The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Klink) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. KLINK. Mr. Speaker, we deal in particular in these days on the floor of the House with such weighty matters and such serious issues as warfare and impeachment, health care reform, Social Security, budgets. I rise tonight for a little lighter of an item. I think sometimes we have to talk about these lighter things to give ourselves a perspective on the serious matters that we occasionally talk about.

Mr. Speaker, I stand tonight to really pay tribute to a friend of mine who has been in radio in the Pittsburgh area for the last 50 years. Fifty years in a career that sometimes only lasts a few weeks or months, those who may have been in the radio business.

If one goes to Pittsburgh, PA and talks about "The Boss Man," "Your Platter-Pushing Papa," "Your Daddio of the Raddio," everybody knows who they are talking about. It is Porky Chedwick, or as he called himself, "Pork the Tork," the "Boss Hoss with the Hot Sauce."

Mr. Speaker, he developed all of these lines of patter back starting in 1948 when really no one in the country was doing anything really strong entertainment wise in radio.

Porky is a white disk jockey. And I mention that because he played what then was known as "race music," the old R&B music, the sweet doo-wop sounds. And for those young people, Mr. Speaker, who may be in the House or watching at home and say what is doo-wop, it is that street corner harmony where you snap your fingers and it sounds so wonderful.

He would play that music that oftentimes was covered by white performers like Pat Boone, but he played it back before people had heard of people like Little Richard and Fats Domino and Bo Diddley. And a lot of those performers pay tribute to Porky Chedwick for giving them their first air play, because back then it was very difficult for black performers to get a wide audience anywhere in the country. There were certainly not many mainline radio stations that would play music by black performers.

Lou Christie, who also comes from the Pittsburgh area said being cool growing up, and Lou Christie had a lot of big records, he said being cool as he grew up meant listening to Porky Chedwick. He says he is still in awe of him, and he still reverts to being a 15-year-old child when he is around him. He will never know how important Porky was to his career. He was the first disk jockey in the country to play "The Gypsy Cried."

Jimmy Beaumont, who has been with the Skyliners around for 40 years playing in the Pittsburgh area and all around the world, Jimmy said he has known Porky for 40 of the 50 years, and he says that growing up hearing that stuff, that is when Jimmy Beaumont of the Skyliners decided he wanted to become a singer and sing that same doo-wop and that same sound that he heard Porky playing on the radio all the time.

There actually is a group in the Pittsburgh area known as P.O.R.C. It is an acronym for Pittsburgh Old Records Club, and one of the members of the club, Jim Sanders, said, `"When I was a kid, when you would listen to Porky, you knew you were cool." It goes back to Porky being the very first white disk jockey to program the music. It was a revelation to white teenagers to hear some of this great music.

Porky started out in 1948 on a little radio station, doing a 5-minute sports program, called WHOD in Homestead, Pennsylvania. And he would go back and he says he played the "dusty disks." They were really dusty, 78 RPM records. And because nobody was playing them, the record store owners

would give them to him. He knew they were talented musicians and he put them on the air and teenagers all over the Pittsburgh area wanted to hear more and more of them.

In fact the story is told of when Porky did a live show at the Stanley Theater. An hour before he went on the air, 500 people crowded around the Stanley Theater. Before the show was over, 10,000 people were crowded around the Stanley Theater. Downtown Pittsburgh came to a screeching halt. Kids were stuck on buses in the logjam created by Porky Chedwick. They got off the buses, crossed the bridges on foot to get to the Stanley Theater to see Porky Chedwick.

As a disk jockey, he saw the highest recognition of his career before the Beatles. In 1963, the Beatles came to America. A lot of performing artists saw their careers go downhill and a lot of disk jockeys that had that signature type of music similarly saw music change a great deal. But still, many of the great disk jockeys in America today credit Porky Chedwick with beginning it all.

As Porky said, "I had more lines than Bell Telephone. I was the original rapper." And he probably was.

Mr. Speaker, I say to Porky, "We are honored for you and your 50 great years in radio. We are honored that you are in the disk jockey portion of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and we hope you are still playing that music for 50 more years. God bless you."