Paul White

Tall Paul was the on-air name for a popular African American disc jockey of the 1960's on WENN, Paul Dudley White. (He got his nickname from a song of the same name recorded by Annette Funicello, one of the original Mouseketeers and star of several beach movies.) Tall Paul, along with his broadcast colleague Shelly (the Playboy) Stewart, was known to broadcast coded messages to civil rights demonstrators during the Birmingham civil rights protests of the early 60's.

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 the station's white manager. The all-black announcing staff quit, a story which made national headlines at the time. A full account of this story can be accessed at http://www.birminghamrewound.com/wenn_dentici.htm.