Henry Stone Talks King Coleman, Miami’s Other Greatest Radio DJ Of All Time

King Coleman In The Miami Times Newspaper, 1958

“Milton “Butterball” Smith was the biggest DJ down here as far as I’m concerned, but King Coleman was very strong too. Y’know why he was so strong? He used to give the numbers on the air. Bolita. The numbers. When he broadcast on the radio, he used to give the numbers out, man, street lottery, for whoever ran it, the gangsters.

And then of course, I put him on a hit record, and after that he quit the radio and tried to make it as an artist.

Going into the 60s James Brown came down, man, with the whole band and got beat out of a date. So I says to James, “Come on in the studio. I saw a gig where you did somethin called Mashed Potatoes.”

I said, “I wanna record that.”

So we cut the Mashed Potato with the James Brown Band, with the JBs, but due to contracts we couldn’t call them that so we called them Nat Kendrick and the Swans. Nat was his drummer so thats what we called them and we cut “Mashed Potatoes.”

I had to take James Brown’s voice off cause he was with King Records. I says “James, we can’t have your voice on there. We gotta take your voice off.”

So I put King Coleman on, the Disc Jockey, and of course that became a pretty big hit record.”

From the Miami Times newspaper, November, 1963

Now, I have the original recording with James Brown here if someday you’d like to hear that.”

From a 2013 interview with Henry Stone where I ask him about King Coleman

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