John R. Dilworth

Jonathan "John" Robert Dilworth (born February 14, 1963), a.k.a. "Dilly", is an American animator, director and actor. He is best known as the producer, director, writer, and creator of the animated television series Courage the Cowardly Dog.

Dilworth attended the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he graduated in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts. After graduation, Dilworth became an art director at Baldi, Bloom and Whelan Advertising, but continued to work on his own films in his spare time, providing much of his own funding. His animated short, The Chicken from Outer Space, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1996. Cartoon Network later commissioned Dilworth to turn the short into a series, which eventually became Courage the Cowardly Dog. Dilworth is the president of Stretch Films, a New York-based design and animation studio, which he founded in 1991. He also worked on the original opening for Nicktoons and for the show Doug. Dilworth created the series of seven animated shorts for Sesame Street using Keith Haring's artwork produced with Klasky Csupo.

John R.

John R. (born John Richbourg, August 20, 1910, Manning, South Carolina; died February 15, 1986, Nashville, Tennessee) was an American radio disc jockey who attained fame in the 1950s and 1960s for playing rhythm and blues music on Nashville radio station WLAC. He was also a notable record producer and artist manager.

Richbourg was arguably the most popular and charismatic of the four announcers at WLAC who showcased popular African-American music in nightly programs from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. (The other three were Gene Nobles, Herman Grizzard, and Bill "Hoss" Allen.) Later rock music disc jockeys such as Alan Freed, Wolfman Jack, and others mimicked Richbourg's practice of using speech that simulated African-American street language of the mid-twentieth century.

Richbourg's highly stylized approach to on-air presentation of both music and advertising earned him popularity, but it also created identity confusion. Because Richbourg and fellow disc jockey Allen used African-American speech patterns, many listeners thought that both announcers were actually African-Americans. The disc jockeys used the mystique to their commercial and personal advantages until the mid-1960s, when their racial identities as Euro-Americans became public knowledge.