Radio

[Guest Bill Barton]

There are a number of folks here who are broadcasters, plus lots of journalists, record producers, managers, musicians and other professionals in the jazz world, and -- of course -- many extremely knowledgeable fans and listeners. So, I thought that it might be interesting to start a general discussion thread about radio.

A few questions spring to mind that might serve as “jumping off” points.

1. Do you listen to radio?

2. Is it broadcast, Internet, satellite or all three?

3. Do you have a jazz station – or at least a station that programs some jazz – in your immediate area?

4. What is your take on their programming?

5. What is your take on jazz radio in general these days?

6. If you’re outside the USA, does your country have quality jazz radio?

My own background reaches back to 1974 when I started doing radio at WRUV, the student station at the University of Vermont. I was a Disc Jockey there, then Production Supervisor, Jazz Director, Music Director and finally Program Director.

In 1977 I was hired at two “start-up” stations: WNCS-FM in Montpelier, VT (a commercial station) and Vermont Public Radio. For 13 years I did “Jazz Spectrum” on WNCS, a weekly jazz show where I had complete artistic control (pretty rare in commercial radio even in those days.) At VPR I was at first a Board Operator, having the privilege of working with Bill Cole on his innovative show featuring world music in oral traditions and jazz, including an in-depth jazz history series, and later produced music programs – primarily jazz and folk/ethnic.

During the 1980s I also worked at another commercial station in Vermont (now defunct - the station, not Vermont!) doing big band/nostalgia, jazz, Celtic and AAA shows.

From 1990 to 1996 I was Music Director at WCFE-FM, Mountain-Lake Public Radio, in Plattsburgh, NY. This was a community public station. At first our format was eclectic. The last couple of years it was a full-fledged jazz format.

Since moving to the Pacific Northwest I’ve done radio at KSER-FM in Everett, WA and am now at KBCS-FM in Bellevue, WA. These are both community stations. This part of the Pacific Northwest is lucky to have two authentic community licensee stations. In fact, if you drive a few miles south to Olympia make it three, with the fabled KAOS.

The days when one could expect to hear a wide variety of jazz on public radio seem to be long gone. The consultants have pretty much taken over the programming and it’s mostly pre-digested and homogenized. Now, what you can hear is high quality within the parameters set by the programmers, but good luck ever hearing anything even remotely off the beaten track, whether it’s a classic Tina Brooks side or something new by William Parker. I recently joined the Jazz Programmers List listserv and notice that the playlists – for the most part – are damned near identical, regardless of what part of the country you’re in. The exceptions prove the rule, and folks like Lazaro and ghost of miles, who delve into interesting historical material and occasionally play some “free” or at least “edgier” jazz appear to be in the minority.

I’d be interested in your thoughts…

Edited December 2, 2007 by Bill Barton

[montg]

The days when one could expect to hear a wide variety of jazz on public radio seem to be long gone. The consultants have pretty much taken over the programming and it’s mostly pre-digested and homogenized. Now, what you can hear is high quality within the parameters set by the programmers, but good luck ever hearing anything even remotely off the beaten track, whether it’s a classic Tina Brooks side or something new by William Parker. I recently joined the Jazz Programmers List listserv and notice that the playlists – for the most part – are damned near identical, regardless of what part of the country you’re in. The exceptions prove the rule, and folks like Lazaro and ghost of miles, who delve into interesting historical material and occasionally play some “free” or at least “edgier” jazz appear to be in the minority.

I grew up in the 70s listening to radio all the time. I love radio. I used to turn the am radio on late at night when I was a kid and turn the dial to get all sorts of interesting radio stations, across the Midwest, Southeast, and Canada on good nights for receptions. It saddens me to see what has become of radio today.

Your quote above perfectly sums up the jazz programming on my local public radio station. It's so boring and bland, and at times marginally jazz with all the vocalists, I don't listen to it anymore, it just frustrates me. I can't see how any kid curious about jazz would be anything but turned off to the music if he/she turned to public radio to become initiated.

