The alias of a
radio personality named Michael Anderson, who broadcasts a once-a-week overnight program for
WFMU. An amazing historian of black music (his show is called "Music of Our Times", covering roughly WWII to disco, encompassing anything from
Pharoah Sanders to
Peter Tosh to
organ trios), and, it would seem, possessor of the largest and
coolest
record collection this side of
John Peel.
Each show is based around a theme; as I type this, it appears to be a Hendrix Night, but with The Doctor's usual twist: recordings from Jimi's 50s influences, like Otis Rush and Johnny "Guitar" Watson, then some recordings from chitlin circuit days (when he was Jimmy Hendrix), including some Isley Brothers and Little Richard material (Jimi was a guitarist for both)... then the Actual Jimi Stuff, but with a liberal dose of rarities and oddities - not the rote oh-not-again same-old that a "classic rock" station would trot out.
The Doctor plays "black music", but that encompasses just about everything - if Olduvai Gorge is Ground Zero for mankind, then Stravinsky and Prokofiev are "black music" too, according to Cecil Taylor - an evening of garage psychedelia counts, since it's essentially soul music on acid; jam band Zappa and a Led Zeppelin bootleg is as blues as Muddy Waters... It makes for great, unpredictable radio - even if he shows up to the studio tired and bleary-eyed, The Doctor makes it a long, strange trip of a party... "edutainment" (what a stupid word!) minus the castor-oil connotations.
He was there, hangin' out, when Philly Soul had its first great heyday in the late 60s (making for great Soul Nights; no obscure 45 is too scratchy to play), and is a Ra-ologist of the first rank, even appearing on a recording or two during The Arkestra's Philadelphia phase.