Radio

[Guest Bill Barton]

Up...

As IAJE in Toronto has wound down folks are looking ahead to 2009 in Seattle. There has been some interesting discussion already regarding jazz radio topics on the Jazz Programmers List listserv and I thought that it might be interesting to open it up to responses and ideas here on Organissimo. The following post is my reply to two posts on the list there. My replies are in boldface, the original messages are in standard typeface. My apologies for any of the background stuff that repeats things I've already stated on this thread.

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I'm looking forward to attending my first IAJE in Seattle. I think that participants from across the country and around the world will find that the Seattle area is a stimulating, exciting and often innovative one for jazz, creative improvised music, free improv and just about any other niche in the music world you can think of.

Ideas that have already been brought up that "jumped out" at me include:

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Subject: Re: [JPL] Topics for IAJE 2008/JPL - Interview

I think too often Peter we underestimate our audience. It's worked for me because I know how to present it. I would bet not one person tuned out of that Herbie interview because ...at times...he talked about the "music." That's what we deal with. The music. Give them something to think about if you as the programmer know a thing or two about the music. I do it all the time and my jazz show raises more money than NPR news programs. Actually, folk want to learn about the music. This argument about talking about the music being a no no is a myth. The more they learn about how it works the more they appreciate it. Think about it...that's the core number one problem as to why jazz struggles. Folk don't understand it. We have to help them...at times. The "technical" part of it is just one part of the interview as it should be. Our audience is smart. They love the challenge so lets not spoon feed them.

Jae Sinnett

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Underestimation of the audience seems to me to be a major problem with radio these days. Who exactly are we programming for? A few weeks ago I initiated discussions on two popular online jazz bulletin boards (Organissimo and Jazz Corner's Speakeasy) regarding the state of jazz radio. General consensus seemed to be that jazz radio is moribund. People who are already avid jazz fans find nothing of interest on radio. There doesn't seem to be any concerted effort on the part of most programmers to introduce listeners to new, creative, "outside the box" music and artists. Are we programming for the people who buy their "jazz" CDs at Starbucks? Are we stuck in a middle-of-the-road, consultant-driven, "playing it safe" cul-de-sac? Do we really need to limit airplay to such a small number of colors (dare I say primary colors?) in the jazz spectrum? Give people credit for some intelligence, curiosity and knowledge. Jazz education in the schools has progressed a thousandfold in the past few years and there are plenty of hip young musicians and listeners out there. Are they listening to radio? Probably not. An endless diet of tepid vocalists and head-solos-head retreads isn't likely to keep their interest.

Admittedly I speak from a perspective that is somewhat different than many on this list. These are my opinions and should not be taken as representative of the station where I do a show nor the magazines to which I contribute.

On KBCS I am a volunteer, and do a show that I consciously aim at a niche audience. There's more "mainstream" jazz programming on the station during morning drive and at other times, and I focus primarily on the "edgier" and overtly adventurous parts of the spectrum. There are certainly other programmers doing similar things at community and college stations but I don't see much evidence of anything even remotely similar on NPR stations. Is community (and college in some cases) radio the last bastion of this type of programming? I think that the obvious answer is "yes."

A bit on my background may be in order here. I started doing radio in 1974 at WRUV, the student station at the University of Vermont, where I was a disc jockey, then Production Supervisor, Jazz Music Director, Music Director and finally Program Director.

In 1977 two "start-up" stations hired me: WNCS-FM in Montpelier (a commercial station) and Vermont Public Radio. From 1977 to 1990 I hosted "Jazz Spectrum," a weekly show on WNCS. The program title was very carefully chosen. One of my commitments was to present as wide a swath as possible, from the historical to the most current experimental. It was a unique situation for commercial radio as I had complete artistic control of the program. It remained so for nearly 13 years, and only toward the end of my stint when the station was sold did any "you can play this but you can't play that" feedback come from management: pretty rare even in those days of "progressive" FM.

At VPR I was initially a Board Operator and later produced and hosted music shows, primarily jazz but also including folk and world music. I was greatly privileged to work with Bill Cole on his innovative program that included an in-depth history of jazz and explorations of world music in oral traditions. I was involved with VPR in various capacities until 1984.

In the mid-to-late '80s I also worked at other commercial stations doing jazz, big band/nostalgia, folk, Celtic, AAA and world music programs.