I have satellite radio, where the programming is better--at least I have a chance to hear someone like Tina Brooks--although the satellite station is still somewhat limited, particularly in missing out on newer jazz artists. I listen to internet streams, mostly those produced by board members, and, increasingly, as my own library continues to get downloaded on my itunes, I'm becoming my own radio programmer (for better and for worse, I guess).

[ejp626]

I don't really listen to live radio ever. I do listen to podcasts, but mostly I stream BBC Radio 3 (a couple of days out of sync). This is a habit I picked up while living in the UK, and so far it is still available outside the UK (there are occasional calls to restrict the listen again features outside the UK). I find it so much richer than US Public Radio, though I suppose that is unfair since I don't follow Public Radio to get a sense of how many concerts they broadcast and the range of classical and jazz performances available. I probably should, but am just barely able to keep up with the BBC. Anything more would be too much.

Anyway, I generally listen to about 2.5 hours/wk of jazz and 2 hours/wk of world music, and 10 or so hours of classical programs. The world music programs lean towards recordings, but the jazz leans towards broadcasts of concerts, so you get a decent overview of who is playing in London each week.

[Guest Bill Barton]

I grew up in the 70s listening to radio all the time. I love radio. I used to turn the am radio on late at night when I was a kid and turn the dial to get all sorts of interesting radio stations, across the Midwest, Southeast, and Canada on good nights for receptions. It saddens me to see what has become of radio today.

Yes, I can recall surreptitiously searching the dial late at night in the 1960s and early 1970s for the "clear channel" AM stations like WNEW in New York City and WHAM in Rochester. I have fond memories of Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins in the Purple Grotto on WNEW and Harry Abrahams' very hip show on WHAM. What seems to be missing for the most part today is personality. What made jazz radio great - and occasionally still makes it great - is the art of the segue and the whole idea of conceiving of a program as something more than the sum of its parts. Where does this tradition live now? On college and community stations.

Your quote above perfectly sums up the jazz programming on my local public radio station. It's so boring and bland, and at times marginally jazz with all the vocalists, I don't listen to it anymore, it just frustrates me. I can't see how any kid curious about jazz would be anything but turned off to the music if he/she turned to public radio to become initiated.

Amen to that! Here in the Seattle area we have KPLU-FM which also streams to the web. When I have the opportunity I try to catch Jim Wilke's Jazz Northwest program and Ken Wiley's The Art of Jazz, both heard on Sunday. The rest of their jazz programming basically bores my ass off. You can pretty much set your clock by when the organ group (nothing wrong with organ groups I hasten to add!), the vocalist (usually Diana Krall) and the wan neo-bop track hit the air.

I have satellite radio, where the programming is better--at least I have a chance to hear someone like Tina Brooks--although the satellite station is still somewhat limited, particularly in missing out on newer jazz artists. I listen to internet streams, mostly those produced by board members, and, increasingly, as my own library continues to get downloaded on my itunes, I'm becoming my own radio programmer (for better and for worse, I guess).

So far I haven't taken the satellite radio plunge. Your point about being your own programmer is well taken. It's getting to the point where I'd wager most "serious" music fans regardless of their particular interests have done the same. The thing that I miss in the satellite programming that I've heard at friends' houses is what I mentioned above: personality and the art of the segue.

I don't really listen to live radio ever. I do listen to podcasts, but mostly I stream BBC Radio 3 (a couple of days out of sync). This is a habit I picked up while living in the UK, and so far it is still available outside the UK (there are occasional calls to restrict the listen again features outside the UK). I find it so much richer than US Public Radio, though I suppose that is unfair since I don't follow Public Radio to get a sense of how many concerts they broadcast and the range of classical and jazz performances available. I probably should, but am just barely able to keep up with the BBC. Anything more would be too much.

I completely agree with you regarding the BBC. Part of the inherent problem with so-called public radio in the U.S. is that it is forced to compete in the marketplace. There is little difference between "commercial" and "public" broadcasting in this country now other than the content of the programming, and as we've already discussed, that content gets narrower and narrower as time passes. For example, check out your local PBS TV station during fund-drive time. Do you see high-quality classical music programs? Interesting jazz documentaries? It's more likely you'll see the umpteenth repeat of Roy Orbison in concert or John Denver or replay number twenty-five-million of the Three Tenors. Whatever hauls in the bucks... The lowest common denominator. Just like commercial TV.

