UPDATE 10:09 AM 8/4/14: Alan Freed’s son Lance appeared on WONE’s Jeff Kinzbach Show this morning.
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The biggest controversy in Northeast Ohio media this Monday morning isn’t what a “shock jock” said on the air, or a possible format change.
It revolves around a man who died in 1965.
But Alan Freed is not just any man, especially in the world of “rock and roll”, a term he’s usually credited with coining while a disk jockey at Cleveland’s WJW/850 in the early 1950s.
A golden urn with his ashes has been prominently on display at Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.
Until this week.
The Plain Dealer’s Laura DeMarco says Freed’s son Lance Freed was informed some time ago that his father’s ashes, well, had to go:
Lance Freed says he was told several months ago by Rock Hall President and Chief Executive Officer Greg Harris that he would have to “immediately” remove his father’s ashes, which had been on display since 2002, from the building.
“He said, ‘look Lance, there’s something strange, people walk past the exhibit and your dad’s ashes and they scratch their heads and can’t figure out what this thing is, and we’d like you to come pick up the ashes.”
The Rock Hall’s Harris defends the decision:
Harris, reached by cell phone as he was driving with his family in the mountains of Pennsylvania stressed that the Rock Hall still realizes the role Freed played both in rock ‘n’ roll and in the museum itself.
“First and foremost, not all of [Freed’s artifacts] are being moved out of the museum,” Harris said. “We are returning the ashes to his family.”
The Plain Dealer reports that Lance Freed will be picking up his father’s ashes sometime today, looking for a Cleveland cemetery to serve as his resting place.
The words “tone deaf” can possibly be applied to Harris and the Rock Hall, if local media personalities’ comments are any indication.
First up, a man with decades of service in Northeast Ohio rock radio… Rubber City Radio Group rock WONE-FM/97.5 Akron morning man Jeff Kinzbach, who spent a long run at iconic Cleveland rock station WMMS/100.7.
From a Facebook post from Kinzbach on Sunday:
“Disgraceful,” might be the best word to describe the decision that the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame has made to get rid of Alan Freed’s ashes. They have been there for over 12 years and were put there for a reason. Why the sudden change? If anything they should do something constructive and add a tribute to Hank Loconti, owner of the Agoras. What are they going to do next….maybe ask for the removal of the dinosaur bones from the Natural History Museum?
The news website of Kinzbach’s employer, AkronNewsNow.com, has this article credited to him and his morning news voice, Rubber City Radio VP/information media and OMW reader Ed Esposito…titled “Keep Alan Freed In The Rock Hall”:
It’s time for you to speak up and let the Rock Hall know they need to reconsider, reverse and respect the legacy of Freed. It’s time for our competitors and colleagues at WMJI, WMMS, WNCX and WRQK to use the airwaves that still celebrate Rock and Roll to use their soapboxes to urge the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame management to do an about face.
The Rock Hall’s Harris spent 14 years with the Baseball Hall of Fame. Abner Doubleday, the father of baseball, is buried with honors at Arlington National Cemetery because of his military service. But if Abner’s ashes were buried in Cooperstown instead of Arlington, would he also recommend sending his remains elsewhere? Rock and Roll is about fun, being unpredictable and not following a book of rules. It is about taking chances and expressing creativity without being afraid.
The AkronNewsNow.com article also provides several examples of rock and roll lyrics without the phrase Freed coined, replacing “rock” or “rock and roll” with “BLANK”.
Freed’s “Moondog Coronation Ball” in 1952 is widely considered the very first “rock concert”. As regular OMW readers know, a modern version of “Moondog” celebrates today’s oldies, and is sponsored by the aforementioned WMJI (Clear Channel’s “Majic 105.7”).
And Akron’s WAKR/1590, owned today by the same company which owns WONE, two other stations and the AkronNewsNow.com site, was Freed’s last stop in Ohio before his WJW gig in Cleveland – he went to New York’s WINS/1010 after that.
From that AkronNewsNow.com piece:
Leave the dead to rest in peace, where they deserve to be honored and celebrated. If there’s indeed “something strange” for visitors walking past the Freed exhibit within eyesight of the radio studios at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the curators should take that as a challenge to help visitors understand just WHO is in the urn and WHY he’s at the Hall of Fame.
We’re just wondering why the urn with Freed’s ashes (a classy brass urn engraved with his name, birth and death years) was no longer good enough for the Rock Hall after 12 years on full display.
And whether you believe the Rock Hall should change things around or not, management there sure seems (to us) to have mishandled this…
Alan Freed?? The guy that gave the tour said they were Dorothy Fuldheim’s ashes.
It was appropriate that the R&RHOF would be correct in asking for their removal of those ashes.. Since Allen Freed had no involvement in the use of illicit drugs, e.g. LSD, Cocaine, Meth, Heroin…he (and his ashes) have no place in the (drug infested) rock and roll hall of fame. I for one will NEVER visit that monument to drug abuse.