called appropriately BURN BABY BURN! and is written by the Magnificent Montague with a former listener, Bob Baker.

The book begs to be appreciated on its own terms-it is not a linear narrative. Its flow derives from the format of the disk jockey himself-riffs of memories with teasing hints of more melodies in the next chapters. The boy from Elizabeth, New Jersey literally could not stay still. He ran away from home twice before he was sixteen, hitchhiking to California to see the place where movies were made-Hollywood. After returning home for the second time, his imagination was fired up by the incipient World War II. In those perilous times, Nathaniel Montague took to sea as so many adventurers have. He enlisted in the merchant marine, the private ships that were pressed into service by the government to haul supplies and troops to the many battlefronts of the war. On board, his talent for entertainment emerged when he organized talent shows which drew the segregated crew and troops together to hear and watch vocalists, comedians, and dancers perform in the midst of perilous waters.

After the war, he continued to sign up for merchant marine voyages as a way to support himself. But his boyhood fascination with the radio medium propelled him to seek work as a radio advertising salesman. This was the turning point of his life. In those times, if a person could purchase time, either from his own pocket or from advertisers, radio stations pretty much let the purchaser place whatever content he or she wished.

The Magnificent Montague was born. He realized who his natural audience was. Women. They were at home listening to the radio which taking care of the house. They were also the purchasers of the household products that were advertised on his show. Montague catered to their unfulfilled desires for appreciation and respect. He called them "my darlings." He also realized that poor whites and Negroes had many of the same frustrations. So he played songs that spoke to their heartstrings. Songs revolved around his turntables like Little Walter proclaiming, "You're So Fine," Lowell Folson pleading, "Reconsider Baby," with closings by the Spaniels kissing all the women goodnight with "Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight." He admits to stealing his style from black preachers who connected contemporary life to ancient prophets and temptations.]

But trouble came one day in Galveston, Texas. The Klu Klux Klan came to the station. They felt the upstart black "boy" on the radio had been "making love to white ladies" on the air. Only intervention by a white disc jockey saved Montague from lynching. But when Montague moved to another station whose signal swept the small town of Louisiana, Montague found a real true love with a seventeen year old girl of Caucasian origin. She called in frequently for requests, he was fascinated by her voice, they met and have been together for forty-eight years.

With his usual nerve and wit, Montague found a way for them to travel together as an interracial couple in the South in the fifties. His wife would enter the motel office alone to rent the room and her husband would enter the room at night. But when he forgot something once and had to return to the motel to pick it up the next day, eyes popped! One day in Chicago, he walked into a rare book store to search for poetry to read on his show. He discovered Paul Laurence Dunbar's words:

These words found a place on Montague's bookshelves which grew and grew. Grew to hold a 1906 biography of Frederick Douglass by Booker T. Washington by Booker T. Washington. His walls hold a pastel painted George Washington Carver, the paints are made of what else but peanut oil. But the music still sounded in his soul. He worked on promotion with Berry Gordy of Motown and singers ranging from Sam Cooke to Barry White. But he had a remaining dream; to own his own radio station. To purchase an existing station would cost millions. So like Kevin Costner in the movie, Field of Dreams, he built his own and knew that the audience would come.

He studied the federal records and found an available frequency in Palm Springs, Florida. He operated the bulldozer himself to clear the land. Snakes in the desert and temperatures over one hundred degrees did not deter him. After it was built, he programmed his music to the tastes of Palm Springs' retirees who missed the music of Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, and Glenn Miller.

It worked. Now Montague's dream is to use to profits from the sale of his station to create a museum to share his black history library with the world. Why not? He has tamed the seas and crossed the desert. Montague could probably write a song called "Move over Moses and tell Montague the News!"

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