Anyway, I generally listen to about 2.5 hours/wk of jazz and 2 hours/wk of world music, and 10 or so hours of classical programs. The world music programs lean towards recordings, but the jazz leans towards broadcasts of concerts, so you get a decent overview of who is playing in London each week.

[BillF]

I have been listening to jazz radio for fifty years and have been resident in the UK throughout that time. Of course, the BBC has been the mainstay of my listening, but the situation has never been ideal. The number of hours per week dedicated to jazz has always been very small, in comparison with the coverage of other sorts of music. This applied even during the "jazz boom" of my youth, when cultural elitism meant that only music in the European classical tradition was heard on the BBC's Third Programme, despite a pretty massive potential jazz audience by today's standards. Now jazz has been admitted to the Third's descendant, Radio 3, but has to share the few available "non-classical" hours with world and avant-garde musics. For me, the great breakthrough has been the discovery in the last year or so of jazz radio via the internet. Last year I emailed ghost of miles at WFIU to tell him that his show was more to my taste than any I could recall in a long career of jazz radio listening. I also listen regularly to jazz and blues on WGBH from Boston. So far, I haven't managed to hear Lazaro online. Perhaps I've been pressing the wrong buttons!

[Dave Garrett]

I mainly listen to broadcast radio, occasionally internet radio. Don't have satellite, and probably won't unless I ever get around to buying a new car (my car is 17 years old and doesn't even have a CD player, let alone a satellite radio deck). Houston is pretty fortunate to have several very good radio stations breaking up the godawful Clear Channel monotony - as you might expect, almost all of them are affiliated with local universities.

KTRU, from my alma mater Rice University, has a reputation for favoring indie-rock obscurata, but they also have an excellent jazz and improvised music program on Sundays, and the DJ usually plays a lot of out stuff - here's today's playlist so far:

03:59 PM- die like a dog quartet / ii [from valley to valley] on the eremite label.

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03:35 PM- jon raskin quartet / bloodcount [the bass & the bird pond] on the new world records label.

03:25 PM- albert ayler quartet / ghosts [the hilversum sessions] on the esp disk label.

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03:12 PM- john coltrane / one down, one up [new thing at newport] on the impulse! label.

03:02 PM- archie shepp / gingerbread, gingerbread boy [on this night] on the impulse! label.

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02:41 PM- luther thomas & the human arts ensemble / una new york [funky donkey] on the atavistic label.

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01:56 PM- cecil taylor & gunter sommer / riobec [riobec] on the free music production label.

You can view setlists and listen online here.

KTSU, the radio station of historically Black university Texas Southern University, has the phrase "Jazz in all its colors" as its tagline, but you're just as likely to hear R&B or classic soul, with Sundays almost exclusively devoted to gospel. I probably spend more time listening to KTSU than any other station, as their non-music talk-show programming is usually interesting as well, offering as it does a down-to-earth perspective that's absent from other stations. Unfortunately, they don't appear to have an online stream available.

Classical station KUHF, at the University of Houston, used to be a jazz station some years ago. Wish it still was, but that was also back when there were a couple of other competing classical stations as well, all of which are now gone, so KUHF is still filling a valuable role.

[Edited to fix my oversight of intending to list radio station KUHF but having it come out with TV station KUHT's call letters]

Edited December 3, 2007 by Dave Garrett

[alocispepraluger102]

hell yes. now playing mcphee and jeb bishop. doesnt get much better. thanks.

[Guest Bill Barton]

hell yes. now playing mcphee and jeb bishop. doesnt get much better. thanks.

Yup, kickin' show! Drives home my point about college and community radio, that's for sure.

