Posted by chicagomedia.org on July 28, 2008 at 21:53:41:
Joy on the Radio
If you are not a lover of that most American of art forms, jazz, then kindly skip to the next article.
If you are, then stop reading and walk over to your radio. Turn it to 90.9 on the FM dial and chances are that you'll hear something wonderful that will help you forget about things like high gas prices and your cholesterol count.
Like television, radio is a vast wasteland unless you know just where to look. Skim the radio dial and you'll likely encounter the kind of vapidity that now characterizes much of American popular culture.
Fortunately, there's a fresh wind blowing from the direction of DuPage county. It's actually been blowing for decades but isn't well known because, like many things of quality, it's been overshadowed by louder and more strident voices—or stronger radio signals.
In a City of Big Shoulders known for muscular jazz, it's the last remaining jazz radio station.
Now let's get something straight. When I say "jazz," I do not refer to that watered-down, insipid, milquetoast variety known as "cool jazz" that is the musical equivalent to a Hostess twinkie. I'm talking about virile, hard-swinging jazz that has red meat on its bones—what the people at WDCB-FM refer to as Straight-Ahead Jazz—music that communicates pure joy and energy and isn't trying to sell you a thing.
I was on a road trip with some musician friends last summer and we stopped at an upscale coffee shot for lunch. They were playing background music: "cool jazz" that consisted of a pointlessly meandering soprano saxophone, an instrument of joy in the right hands and one of torture in the hands of Kenny G. Over lunch, a buzzing fly came hovering over our table, plaguing us by landing on our plates or on our heads and we COULDN'T MAKE IT STOP. After a few minutes we grasped the parallel. We equated the fly with the music. Imagine one of the higher circles of hell where you are forced to listen to a "cool jazz" soprano sax for eternity while a single fly buzzes you endlessly. . .
But I digress.
Happily for us all, there is WDCB. It's a public radio station that is a department of the College of DuPage, and it offers first-rate jazz as well as "Americana"—authentic music you'll hear almost nowhere else on the free-of-charge radio dial—bluegrass, acoustic blues, and folk music with (mostly) American roots. Real music.
But the station is first and foremost a jazz station, broadcasting 100 hours of undiluted jazz each week to Northern Illinois . What's more, its announcers are practitioners of the art. They know of what they speak and love it, and that affection comes through loud and clear over the airwaves. John Burnett, who calls himself "your British-American buddy" and is a former trumpeter, directs his own big band, as does Bill O'Connell, who as a high school kid at Gordon Tech saw Maynard Ferguson perform and became a convert on the spot. Barry Winograd began playing sax at the age of fifteen and is now an accomplished musician and bandleader who plays with the house band at the Green Mill in Uptown.
I was surprised to learn that a good number of WDCB's announcers are volunteers, though experts in their respective musical fields. They do the job for the love of it, and they stick around. "We have no announcing slots open," says Promotions Manager Ken Scott. The station also runs the nostalgic radio program "Those Were the Days," hosted on Saturday afternoons (1:00 to 5:00 pm) by Chuck Schaden, a Radio Hall of Famer. In an example of the oddities of radio economics, even Schaden is a volunteer, despite the popularity and longevity of his show, which takes us back to the early days of radio and to gentler times.
But wait, you protest. There's satellite radio. I can find any sort of music I want there, of any quality. Yes, but it costs, and it has nowhere near the personality of a WDCB. You'll find no love there. Besides, there's something flawed in the idea of unlimited choice and control. Some of life's best discoveries are accidents.
The station has had its trials since its founding in 1977. A few days before Christmas, 2001, its radio tower was toppled by high winds, its antenna smashed. But not to worry. These are jazz lovers. Operating on slim resources, they began broadcasting over the Internet within two days and had soon replaced the twenty-five-year-old tower with state-of-the-art equipment that greatly boosted broadcast quality (though I still have trouble getting a clear signal in the car on Lake Shore Drive amidst all those highrises).
Another boost came last year, when public station WBEZ decided to forego jazz and switch to an all-news-and-public-affairs format. WDCB's listenership rose substantially.
(WBEZ did retain the incomparable Dick Buckley for Sunday afternoon jazz broadcasts. IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: Mr. Buckley, to whom Chicago owes an enormous debt of gratitude, is retiring. His final broadcast on WBEZ is/was Sunday, July 27, 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.)
Part of WDCB's mission is to foster and showcase the best jazz talent in Chicago —Von Freeman, Willie Pickens, Bobby Lewis, Frank D'Rone, Judy Roberts, Kurt Elling. The station broadcasts their music, runs a calender of live performances, hosts events in clubs, and produces an annual jazz fest in Glen Ellyn. It spreads the joy.
The saying goes that the best things in life are free. WDCB isn't exactly free—they need public support to stay alive—but they're in it for love, not money, and in the music business in twenty-first-century America that's an extraordinary thing.
(Chicago Daily Observer)