The Electrifying Mojo
Charles "The Electrifying Mojo" Johnson was a Detroit, USA radio disc jockey from the 1970s through the 1990s, whose on-air journey of musical and social development shaped a generation of Detroit music-lovers, and was of paramount importance to the development of Techno.
His seminal radio show ran from 1977 through the mid-1980s, and while broadcast on stations marketed at the African-American market, his programming was an inspired blend of the best soul, funk, new wave, and rock that defied common radio industry classifications.
He is recognized for having "broken" many artists into the Detroit radio market, including Prince, the B-52's, and Kraftwerk, and was occasionally thanked on-air by the artists for his support of their work. Because his habit was to play entire recordings without interruption, regular listeners became deeply familiar with each recording.
The amount of influence that Mojo had on his listeners cannot be overstated. Detroiters from this era still speak of the diversity of Mojo's shows, and it is a common opinion that if someone is from the Detroit area, it's Mojo's fault if they are a Prince fan. Mojo would often play hours of Prince's music, not only his hits, but deep album cuts, b-sides, and sometimes bootleg tracks as well. Prince returned the favor by granting Mojo a live interview in 1986, when Prince rarely if ever granted interviews, as well as sending Mojo pre-release music. When Prince was about to release a new album, Mojo would often play the album in it's entirity, and this practice continued into the '90s.
Mojo moved from the smaller WGPR to WJLB in its prime years, then on to WHYT as its star passed.
His shows during the late seventies to mid eighties has several segments each night. A typical Mojo night was:
10:00pm - The Landing of the Mothership. This was the intro to each show - following spaceship sound effects and related dialog, Mojo would begin his show. Sometimes the music heard during the first hour were indicative of what you'd hear that night; sometimes it would be completely random. Mojo's listeners still remember the spoken intro:
"Hold on tight, don't let go. Whenever you feel like you're nearing the end of your rope, don't slide off. Just tie a knot. Keep hanging, keep remembering, that it ain't nobody bad like you"
11:00pm - Awesome ('84, '85). In the mid eighties, Mojo would play an hour of brand new music (hence the year in the title). A lot of songs were "broken" during this segment of the show, including the early techno classic "Good Life" by Inner City. This song would hit charts worldwide about 3 years later, but Detroit had it first. Mojo also would air music by local groups at this time.
11:30pm - Lover's Lane. A half an hour of "slow jams".
12:00am - The Midnight Funk Association. It's a common mistake to refer to Mojo's entire show as this. But at Midnight, each night, Mojo would call the MFA to order. This is the only segment that remained throughout every incarnation of Mojo's show. This segment of the show consisted regularly of Parliament-Funkadelic, the Gap Band, Zapp and other funk bands of the era.
From 1:00am to 3:00am (2:00 am on Saturday nights), Mojo's show was different every night. Sometimes, the MFA would stretch well beyond 1:00am, other times Mojo would introduce other segments such as:
Star Wars - A classic "artist vs. artist" set, where Mojo would alternate selections from two different groups or artists, and the listeners would call in to vote for their favorite.
Journey - Sometimes a multi-night segment, where Mojo would play songs by a single artist or group, spanning their entire career. This usually included a mix of hits and obscure songs by that artist.
Sometimes Mojo would spend the last 2 hours of his show performing live mixes on two turntables, or bringing in other local DJs to do the same.
After leaving WHYT after a management turnover in the late eighties, Mojo's show moved to Toledo, Ohio, on WTWR, and his show prospered until 1990, when he accepted an offer to return to the Detroit airwaves at WMXD. At this time, Mojo began doing remote broadcasts, driving around Detroit, talking to people in the city, while his assistant Wendel kept the music going at the studio.
In October 1990, Mojo gave an exclusive interview to Finney High Today, a one page newspaper produced by the Journalism class at a Detroit High School. This interview was so lengthy that it took up nearly the entire issue, and went deep into subjects ranging from his origins on AM radio in Ann Arbor, Michigan to current radio jockeys who were "stealing" concepts from his shows. At the time, Mojo had just returned to the Detroit airwaves, but in his absence, WHYT hired a Disk Jockey named Lisa Lisa, who immediately began producing an imitation show, with segments such as the Midnight Mix Association, and their own Lover's Lane. For a brief period she also included a "spaceship" show intro of her own.
In this interview, Mojo also addresses some reasons why he always bounced from station to station. These reasons range from his refusal to follow any station's genre or format, playing "white music" on "black stations" and vice-versa. These problems continued throughout the '90s, when he was fired from R 'n B station WGPR for playing classical music, and talking too much. Sometimes Mojo would stop the music to talk, sometimes for a half an hour or more, about whatever was on his mind, sometimes also taking live phone calls on the air about any given subject. WGPR's station managers, citing the fact that WGPR is a music station, not a talk station, combined with Mojo's penchant for playing Rock, Rap, Jazz, Classical, Techno and any other music genre, fired Mojo.
While at WMXD, Mojo debuted one of his most-loved segments, "35-35-35". In this segment, Mojo would take suggestions from listeners about their favorite artists and bands. He then would choose the three most popular groups that night and play thirty-five minutes, commercial-free, of each group. This segment often gave airtime to groups that no other radio station in Detroit would play.
The mid-nineties found Mojo back at WGPR, again challenging ideas about the role of a broadcast DJ. His show, a weekend mid-day slot, consisted of a broad range of content, tied to a common thread of social and cultural awareness of the African-American community.
Musically, this included shows focused on single themes, such as symphonic music by black composers, a survey of the jazz and symphonic music of Duke Ellington, and one alternating the music of Billie Holiday with spoken excerpts from her autobiography. He, as before, frequently played recordings in their entirety.
He also dedicated airtime to reading excerpts from his 500-plus page book, The Mental Machine (ISBN 0-9639811-1-0). A work of poetry and prose preaching community and lamenting societal ills, The Mental Machine did not avoid the traps of cliche and triteness common to this type of writing, but was frequently compelling nonetheless--particularly when read aloud by the author. Both his on-air persona and his writing seemed to put a Christian spirituality more centerstage than his previous shows.
But his sense of humor and creativity shone even as he paid the bills. His two primary sponsors at the time were a deli and an insurance agency, and together had the lion's share of the commercial time on his show. The spots for them produced by Mojo were loose and low-production, with plenty of booming reverb on Mojo's admonishment to "save on auto insurance!"
The late 1990s brought Mojo to WCHB-FM for a stretch in 1998. He also was making guest appearances on the now-defunct WDTR around 2004.
The latest news on Mojo has him serving as Program Director for a handful of Detroit radio stations - he does not publicize which ones - and he is in negotiations to bring his show to XM satellite radio in 2006, where he will not only begin a new show, but also air shows from his archive dating back to 1977.