Magnificent Montague

Posted by ESC on August 27, 2003

In Reply to: Burn baby burn posted by masakim on August 27, 2003

: : Anyone know where this one originated?

: burn, baby, burn. A slogan adopted by militant Blacks after a riot in Los Angeles in 1965, in which 34 people died and wide area was destroyed by arsonists.
: From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

BURN, BABY, BURN - Eric Partridge says the phrase was originally the catchphrase of a disc jockey, Magnificent Montague. From Dictionary of Catch Phrases: American and British, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day by Eric Partridge, updated and edited by Paul Beal, Scarborough House, Lanham, Md., 1992.

Searching online I found: Burn, Baby! BURN! The Autobiography of Magnificent Montague.
Magnificent Montague with Bob Baker. With his dynamic on-air personality and his trademark cry of "Burn, baby! Burn!" before spinning the hottest new records, Magnificent Montague was the charismatic voice of soul music in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. . . Montague served as an unofficial spokesman for his black listeners, reflecting their beliefs and acting as a sounding board for their concerns. Montague was based in Los Angeles in 1965 when the Watts rioters seized on his incendiary slogan, turning the shout of musical appreciation into a rallying cry for racial violence. In Burn, Baby! Burn!. . . www.press.uillinois.edu/ f03/montague.html Accessed August 27, 2003.