[ghost of miles]

Many thanks to Bill B for starting the thread, and thanks to the positive comments about Night Lights (BillF, great to see you aboard here! We're lucky to have you). I got my start at WFHB around the end of the 1990s, originally co-hosting a vintage-American-music show called Back to the Tracks (yep, title courtesy of Mr. Brooks) that focused on pop, jazz, blues, r & b, and country from the 1930s through the 1970s. Ended up hosting a jazz show (since jazz was my first and foremost love) on Wednesday nights; WFHB still does jazz Tues, Wed and Thursday evenings from 7 to 9, though my slot was originally 6 to 9. Did that show through 2004, but started subbing for Joe Bourne in 2002, which led to my current gig at WFIU, doing Night Lights and Afterglow.

I feel pretty lucky--there's a good audience for jazz here in the WFIU listening area, in large part because of the IU School of Music and David Baker's presence. We do close to 20 hours of jazz programming a week, and both I and Joe have complete creative freedom. To the north, up in Indianapolis, there's WICR, which has a decent rep around these parts for giving Organissimo some airplay. The student announcers are obviously still honing their on-air chops, but the music's generally pretty good.

Despite the not-so-great state that Bill B correctly diagnoses among many pub-radio/jazz stations today, the Internet has opened up everybody's listening options in ways inconceivable just a few years ago. For some reason, I still think some (many?) in jazz radio are slow to get this...that all the world's a stage now, and that jazz, with a marginal but passionate audience, has a great opportunity at hand. We seem to be discovering interesting programs and shows all the time, on this board and elsewhere... the dilemma's more often too many listening choices. Because of the Internet and this board I've discovered Lazaro, Bill B, and Steve Schwartz...and WKCR, which I knew of but couldn't hear before, is now available to me as well. We no longer need to operate only in our little corners of the world (though I think it's very, very important to pay a lot of attention to local/regional jazz in one's daily/nightly programming, which we do wholeheartedly on Joe's weekday afternoon show). For me, the problem now is too many show ideas, too little time...I'd actually like to launch a third weekly program very different from what I'm doing right now, but it's probably destined to stay on the drawing board.

[alocispepraluger102]

there are times when some of us fanatics dont have enough ears or hours.

nothing like being in a club, but nonetheless a great pleasure.

[Harold_Z]

I still listen to a lot of FM. I'm fortunate in that both WKCR and WBGO are local stations for me. WBGO is devoted to Jazz and WKCR broadcasts (a guess) around 12 hours of jazz a day and sometimes more when they have a birthday broadcast devoted to a specific artist. Most of my radio listening is done in my car. When I travel Jazz stations seem few and far between. There's one around Philly that I sometimes can find and a few years ago I think I found one in the Boston area. I'm not sure if either of those are still going. So in general I would think the state of Jazz Radio (broadcast) is pretty bad, but I happen to live in an oasis.

WBGO's programming is pretty varied - new releases mixed in with reissues and some of the giants - Miles, Pops etc. Also shows like Jazzset and Live From Lincoln Center. WKCR is more thematic in it's programming and is more likely to devote a three hour show (or more) to a specific artist. If it's someone you like and you stick around to listen, you are very likely to hear rarities. Great station.

[Neal Pomea]

Our public radio station moved all its music to HD (hybrid digital) and they gave away cheap HD radios to its members or to anyone making a $100 donation. I got one. Can't catch too many other stations, but at least the oldies station it can catch plays music from the 50s. Don't have HD radio in my car.

I don't see how satellite radio is going to catch on. There will no competition, only homogenized offerings from a few mega-stations. Not very promising for small niche music markets.

[Guest Bill Barton]

I have been listening to jazz radio for fifty years and have been resident in the UK throughout that time. Of course, the BBC has been the mainstay of my listening, but the situation has never been ideal. The number of hours per week dedicated to jazz has always been very small, in comparison with the coverage of other sorts of music. This applied even during the "jazz boom" of my youth, when cultural elitism meant that only music in the European classical tradition was heard on the BBC's Third Programme, despite a pretty massive potential jazz audience by today's standards. Now jazz has been admitted to the Third's descendant, Radio 3, but has to share the few available "non-classical" hours with world and avant-garde musics. For me, the great breakthrough has been the discovery in the last year or so of jazz radio via the internet. Last year I emailed ghost of miles at WFIU to tell him that his show was more to my taste than any I could recall in a long career of jazz radio listening. I also listen regularly to jazz and blues on WGBH from Boston. So far, I haven't managed to hear Lazaro online. Perhaps I've been pressing the wrong buttons!