From 1990 to 1996 I was Music Director at Mountain-Lake Public Radio, WCFE-FM, in Plattsburgh, NY. WCFE was a community licensee public station. We carried something of an alternative to NPR: instead of ATC we had Monitor Radio and carried BBC World Service overnights. We did have some of the mainstream NPR programming, including Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. And we carried Jazz After Hours with Jim Wilke. The first couple of years we had an eclectic music format and after that switched to a jazz-based format. One of my projects there was an extended, in-depth jazz history series that I produced and hosted.

Since moving to the Pacific Northwest I've volunteered at two community stations, first KSER-FM in Everett and now KBCS-FM Bellevue-Seattle.

I mention this background because my perspective includes time "in the trenches" of public and commercial radio as well as community and college radio.

It strikes me as a wholly different world now. Some of you may remember when "public broadcasting" was called "educational broadcasting." Those days appear to be long gone. Lowest common denominator programming seems to be the rule rather than the exception now. Part of the problem is that public broadcasting in the U.S. is forced to compete in the marketplace. Unlike European and some other systems with government subsidies where a radio station can have their own symphony or jazz band, here in the U.S. we're left scrambling to make a buck to stay afloat. That's not going to change. But is the way to haul in the $$$ to cater to the lowest common denominator? Are there alternatives? Can creative, informed, dare I say educational, innovative and wide-ranging programs exist successfully in the marketplace?

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Subject: RE: [JPL] topics for IAJE 2008

Hello Tom, here are some topic ideas.

One of the things I always find interesting for us to talk about on a panel

is what we look for in a cut. Why does one trumpet player get in and not

another? We address this somewhat in the jukebox but we can also talk about it more in depth, as in how we choose from the many artists we receive each week.

This strikes me as an extremely valid subject for discussion. I've wondered on occasion since joining this listserv why the playlists from across the country look so similar. If people are making individual choices based on their knowledge, taste and background why is there such a "consensus"? Does it have anything to do with which musicians get good promotion and which musicians don't get good promotion? Are programming consultants making the decisions rather than individual programmers?

How do you create a flow for a set of music?

How do you choose how you will lay things out for the listener. This is

also somewhat dependent on the market. Here in Phoenix we don't have a

highly educated jazz audience. There are of course many jazz fans here who

are very hip, but a larger portion of the audience can still only name Miles

Davis and Ella when I ask for who they like to listen to. I'm working on

building name awareness, but it's a journey.

The flow of a set and different concepts to create that flow (peaks and valleys, segues based on textures, thematic mixes, etc.) strike me as great ideas to talk about.

How do you stay entertaining and informative

As radio programmers we are entertainers and the good news is people WANT to

learn more but they don't want it to feel like work, so the information has

to be entertaining.Not American Idol mind you but not C-span. Coming from

live performance as many of us do, I think helps to give us a sense of how

to keep the audience engaged.

That's a very good analogy: not American Idol mind you but not C-Span. Well said! My comments above about the days of "educational" broadcasting kind of tie in here. Being informative without being pedantic is not easy. It's certainly more of an art than it is a science.

Different programming situations

When we talk about programming we can talk about the difference between

programming for a station for many hours a day and how that is different

than doing a two hour show once a week.

Good idea.

Repitition vs variety

Including repetition to get people aware of a tune can be a little tricky,

I've gotten complaints about it and I'm only playing that tune once a night.

The more recognizable the tune, the more people whine. Song for My Father,

Take five, and any vocalist can set off this reaction. So how do we

program for recognition to an audience that wants variety? One way is to

play a couple of cuts from the same CD, to get artist awareness. I did that

with the Bob deVos CD to get it out there, but really I bet not many people

in my audience would know who Bob deVos is even though I played him five

nights a week for over a month.

Promos/Contests

I'm contemplating more contests to get people to hear the name of the

artist. Announce the tune going in and tell them afterward I'll have a

giveaway. I don't know if that will work but jazz has so many talented

players and very few people know who they are. Have any of you been doing

this? How has it worked

Just my 2 cents, thanks,

Blaise Lantana

Music Director

KJZZ Phoenix

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To be continued...

Bill Barton

host: "Bright Moments" KBCS Bellevue-Seattle 91.3FM www.kbcs.fm

contributing writer:

CODA magazine

Signal to Noise: The Journal of Improvised and Experimental Music

All About Jazz (Seattle print version and online)

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

The BBC WAS pretty high quality broadcasting, even if there wasn't a lot of jazz. There were some riveting interviews - two that really glued me to the radio were long ones (and hour with virtually NO music, as I recollect): Sun Ra and Francis Wolff (not together )

Generally, except for "Jazz record requests", which I never usually bothered with, there was quite a bit of discussion which, even though I knew that eg Humphrey Lyttleton had his prejudices, was often interesting because, despite the prejudices, I knew that Humph could hear stuff a lot better than me. (And Humph LURVED long, slow, greasy blues! Whether they were by Coleman Hawkins or Jimmy McGriff.)

