Paul White

Paul Dudley "Tall Paul" White (born August 23, 1936; died 2001) was a popular African American disc jockey of the 1960's on WENN-AM. His nickname came from a song recorded by Annette Funicello). He and his broadcast colleague Shelly the Playboy Stewart were known to broadcast coded messages to civil rights demonstrators during the Birmingham campaign of the early 1960s.

White began his radio career at Leroy and Viola Garrett's WEUP-AM in Huntsville.

Tall Paul had a significant audience among white teenagers, demonstrated on one of the favorite feature of his shows -- "Roll Call." For Roll Call he would play an uptempo instrumental and then in his inimitable style announce the names of area high schools when students from those schools called in. In those still-segregated days it was not unusual to have Ramsay High School announced along with the "Parker High Thundering Herd" or the "Rosedale Sons of Kong."

Tall Paul participated in the famous DJ walk-out in the mid-1970's at WENN when new ownership fired Joe Dentici, the station's white manager. The all-black announcing staff quit, a story which made national headlines at the time.

References

• WENN & Joe Dentici at Birmingham Rewound
• Knight, Ashley (August 17, 2019) "Donations needed for influential civil rights DJ “Tall Paul”’s gravesite." WBRC.com