It's interesting that many of us outside the UK tend to think of the Beeb as the gold standard of radio, whether it's news or music. The old "grass is always greener" cliche perhaps applies here. We tend to ignore the fact that you pointed out that the actual percentage of jazz is pretty low, as is the CBC's jazz percentage. I do think that the quality of what they produce is higher on average than the U.S. however. Yes, the Internet has changed everything. Now our little station in Bellevue, Washington can have listeners in Ohio, Alaska or Ireland...

I mainly listen to broadcast radio, occasionally internet radio. Don't have satellite, and probably won't unless I ever get around to buying a new car (my car is 17 years old and doesn't even have a CD player, let alone a satellite radio deck). Houston is pretty fortunate to have several very good radio stations breaking up the godawful Clear Channel monotony - as you might expect, almost all of them are affiliated with local universities.

KTRU, from my alma mater Rice University, has a reputation for favoring indie-rock obscurata, but they also have an excellent jazz and improvised music program on Sundays, and the DJ usually plays a lot of out stuff...

KTSU, the radio station of historically Black university Texas Southern University, has the phrase "Jazz in all its colors" as its tagline, but you're just as likely to hear R&B or classic soul, with Sundays almost exclusively devoted to gospel. I probably spend more time listening to KTSU than any other station, as their non-music talk-show programming is usually interesting as well, offering as it does a down-to-earth perspective that's absent from other stations. Unfortunately, they don't appear to have an online stream available.

Classical station KUHF, at the University of Houston, used to be a jazz station some years ago. Wish it still was, but that was also back when there were a couple of other competing classical stations as well, all of which are now gone, so KUHF is still filling a valuable role.

[Edited to fix my oversight of intending to list radio station KUHF but having it come out with TV station KUHT's call letters]

It's nice to hear that someone is still tuned in to broadcast radio! And that is some very cool programming on KTRU. They obviously have some state-of-the-art software installed for their real-time playlists and a very high quality feed to the web.

...I feel pretty lucky--there's a good audience for jazz here in the WFIU listening area, in large part because of the IU School of Music and David Baker's presence. We do close to 20 hours of jazz programming a week, and both I and Joe have complete creative freedom...

Despite the not-so-great state that Bill B correctly diagnoses among many pub-radio/jazz stations today, the Internet has opened up everybody's listening options in ways inconceivable just a few years ago. For some reason, I still think some (many?) in jazz radio are slow to get this...that all the world's a stage now, and that jazz, with a marginal but passionate audience, has a great opportunity at hand. We seem to be discovering interesting programs and shows all the time, on this board and elsewhere... the dilemma's more often too many listening choices. Because of the Internet and this board I've discovered Lazaro, Bill B, and Steve Schwartz...and WKCR, which I knew of but couldn't hear before, is now available to me as well. We no longer need to operate only in our little corners of the world (though I think it's very, very important to pay a lot of attention to local/regional jazz in one's daily/nightly programming, which we do wholeheartedly on Joe's weekday afternoon show). For me, the problem now is too many show ideas, too little time...I'd actually like to launch a third weekly program very different from what I'm doing right now, but it's probably destined to stay on the drawing board.

Having the artistic freedom to program what you see fit to program is a wonderful thing. My best wishes for continued success and many more interesting, enlightening, in-depth shows. You're right on the money about seeing the "big picture" but not forgetting the local/regional focus too.

there are times when some of us fanatics dont have enough ears or hours.

nothing like being in a club, but nonetheless a great pleasure.

Fanatic? You? Naw... Never woulda guessed

I still listen to a lot of FM. I'm fortunate in that both WKCR and WBGO are local stations for me. WBGO is devoted to Jazz and WKCR broadcasts (a guess) around 12 hours of jazz a day and sometimes more when they have a birthday broadcast devoted to a specific artist. Most of my radio listening is done in my car. When I travel Jazz stations seem few and far between. There's one around Philly that I sometimes can find and a few years ago I think I found one in the Boston area. I'm not sure if either of those are still going. So in general I would think the state of Jazz Radio (broadcast) is pretty bad, but I happen to live in an oasis.