Things have changed and I don't listen to the radio now, but in my view, quality definitely wins.

MG

[Guest Bill Barton]

MG,

Here's an interesting article that was posted today on the Jazz Programmers List listserv:

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original link

Digital jazz contenders challenge BBC

John L Walters argues that a new competitor for Radio 3 has at last

reinvigorated jazz broadcasting

John L Walters

Friday January 25, 2008

Guardian

Trying to find jazz on national radio used to feel like an obstacle course.

There was Humphrey Lyttelton and, occasionally, Courtney Pine on Radio 2.

And Gilles Peterson would sneak it into his Radio 1 and World Service shows.

But the best shows were tucked away on Radio 3: documentaries and magazine

programmes on Saturday afternoons; late-night bits and pieces on Late

Junction and Mixing It; occasional concert broadcasts. For many years, BBC

Radio's flagship programme has been Jazz On 3, with a slot of around 11pm on

Friday night. Go out on Friday night, and you would miss half the station's

contemporary jazz output.

Though jazz has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance over the past decade, its

BBC coverage has remained small. But at least those programmes exist. When

you tune into regional and/or commercial radio, coverage is patchy or

nonexistent . Of course, we had the false dawn of Jazz FM, broadcasting in

the London and Manchester regions. In 2005, the station rebranded itself out

of existence, and was profitably reinvented as Smooth FM. Jazz FM survives

as an internet radio station, and both the website and Smooth are owned by

the Guardian Media Group.

But last Easter, the radio landscape was transformed by the launch of

national digital station theJazz. There wasn't much marketing fuss, but

after a short trial period, theJazz arrived on our doorsteps almost fully

formed - with warm-voiced presenters and a listener-friendly playlist. That

means vocalists and modern mainstream (Diana Krall, 1960s Miles Davis)

during the day, dinner jazz in the early evening and an eclectic, broadly

credible mix of styles off-peak. It was quickly welcomed into jazz-loving

homes across the country.

The figures back this up: theJazz is the most successful DAB station launch

to date. Late last year, it announced a total audience of 441,000 people

each week, of whom 53,000 were children under the age of 15, with the

biggest show being the drivetime Easy Jazz (147,000).

And what of the BBC's output? Radio 3's Jazz On 3 attracts 59,000 listeners,

while on Saturday afternoons, Jazz Record Requests attracts 184,000, and

Jazz Line-Up gets 163,000. Radio 3's total reach is 1.9 million. Radio 2's

most popular jazz slot is Monday night, when Big Band Special gets 370,000 -

out of Radio 2's total reach of 13.01 million.

So what has been the BBC's response to theJazz? It's hard to detect

anything. Radio 3's Saturday afternoon Jazz Line-Up has a chatty, populist

approach similar to theJazz's daytime programmes, but it was like that long

before the digital upstart launched. Jazz On 3, presented by the estimable

Jez Nelson, maintains its authority and enthusiasm when it comes to the core

repertoire of contemporary jazz, but now it goes out head to head with Mike

Chadwick's late-night Cutting Edge show on theJazz.

Radio 3 controller Roger Wright doesn't see theJazz as a rival "because it

does something different - in the same way that [theJazz's sibling station]

Classic FM does something completely different to what we do. It is good to

have it in the market."

Perhaps the most significant aspect of Radio 3's commitment has been its

sponsorship of the London jazz festival. It's been the sponsor since 2001,

and great excitement greeted the confirmation last autumn that the BBC would

remain so for another five years.

Radio 3's festival commitment, combined with the occasional appearance of

Duke Ellington or Miles Davis as "composer of the week", may have given fans

the impression that jazz is being taken more seriously at the BBC. But

Wright denies there's a master-plan. "These things don't take place as a

result of what Eddie Izzard calls 'strokey beard' meetings," he says. For

Wright, the commitment to jazz as part of musical culture - and of culture

at large (since Radio 3's output includes plays and poetry) - is "part of

the station's DNA. We seem to be increasingly in a world of niche or

narrow-casting. Radio 3 remains a broadcaster."

