San Francisco's Last Top 40 Disc Jockey
San Francisco’s Last Top 40 Disc Jockey is a candid, often humorous memoir tracing Wilber Johnson’s journey from the segregated South to major-market radio, where he became known on air as Don Sainte-Johnn. Moving through markets including Yuma, Modesto, St. Louis, Sacramento, San Diego, and ultimately San Francisco, Sainte-Johnn offers a firsthand account of the discipline, pressure, and personality that defined the Top 40-dominant era of American radio. The book reaches its turning point at legendary station KFRC, one of the last major holdouts as stations abandoned Top 40 for CHR amid corporate consolidation and tighter formatting. Rather than nostalgia, the memoir documents radio’s transition from inside the studios, capturing the cultural and professional impact of an industry at a crossroads. Part personal history, part broadcast chronicle, the book preserves a lived moment in radio history before it faded into abstraction.