WBGO's programming is pretty varied - new releases mixed in with reissues and some of the giants - Miles, Pops etc. Also shows like Jazzset and Live From Lincoln Center. WKCR is more thematic in it's programming and is more likely to devote a three hour show (or more) to a specific artist. If it's someone you like and you stick around to listen, you are very likely to hear rarities. Great station.

Ah yes, an oasis indeed when it comes to broadcast radio. WBGO is a very high quality station as is the fabled WKCR. And then there's WFMU too... "Wouldn't You Rather Have A Segue". Freeform radio is alive and well and living in NJ. Not a lot of jazz but great, eclectic wildness worthy of the 1960s. Their blog is kickin' too ("Beware of the Blog"). It's great that those of us outside the NYC metro area now have access to programming from these sources.

Our public radio station moved all its music to HD (hybrid digital) and they gave away cheap HD radios to its members or to anyone making a $100 donation. I got one. Can't catch too many other stations, but at least the oldies station it can catch plays music from the 50s. Don't have HD radio in my car.

I don't see how satellite radio is going to catch on. There will no competition, only homogenized offerings from a few mega-stations. Not very promising for small niche music markets.

You have a point regarding satellite which is truly still in its infancy. We'll see how things shake out in a year or two or three... Actually the playlists that I've seen from XM aren't half bad. Very similar to the mainstream public radio ones.

[BillF]

Thanks, Bill, for making me aware of jazz on KBCS. Bebop Spoken Here is a tremendous show! Although this is my preferred area, I'm hearing lots of great things for the first time on this show. I'd love to listen to Bright Moments, but the eight-hour time difference rules out so much of KBCS's material. So perhaps I should refine what I wrote about the joys of internet radio and say that archived material is pretty essential for the intercontinental listener!

[Guest Bill Barton]

Thanks, Bill, for making me aware of jazz on KBCS. Bebop Spoken Here is a tremendous show! Although this is my preferred area, I'm hearing lots of great things for the first time on this show. I'd love to listen to Bright Moments, but the eight-hour time difference rules out so much of KBCS's material. So perhaps I should refine what I wrote about the joys of internet radio and say that archived material is pretty essential for the intercontinental listener!

And thanks to you for checking in with your comments. Yes, KBCS has lots of more "mainstream" jazz from 7:00 a.m. to noon-ish every weekday, including the superb "Bebop Spoken Here" show.

Unfortunately, KBCS does not archive programs. They are recorded as hour-long MP3s on a hard-drive but are not available to the public on the website. Anyone who has a real hankering to hear my show or other late night/graveyard shows could PM me and I'll see what I can do...

Edited December 11, 2007 by Bill Barton

[GregK]

I'm lucky because WEMU out of EMU in Ypsilanti, MI still plays jazz (though I only find the evening programming interesting, as the morning jazz is largely vocals, and afternoons is a lot of blues mixed in, which I can only take very little of), and their hosts are pretty knowledgeable. They are also a big supporter of Organissimo!

[Guest Bill Barton]

I'm lucky because WEMU out of EMU in Ypsilanti, MI still plays jazz (though I only find the evening programming interesting, as the morning jazz is largely vocals, and afternoons is a lot of blues mixed in, which I can only take very little of), and their hosts are pretty knowledgeable. They are also a big supporter of Organissimo!

Yes, you are privileged to have a fine local station. I know what you mean about the vocals... It really puzzles me as to exactly what is in the minds of the consultants who are programming these stations. Just what audience are they attempting to appeal to? It's pretty obvious that folks already attuned to jazz are tuning out as fast as they tune in.

[GregK]

I'm lucky because WEMU out of EMU in Ypsilanti, MI still plays jazz (though I only find the evening programming interesting, as the morning jazz is largely vocals, and afternoons is a lot of blues mixed in, which I can only take very little of), and their hosts are pretty knowledgeable. They are also a big supporter of Organissimo!