Keith Loxam, producer of Radio 3's Jazz Line-Up has positive things to say

about theJazz: "You've got a station playing jazz records 24 hours a day - I

put it on for an hour or so, and I enjoy that." But, as he explains, the BBC

has a different role: "When I come on for my 90 minutes a week, I try and

make that action-packed. So I have the presenter playing classic albums, we

have new albums and exclusive concert sets. That's where the BBC's

difference comes in. As a public service broadcaster, we are providing

exclusive live music for the listener. Programmes like Jazz Line-Up and Jazz

on 3 are throwing down the gauntlet and saying, 'This is what we're into.'

We might play the same track, but it won't be played in the same way."

Geoffrey Smith has been presenting Jazz Record Requests (also in the

Saturday afternoon "jazz zone") on Radio 3 since August 1991, taking over

from the late Charles Fox. "It's important to keep the repertoire alive,"

says Smith. In fact, JRR is very current in its "listener-led" format, and

you can learn much about music history from the show's playlist and Smith's

brief but erudite commentary, which make it a typical Radio 3 show rather

than a trip down memory lane. "Nostalgia is the enemy," says Smith. "All

these things are current. Art Farmer said that great thing: 'We never say

that Roy Eldridge - or Lester Young - was here but now he's gone. They are

here, they are in us and they will never die,' and I think that's true."

So is the difference between theJazz and Radio 3 analogous to that between

Classic FM and, erm, Radio 3? Wright says: "Some of my colleagues talk about

the difference between 'lean forward' and 'lean back' radio - foreground and

background. We hope audiences will get more, the more they lean forward, but

we also recognise that radio is often a secondary experience - secondary to

the other thing you are doing at that time, whether that be driving, having

a bath, reading - that's natural." So is theJazz "lean back" radio? The

daytime stream of Blue Note-lite and vocalists is tempered by good music

that's both accessible and credible. The station's British jazz week, in

November, introduced some local names - Michael Garrick, Zoe Rahman, Iain

Ballamy - to the playlist, and their music database is growing richer all

the time.

Perhaps it's in its cost-saving use of computers to generate playlists that

theJazz differs most from the BBC's output. "You don't get heavy rotation of

standard repertoire," says Radio 3's Wright, arguing for the BBC's

superiority over the newcomer. "Way more than 50% of our output is live

music ... there's no way you can operate that as a computer-generated

playlist. You've got to do it with humans."

However, there are signs that theJazz is broadening its base. Chadwick's

spontaneous approach avoids computers and scripts, with him "never really

deciding what to play until it's the next track". Jamie Cullum presents his

freewheeling show from hotel rooms and gardens. A recent collaboration with

Toronto's Jazz FM 91 resulted in "exclusive live sessions" for theJazz by

Acoustic Triangle, Norma Winstone and Kenny Wheeler.

But theJazz can't structure itself like a public service broadcaster, nor

should it, and it should not be dismissed as a "narrowcaster". Jazz music is

too big; the trick lies in the "lean back" presentation of "lean forward"

music, and giving people a chance to hear the repertoire. At present, the

chances are that if you tune in to theJazz at random, you'll hear some jazz.

If Jazz FM was the patchy demo, theJazz promises to be the real thing.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

[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!

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...

Letter in today's Guardian newspaper:

"Radio has moved with the times in many ways. The main exception is Radio 3, which might as well still be called the Third Programme. While there are a few plays and a modicum of jazz and world music, its almost undiluted output of classical music is intellectually outdated - and I say this as someone whose CD collection is mainly classical. There is a place for classical music but it should not be allowed to obstruct other equally serious forms. Radio 3 could broaden its appeal and become truly superior, instead of merely moribund.

Arthur Gould

Loughborough,Leicestershire"

Thank goodness for the sounds coming from across the pond!

[Christiern]

I owe much to radio. I did my first broadcast in 1953, on the Danish radio, to present tapes of Humphrey Lyttleton's band that I had made in London a month before. I ended up doing several shows for DR and it prepared me for my next radio job, which was in 1955 when U.S. Armed Forces Radio & TV Service (AFRS) at Keflavík, Iceland hired me as a classical music dj because I could pronounce the names of European composers and performers. It was a full-time civilian job, so course I ended up doing jazz, pop and even country shows. The station was located in a quonset hut on the base, very different from the large Danish facilities, where one had engineers to fiddle with the knobs, watch the vu meters, etc.

The AFRS experience prepared me for American radio but my next job was at WCAU in Philly, also a big station. There I wrote and produced programs but was not on the air. A year later (1959) I landed a great (albeit low-paying) job as the morning dj on WHAT-FM, which I think was the country's first 24/7 jazz station. I was on the air from 6 to 11 every morning, Monday through Saturday, and from 9 to 12 on Sundays (all for $100 a week!).

