Tomcat’s Progress

Tomcat’s Progress, while fictional, is inspired by the life of Alan Freed, the disc jockey that may not have discovered rock ‘n’ roll as he claimed, but who was certainly its early courageous, even foolhardy champion.

Championing that music also meant championing those who were the creators of that music: African-Americans (“Negroes” most charitably so-called in those days, other appellations were more usual in private conversations) who up to that day had been locked into the segregated “race music” category.

It also meant championing the just emerging new cultural phenomenon: THE TEENAGER.

The play tells a sweeping and complicated story with only a handful of human characters and two strong supporting non-human ones: music and alcohol.

Tomcat bucks every boss and authority who opposes him–and there is an entire “establishment” full of them—to rise to the top of music radio and take his show very much on the road around the country with a mini-empire of live concerts, television programs, and movies—all devoted to a single theme: Rock ‘n’ roll is life enhancing here to stay.

But he has made many enemies in the “establishment” who regard him and his music as a mortal danger to respectable society, denouncing him and praying for and sometimes plotting his downfall.