Yes, you are privileged to have a fine local station. I know what you mean about the vocals... It really puzzles me as to exactly what is in the minds of the consultants who are programming these stations. Just what audience are they attempting to appeal to? It's pretty obvious that folks already attuned to jazz are tuning out as fast as they tune in.

oh, and one other odd stat from the otherwise fine WEMU: their playlists dating from August of this year list the Bruce Hornsby jazz album as their most played album. I haven't heard it, but could that really be getting the most airplay on a NPR/jazz station??

[Guest Bill Barton]

I'm lucky because WEMU out of EMU in Ypsilanti, MI still plays jazz (though I only find the evening programming interesting, as the morning jazz is largely vocals, and afternoons is a lot of blues mixed in, which I can only take very little of), and their hosts are pretty knowledgeable. They are also a big supporter of Organissimo!

Yes, you are privileged to have a fine local station. I know what you mean about the vocals... It really puzzles me as to exactly what is in the minds of the consultants who are programming these stations. Just what audience are they attempting to appeal to? It's pretty obvious that folks already attuned to jazz are tuning out as fast as they tune in.

oh, and one other odd stat from the otherwise fine WEMU: their playlists dating from August of this year list the Bruce Hornsby jazz album as their most played album. I haven't heard it, but could that really be getting the most airplay on a NPR/jazz station??

Not a big surprise to me. Queen Latifah seems to be the current rage...

[Lazaro Vega]

The Hornsby album features Jack DeJohnette and Christian McBride and includes a previously un-recorded Ornette Coleman composition, so, yeah -- it's a jazz trio album trying to find a place amid that crowded field of instrumentation.

[Guest Bill Barton]

The Hornsby album features Jack DeJohnette and Christian McBride and includes a previously un-recorded Ornette Coleman composition, so, yeah -- it's a jazz trio album trying to find a place amid that crowded field of instrumentation.

Hi, Lazaro. I haven't heard it... What is your take on it?

[montg]

Here's a fairly typical hour of 'jazz' programing from my local public radio station. I assume it's consultant-driven and serves very well whatever purposes the consultants are attempting to achieve. But from my standpoint, it also exemplifies the compromise of public radio's identity that the corporate mentality invites. Nothing against any music on that list, per se. But the suits love vocals and piano trios and romantic sax quartets, and have pretty much squeezed pre 50s jazz, inside/outside jazz, and so many other forms of the music right off of the public airwaves.

9:00 Blackbird Ken Karsh Ventana

09:06 Thinking Of You Houston Person Thinking Of You

09:11 It's Only A Paper Moon Ray Brown Bassics

09:19 Hot Christmas Squirrel Nut Zippers Christmas Caravan

09:22 I'll Be Your Baby Tonig Curtis Stigers Real Emotional

09:28 Our Love Is Here To Sta Louis Armstr/Ella Fitzger An American Icon

09:33 Half Step Bill Charlap Souvenir

09:39 He Ain't Got Ryhthm Champian Fulton With David Berger & the

09:43 The Way You Look Tonigh Erroll Garner Body & Soul

[Guest Bill Barton]

You hit the nail squarely on the head, montg. I too have nothing against the music heard on these shows. The problem I have is with the ultra-narrow range and the often suspect inclusion of the likes of Squirrel Nut Zippers (as in your example playlist) in a so-called "jazz" program. Does anyone remember when "public" broadcasting used to be called "educational" broadcasting? Those days are now ancient history, that's for sure.

[Lazaro Vega]

The Hornsby album's alright from what I've heard of it, though it didn't catch my attention enough to return to it again and again. He's trying some different approaches to Un Poco Loco, but could anything be greater than Bud's original?

[Guest Bill Barton]

The Hornsby album's alright from what I've heard of it, though it didn't catch my attention enough to return to it again and again. He's trying some different approaches to Un Poco Loco, but could anything be greater than Bud's original?

Exactly. There's no question that Hornsby is a talented musician. The question is, I suppose, why is he getting played on "jazz" shows when - for example - one might be hard-pressed to find somebody playing Bobby Few's new disc, or Mal Waldron, or [fill-in your favorite underexposed jazz pianist]? Thanks, Lazaro...

Edited December 17, 2007 by Bill Barton