Freed pictured on set in Los Angeles during the filming of 1959’s rock’n’roll movie Go, Johnny, Go!
GETTY IMAGES © RICHARD C. MILLER/DONALDSON COLLECTION
But as the preeminent figurehead of the rock’n’roll revolution, Alan Freed was a high-profile target for the US Congress when they began investigating payola, after their headline-grabbing inquiry into rigged TV quiz shows. Many DJs were fired or quit, and WABC (AM), where Freed had found himself by 1959, demanded all their DJs sign a statement for the Federal Communications Commission that they had never accepted bribes. After refusing, the station fired him. In December 1962, after being charged on multiple counts of commercial bribery, Freed pleaded guilty to two counts and was fined $300 and handed asuspended sentence.
Freed wasn’t the only DJ to accept payments from record labels, but he was the most prominent victim of the investigation. His reputation in tatters, he found work hard to come by in the years after. Ajob at WQAM in Miami lasted just two months. He later moved to L.A., but by then had developed a drinking problem and died on 20 January 1965, from uremia and cirrhosis brought on by chronic alcoholism, at the age of 43.