Douglas "Jocko" Henderson brought a syncopated, rhyming radio patter to Baltimore and then Philadelphia and New York airwaves starting in 1952, and as the host of "Jocko's Rocket Ship Show" through the early '60s he turned ordinary record introductions into rehearsed, rhythmic performance decades before anyone called it rapping. Hip-hop's own elders — DJ Hollywood among them — point to Jocko as a direct ancestor of the MC's rhymed flow, and he lived to prove the throughline himself, cutting rap-era singles like "Rhythm Talk" during the genre's first commercial wave.

the sound in question

1979

Rhythm TalkJocko Henderson