Woods, Georgie

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Georgie Woods

1927–2005

Disc jockey, radio talk show host

George "Georgie" Woods, known as "the guy with the goods," became a radio legend in Philadelphia during his four-decade-long career that started in the 1950s. Starting at a time when there were few African Americans on mainstream media outlets, Woods created a popular show that broke new ground for a long list of performers, from Sam Cooke to the Beatles. The broadcast pioneer was also an ardent supporter of the civil rights movement, and used his high profile in the city to draw his listeners into the causes he championed. "In the 1950's and the 1960's, he was it—the person everyone listened to," former Philadelphia mayor W. Wilson Goode was quoted as saying in the New York Times. "He was an outstanding community and civil rights leader."

Woods was born in Barnett, Georgia, in 1927, as one of Clinton and Ludelia Lewis Woods's 13 children. Clinton Woods was an itinerant Baptist preacher who died when his son Georgie was nine. After her husband's death, Ludelia Woods took her family to Harlem, New York's thriving African American neighborhood. She died, too, when Woods was just 14. Forced to quit school in order to support his siblings, Woods worked as a dishwasher, truck driver, dockworker, and mail sorter at the post office before joining the U.S. Navy during World War II, when he was 16. His experience with Armed Services Radio, the information and entertainment network for U.S. military forces serving overseas, helped him find his calling, and when he returned to civilian life he enrolled in a three-month radio announcers' course. His first job was on the New York City station WWRL in late 1952, but he moved on to Philadelphia when he was hired at an AM station there, WHAT, in January of 1953.

Woods was one of just four African-American radio announcers, or disc jockeys (DJs) on the air in Philadelphia, at a time when radio was at the height of popularity as an entertainment medium. In 1956, he moved over to another AM station in Philly, WDAS, and would spend the remainder of his career at one of these two stations, both of which geared their programming to the city's black community. Early on, his distinctive baritone voice was popular with listeners, but he also proved to have a good ear for a potential hit record. In 1957, Woods began playing a new song from a moderately well known gospel singer who had stopped recording religious music to concentrate on making pop records. The singer was Sam Cooke, and the track was "You Send Me," which went on to spend six weeks at number one on the charts.

Woods even played a catchy tune from an unknown British group called the Beatles in 1962, "Please, Please Me." Two years later, he claimed that a record from an all-white act, the Righteous Brothers, was "blue-eyed soul." The term came into widespread use a few years later when the Osmond Brothers were mocked as the white copycat version of an African-American singing family, the Jackson 5.

Woods spent four years in the mid-1960s back at WHAT after a dispute with the management of WDAS. On both outlets he called himself "Georgie Woods, the man with the goods." By then he had already emerged as well-known local champion of the civil rights move-ment. He organized a Philadelphia caravan of 21 buses to the 1963 March on Washington, interviewed Malcolm X, and began hosting Motown-star-studded "Freedom Shows" that were fundraisers for various civil rights organizations. He also served as vice president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and sometimes stopped playing records to discuss issues important to the city's black community. In 1967, he ran for a seat on the Philadelphia city council, and seemed to win by a narrow margin. An overnight recount, done under questionable circumstances, showed otherwise, and Woods never ventured near electoral politics again.

After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in April of 1968, Woods urged his listeners to stay calm and keep the slain civil rights leader's message of peace in mind. That same year he returned to WDAS, and as music programming on AM stations declined thanks to the better sound quality of the FM signal, WDAS decided to give Woods his own talk show in 1978. It drew excellent ratings, and lasted for nearly twenty years. Eventually he became the program director for WDAS as well.

The talk-show forum gave Woods an opportunity to discuss race, city politics, and other topics full-time, but his opinions occasionally landed him in trouble. One of the most heated controversies came in 1988, when Woods responded to hints of resentment in the black community against stores owned by Korean immigrants. Woods suggested on the air that African Americans boycott the businesses owned by Korean Americans, asserting that "they take our money; they suck our blood," according to a Philadelphia Inquirer profile by Joe Logan. The radio station issued an apology, but Woods refused to do so, saying, "I will not apologize for speaking out on behalf of blacks," Logan quoted him as saying.

Logan interviewed Woods in 1993, when the DJ was being honored on the occasion of his 66th birthday for his 40 years in radio and legacy of community involvement. The celebrations included the unveiling of a mural located at 5531 Germantown Avenue in a tribute to his life. At the time, Woods admitted to Logan that his skirmish with the city's Korean-American business owners was misguided. "One thing I will have to say about them is they come into the community and work hard," he told the Inquirer. "There's a void there and they've filled it. That's our fault, not their fault. It took me a long time to understand that." Looking back, Woods also told the Philadelphia Inquirer that his support for integration, the goal of the civil rights struggle, in the 1960s was also a mistake. "I think integration has hurt the blacks, because we used to be a unit…. We had black hotels, we had our own restaurants, our own shopping centers, our own clothing stores—and we lost it all through integration."

Woods retired from the airwaves in 1996. In 1997 Woods moved to Florida, and the city sent him off with a heartfelt celebration of his career. "We would like him to leave with the feeling that his work in radio, television, public affairs, politics, and the many other arenas have not been without the love and appreciation of those who have shared his life …," Diane Brown said in her farewell speech to Woods, according to the Philadelphia Tribune. He died in Boynton, Beach, Florida, in June of 2005.

At a Glance …

Born on May 11, 1927, in Barnett, GA; died of a heart attack on June 18, 2005, in Boynton Beach, FL; married Gilda (second wife); children: Janet, Lynne (from first marriage); George Jr. (second marriage); Devin (with companion Doris Harris).

Career: WWRL-AM, New York City, disk jockey, 1952; WHAT-AM, Philadelphia, disk jockey, 1953–56, 1964–68, and 1990–94; WDAS, disk jockey, 1956–64, and 1968–78, talk-show host, 1978–90; WGPR, disk jockey, 1994–96; host, 17 Canteen (television dance show), WPHL TV17, Philadelphia, 1960s and '70s; produced his own line of potato chips, 1988–?.

Memberships: NAACP.

Awards: March of Dimes Achievement in Radio Award, 2002; inductee, Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame, 2005.