TO BE ANNOUNCED
by Don Swaim
To Be Announcedby Don Swaim is a novel about radio, rock 'n' roll, and the payola scandals of the 50s and 60s. Deejay Charlie Speed (loosely basedon the real-life Alan Freed) introduces a new kind of music to ecstatic teens across the nation—but on the way catches the eye of assorted women, congressional probers,criminal prosecutors, and the IRS.To Be Announcedis a bitter-sweet story of ambition, cupidity, ignorance, and injustice—but no less about love, radio,and redemption.
SYNOPSIS
[This chapter is dead as a chapter]Chapter One. “So Long, Charlie Speed.” Spencer Summers—prompted by an Internet site which is resurrecting the name of Charlie Speed, a popular disc jockey of the ’50s and ’60s who died in disgrace after a payola scandal—decides to write the true story of his late boyhood pal, starting with Charlie’s burial in a Queens cemetery. Spencer, since he was a kid, has dial-switched for a mysterious radio show called “To Be Announced,” which everyone says is bogus.
Chapter One. “Captain Midnight and the Atomic Ring.” Intellectual Spencer, who is overweight, wears glasses, and painfully shy, tells of his and Charlie’s childhood passion for their radio heroes. Charlie (aka Claude), whose own younger brother is dead, “adopts” Spencer after his mother dies and his father becomes a drunk. Spencer’s bitterly disappointed by a worthless box-top atomic ring offered by radio’s Captain Midnight.
Chapter Two. “The Uncle Max Show.” Spencer describes growing up in a polluted, angry, unionized industrial city, Pittsburgh. Spencer and Charlie visit the dumb local Uncle Max radio show for kids and are crushingly disappointed.
Chapter Three. “Made for Radio.” Charlie tries to teach Spencer how to lose his East Liberty (Sliberty) accent. The boys play radio station before the enormous console radio-phonograph in Spencer’s living room. Spencer’s father drunkenly abuses Spencer, and Charlie rescues him.
Chapter Four. “Tunes for Teens.” Charlie solidifies Spencer’s worship of him by fighting off a bully. Charlie nearly dies of a mastoid infection and is treated with radium. Charlie and Spencer join the Scouts to get on a local radio show, during which Spencer bungles his only line, while Charlie goes on to become a non-paid teen deejay.
Chapter Five. “The Chinese Bandit Law.” Charlie drops out of Pitt and abandons a possible future in classical music to work at a station owned by a zealous ex-preacher in an old steel town. Charlie hates the repressive working conditions, like those in a nearby utopian community, now defunct. Charlie quits the day the preacher’s enemies firebomb the station.
Chapter Six. “Race Radio.” In flashbacks, Charlie tries to show Spencer how to make out with girls, and Spencer blows a job as a soda jerk. Charlie works at the local CBS affiliate, but is contractually barred from radio for a year after taking a job playing rock ’n’ roll for a competitor. In the interim he works in TV and marries Wanda Jean, who hates Spencer. Spencer agrees to work for Charlie as his producer.
Chapter Seven. “Mojo Man.” What you’re about to read.
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