By Donald True Van Deusen

Jazz, often called America’s only truly indigenous art form, was born and some fear may be buried in the 20th Century everyone is now so busy celebrating. Radio, the principal means of jazz exposure for most of its existence (apart from records and a few caring critics) has virtually abandoned jazz. Most radio stations today have abandoned just about everything else that made a significant cultural contribution to people’s lives, but it’s jazz we’re concerned with here.

In the 1940’s when I lived in New York City, local radio stations featured jazz in several of its main programs. Disc jockeys such as Fred Robbins and Symphony Sid covered the jazz spectrum. Their memories may be enshrined in some of the numbers written in fond tribute to them by songwriters of the day—"Robbins’ Nest" and "Jumping With Symphony Sid." They played Bop, Blues, Barrelhouse, Boogie, Mainstream, New Orleans, Dixie, Swing. On different nights, particularly on Robbins’ show, you could hear anyone from Jelly Roll Morton to Thelonious Monk. You could hear Lee Wiley’s torchy treatment like so much heady bourbon singing "It’s midnight, it’s heavy laden and midnight" or George Brunies gutsy put down, "You sure ugly, you sure ugly, you some ugly child, you’re knock kneed, pigeon toed, box-angled too, there’s a curse on your family and it fell on you…"

Robbins even had a "guest collectors night" where at 18 years of age I found myself going with my copy of "Stompin’ at the Savoy" by the Gene Krupa Trio featuring Charlie Ventura and Teddy Napoleon among others clutched in my rapidly moistening hand. I ended up the my first radio appearance arguing with bandleader Sam Donahue who took offense at my criticism of Stan Kenton’s new record, "City of Glass." I said Kenton was great, but that didn’t preclude his being judged pretentious at times.

Just a year later, I became a disc jockey myself in the Scott AFB station at Belleville, Illinois where I was in training to be a radio operator. We moved to Keesler Field in Biloxi, Mississippi where I continued training and my work as a disc jockey which was better than pulling detail such as K.P. I confess to picking up some of Robbins’ playful patter. He was the first to say, "Your boss with the hot sauce." I would sometimes start out with, "Listen my friends wherever you be to this hopped up ride by a PFC." Gradually, I outgrew that and stuck with just telling the story of jazz. As I moved around the country I discovered that many cities—Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis had at least one or two DJs who played the music and gave background on the artist and recordings involved. These programs provided, in effect, living classrooms that made the exciting story of jazz and the people who created it, something that younger people could take an interest in beyond just the current hit parade. This was still a time when radio was aimed primarily at adults and not ten and 12-year olds. Many years later I extended this approach—playing the music and telling the story of jazz where I now live as a lecturer at Philadelphia Community College for several years. The radio situation in Philadelphia today would seem to reflect the industry as a whole from all that I’ve read and heard. In short, it’s a wasteland. WHYY, the local PBS station dropped both classical and jazz radio programming not long ago in favor of "talk shows." When I argued the cultural significance of jazz and classical music, one of the station’s officials told me that as a public service station they were not there to serve a cultural elite. I made the point that if audience numbers were all they were seeking they could just play RAP and Howard Stern, but to no avail. The main man that WHYY had playing just a touch of jazz every weekend, Bob Perkins, was dropped like the proverbial hot potato after his work with them for many years on a show called, "Remember This One?" His mellifluous voice and extensive knowledge of jazz music was thankfully soon picked up by the local college station of Temple University which also took on classical music as part of its format. Many jazz fans bitterly resented the loss of a 24-hour jazz station, but it was a question of how much room is there in the lifeboat.

Other local stations here are playing about the same amount of jazz you can find in most cities—none. There is one station playing something called "smooth jazz" which means music you can eat and talk to without every missing a bite because of some interesting chord structures and melodic handling. In short, it’s boring. The other stations play whatever it is teeny boppers like this week plus RAP and hip-hop favored by the unknowing and uncaring. Radio used to provide an exciting outlet for America’s greatest cultural contribution to the world. It was run by people who cared about the music. It featured disc jockeys who knew the music and how to tell the story of its creation in an exciting fashion that would bring kids into the fold and let them know just how enthralling this native art form can be. Radio today, of course, is run by investors who buy stations to see how much they can make when they sell them. Radio today runs rap and ruin music by people who don’t care for people who don’t know and is owned by people buying stations for Return on Investment value who have no value. Welcome to the 21st Century!