Thanks to a great write-up in Jazz Review by John Szwed (then unknown), I was able to move on to NYC where I did Voice of America broadcasts and worked at WNEW and WNCN before going to WBAI. From WBAI I went to London and the BBC, preparing all kinds of programs for the American market--a great experience. That was my last salaried job (1967). Since then, my broadcasting experience has been limited to one TV show, The Jazz Set, which ran for about 20 weekly shows, 13 of which were carried coast to coast by PBS.

While at WHAT, I also drew some ads for our monthly program guide...

I consider myself fortunate to have worked in radio at a time when there were no play lists, one simply played whatever one's mood called for. On my WHAT Sunday show, I focused on 78s and actually played 78 rpm discs, placing them on the turntable as I spoke over the air--it was like playing records for a friend.

[Guest Bill Barton]

Thanks for sharing those memories, Chris. Indeed, those were the days...

Say, when you were at WNEW was it the clear-channel AM or the FM station? When Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins made his East Coast reappearance in "The Purple Grotto" on WNEW-AM's Milkman's Matinee I have some very vivid recollections of his shows. One early a.m. he played the entire Coleman Hawkins Hollywood Stampede album and completely blew me away. And he could be counted on to play at least one Eddie Sauter arrangement on every show. "I'm Late, I'm Late" made frequent appearances.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Ahhh! WHAT - home of Sonny Hopson, The Mighty Burner!

It would be nice to hear from our members in France about the state of jazz broadcasting there. My introduction to John Coltrane was on French radio in 1965, in the small hours when I worked night shift. The DJ played "A love supreme", which had just come out, ALL THE WAY THROUGH!

Of course, I was flattened and, as soon as the shift was over, rushed down to Joe Lyons for breakfast and was outside the record shop door when Ken came to open it up. But really, what programming! And even more, what understanding of what was going down!

MG

[Christiern]

Thanks for sharing those memories, Chris. Indeed, those were the days...

Say, when you were at WNEW was it the clear-channel AM or the FM station? When Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins made his East Coast reappearance in "The Purple Grotto" on WNEW-AM's Milkman's Matinee I have some very vivid recollections of his shows. One early a.m. he played the entire Coleman Hawkins Hollywood Stampede album and completely blew me away. And he could be counted on to play at least one Eddie Sauter arrangement on every show. "I'm Late, I'm Late" made frequent appearances.

I was at WNEW when MLK was assassinated. William B. Williams (a great guy whose secretary I stole when I moved on to WBAI) was the leading on-air personality and I guess Klavan and Finch were next on that list (also great guys). As I recall, we were simulcasting Am and FM back then. I was a guest in Collins' "Purple Grotto" in 1973, when I was moving around the country on a book tour for Bessie. He was broadcasting in Pittsburgh at the time. Shortly after I left WNEW, they decided to try having female djs, the major one being Allison Steele. She made a funny goof one day while doing a fact-sheet-based ad lib commercial for a hair preparation. "Girls, you know how hair on the whole is curly....." Well, the "w" in hole just did not come through on radio.

Anyone here remember Klavan and Finch?

[AllenLowe]

as I recall, WNEW became the progressive rock station in NYC when WOR either closed down or faded out (or maybe they were competitors, don't remember) - Murray the K was on WOR, did great shows, and I remember Scott Muni from WNEW -

by the way, someday I will tell the story of how I invented Album Oriented Rock as a station format -

[Guest Bill Barton]

Thanks for sharing those memories, Chris. Indeed, those were the days...

Say, when you were at WNEW was it the clear-channel AM or the FM station? When Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins made his East Coast reappearance in "The Purple Grotto" on WNEW-AM's Milkman's Matinee I have some very vivid recollections of his shows. One early a.m. he played the entire Coleman Hawkins Hollywood Stampede album and completely blew me away. And he could be counted on to play at least one Eddie Sauter arrangement on every show. "I'm Late, I'm Late" made frequent appearances.

I was at WNEW when MLK was assassinated. William B. Williams (a great guy whose secretary I stole when I moved on to WBAI) was the leading on-air personality and I guess Klavan and Finch were next on that list (also great guys). As I recall, we were simulcasting Am and FM back then. I was a guest in Collins' "Purple Grotto" in 1973, when I was moving around the country on a book tour for Bessie. He was broadcasting in Pittsburgh at the time. Shortly after I left WNEW, they decided to try having female djs, the major one being Allison Steele. She made a funny goof one day while doing a fact-sheet-based ad lib commercial for a hair preparation. "Girls, you know how hair on the whole is curly....." Well, the "w" in hole just did not come through on radio.

