“Mojo was the Michael Jackson of radio here in Detroit,” says Bruce Bailey, a house music DJ from Detroit who played on WJLB. By 1977, he was The Electrifying Mojo on Detroit’s WGPR. He was developing his future persona, one that would soon break Prince, Kraftwerk and The B-52’s into the Detroit market just a few years later. About 45 minutes west of Detroit in the nearby city of Ann Arbor, a young man named Charles Johnson was getting his foot in the door at a University of Michigan radio station during the disco boom. Most dance music histories of Detroit radio, though, begin in the mid-’70s. There was even a brief flurry of pirate radio, one of which was run by Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May. There was also the impact of Billy T, who was important to Detroit’s soulful house sound, and Alan Oldham’s late-night Fast Forward show, which brought numerous Detroit techno artists to the forefront.
There was, of course, the reign of The Electrifying Mojo, who was followed by his successor of sorts Lisa “Lisa Lisa” Orlando. That said, Detroit’s select dance radio personalities and DJs over the years have had unique passion and vision, and their impact on the city’s disco, house, techno and soul scenes has been enormous. But this notion strays far from reality, as the highpoints in Detroit’s dance music radio have been few and scattered over the course of the last 40 years – an odd twist considering Detroit’s massive impact in that region of music. It can be a common misconception that since Detroit is the birthplace of techno, there is a huge presence for the genre on radio.
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