- Georgie Woods
Georgie Woods, Philadelphia radio broadcast legend; born 1927, died
June 18 , 2005.Woods came to
Philadelphia from New York in 1953 and began broadcasting from AM stations such asWDAS(AM) andWHAT (AM) . He was a consultant toDick Clark , advising him which records were popular in theAfrican-American community. He went on to play the talents of emerging artists like theTemptations ,Stevie Wonder andMichael Jackson over the radio.In the 1960s, Woods used the airwaves to talk about the American
civil rights movement. He was often known to stop playing music to talk about the efforts of African-Americans and others who were campaigning for equality, and about the work of the movement's leaders such as Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. In 1963, Woods and WDAS radio station General manager Bob Klein [http://www.wdashistory.org] chartered buses to take people down to the August 28, 1963 March onWashington, D.C. (subsequently famous for its "I Have a Dream " speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) and had asked a youngEd Bradley , currently a well-knownCBS correspondent , to be a bus captain [http://www.sacobserver.com/soul/poetry_literature/082803/ed_bradley_jr.shtml] .According to news reports [http://www.nbc10.com/news/4626624/detail.html] , he was due to return to Philadelphia in the fall of 2005 to be inducted into the Philadelphia Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame.
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