Anyone here remember Klavan and Finch?

That Allison Steele story is priceless! She had (has?) one of the sexiest on-air voices that I've ever heard. I remember William B. Williams well. Klavan and Finch were either before my time or on at a time of day when the signal didn't penetrate into Vermont (contrary to DEEP-ism, there really were living jazz fans and musicians in Vermont.) It was around the time that you guested on the "Jazzbeaux" extravaganza that I was an avid listener, though I don't recall hearing that show. I do recall sitting through what seemed like hours of Easy Listening strings and vocalists ad infinitum to hear one or two jazz tracks on the Make Believe Ballroom and Milkman's Matinee. There was a period when the AM side shifted their focus more toward mainstream jazz too; I'm not sure of the year or years.

as I recall, WNEW became the progressive rock station in NYC when WOR either closed down or faded out (or maybe they were competitors, don't remember) - Murray the K was on WOR, did great shows, and I remember Scott Muni from WNEW -

by the way, someday I will tell the story of how I invented Album Oriented Rock as a station format -

Aha! So we can thank or blame you for AOR, Allen? How about AAA? The Quiet Storm? And what about those "thematic" names like The Buzz, The Mountain, The Breeze...? My nominations for names that immediately convey the nature of a commercial station's format these days would be: The Mud, The Algae, The Scream, The Thud.

[jazztrain]

Alison Steele, the "Nightbird." I remember her voice well from her time on WNEW-FM.

She passed away several years ago from cancer.

Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Steele

Thanks for sharing those memories, Chris. Indeed, those were the days...

Say, when you were at WNEW was it the clear-channel AM or the FM station? When Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins made his East Coast reappearance in "The Purple Grotto" on WNEW-AM's Milkman's Matinee I have some very vivid recollections of his shows. One early a.m. he played the entire Coleman Hawkins Hollywood Stampede album and completely blew me away. And he could be counted on to play at least one Eddie Sauter arrangement on every show. "I'm Late, I'm Late" made frequent appearances.

I was at WNEW when MLK was assassinated. William B. Williams (a great guy whose secretary I stole when I moved on to WBAI) was the leading on-air personality and I guess Klavan and Finch were next on that list (also great guys). As I recall, we were simulcasting Am and FM back then. I was a guest in Collins' "Purple Grotto" in 1973, when I was moving around the country on a book tour for Bessie. He was broadcasting in Pittsburgh at the time. Shortly after I left WNEW, they decided to try having female djs, the major one being Allison Steele. She made a funny goof one day while doing a fact-sheet-based ad lib commercial for a hair preparation. "Girls, you know how hair on the whole is curly....." Well, the "w" in hole just did not come through on radio.

Anyone here remember Klavan and Finch?

That Allison Steele story is priceless! She had (has?) one of the sexiest on-air voices that I've ever heard. I remember William B. Williams well. Klavan and Finch were either before my time or on at a time of day when the signal didn't penetrate into Vermont (contrary to DEEP-ism, there really were living jazz fans and musicians in Vermont.) It was around the time that you guested on the "Jazzbeaux" extravaganza that I was an avid listener, though I don't recall hearing that show. I do recall sitting through what seemed like hours of Easy Listening strings and vocalists ad infinitum to hear one or two jazz tracks on the Make Believe Ballroom and Milkman's Matinee. There was a period when the AM side shifted their focus more toward mainstream jazz too; I'm not sure of the year or years.

as I recall, WNEW became the progressive rock station in NYC when WOR either closed down or faded out (or maybe they were competitors, don't remember) - Murray the K was on WOR, did great shows, and I remember Scott Muni from WNEW -

by the way, someday I will tell the story of how I invented Album Oriented Rock as a station format -

Aha! So we can thank or blame you for AOR, Allen? How about AAA? The Quiet Storm? And what about those "thematic" names like The Buzz, The Mountain, The Breeze...? My nominations for names that immediately convey the nature of a commercial station's format these days would be: The Mud, The Algae, The Scream, The Thud.

[Guest Bill Barton]

Thanks for the link, jazztrain. I didn't know that she had passed. R.I.P. She was a talented broadcaster. I too recall the FM shows she did after 'NEW became the progressive rock outlet.

Edited May 8, 2008 by Bill Barton