Cold Duck Time!

https://youtu.be/y8YOLY4Tats

Metal Ghosts

Every once in awhile, you'll see a ghost from the past. Floating metal from an era aging away as non-event trivia to the current generation. The don't even know what a record needle is.

The Overnight Jazz Fan Insomniac Club

The Overnight Jazz Fan Insomniac Club

For much of the mid to latter half of the 20th Century, Milwaukee had some great overnight jazz programs hosted by some great djs. Ron Cuzner & Al Russel come to mind as the 2 who influenced my discovery and subsequent love of jazz in the late 80's and throughout the 1990's.

During this time, overnight sleep wasn't a high priority for me, but a quiet time of reflection for homework, wine drinking, most often at the same time, called for jazz in the background. Played by live djs as we shared the overnight listening experience quietly together over the airwaves.

We became The Overnight Jazz Fan Insomniac Club.

Later on, I would work as much 3rd shift overtime as possible as I worked my way through college. I'd be alone in a printing company, running digital presses, doing homework, and listening to Ron Cuzner on WFMR or Al Russel on WYMS that I mic'd throughout the building over the P.A. system.

Sometimes I'd call in, 2 or 3 in the morning and ask "WHO WAS THAT?" and we'd spend time just talking about what we heard. More often than not, they were glad to talk, and that there was a "live one" out there in the dead of night, listening to and contemplating jazz. It was a fun and profitable way to spend the evenings & I looked forward to it.

And sometimes, on that first night off, in bed and wide awake, I'd drift off into a dreamlike semi-consciousness set to the jazz playing quietly from the clock radio that painted the evening and my imagination. I had discovered some great music this way.

One song that comes to mind is Rosemary Clooney's "Sweet Kentucky Ham", with its lines about having trouble falling asleep in Milwaukee, of all places:

It's 10 PM, they're rollin' up the sidewalk in Milwauee
And the only place to eat, is just across the street
So you sit there with a bowl of navy bean
And you turn the pages of magazine

And you feel you wanna quit while you're behind
'Cause you've got sweet Kentucky ham on your mind, on your mind
Nothin' but sweet Kentucky ham on your mind

And you feel like you're forever on the phone
Half past 10, let it ring
Dial again, same damn thing
And you're really getting hungry for some talk
Grab a shower, take a walk

It was one of those strange semi-lucent 3 a.m. moments where I woke up, not sure if I heard that or if it came to me in a dream. I called Al Russel "who WAS THAT?", and he actually said "Hey man, I thought YOU might like that..."

Al was a cool guy. You could hardly hear him speak because he talked softly to the overnight crowd,
and his throat had been slit in a knife fight in Chicago many years before, and he lived. That did not prevent his career as a dj in the slightest. Just gave him the quiet overnight shifts to speak into the evening and the overnight insomniac jazz listeners that tuned in.

One time, I even answered phones for the WYMS phone-a-thon well in to Al's overnight show, when technically the volunteer shift was over. They were worried no one would want to volunteer that late. I lived across the street from the station at that time, and Al and I had a great time, hanging out, playing jazz, and eating the left over Mexican buffet food for the volunteers that arrived earlier that evening.

 These guys, Al and Ron, kept an owl's watch on the overnight bandwidth, filling the deep evening with jazz until sunrise.

It's that sort of listening community that I tried to build when Jeremy Riggs started to build online radio station Freeze Frame Radio in the early 2000s, and invited me in to be an evening jazz host on Sunday evenings. I felt semi-successful at this mission when after a couple years of broadcasting and growing the station, a woman claiming to be Ron's lover from long ago got a hold of me & we were able to talk a few times. She even made me Christmas cookies for a couple of years. 

For awhile there, when broadband speeds were new, internet radio was new, iPods were not yet on the market, and big companies didn't clamp down on streaming, this station was a big deal. :) During the week, it was the largest pop music station broadcasting on Live365. Sunday nights, I flipped the switch for an hour of punk, 2 hrs of jazz, blues, soul, and funk, and then a late evening hour of the weirdest stuff from the furthest reaches of the audio archive. This was a ball, and I met a lot of fun people and artists that I still consider friends to this day from all over the world.

We return now with a new iteration  of Freeze Frame Radio. I'll be doing it as periodic Sunday evening jazz podcasts, and am excited for this re-generation of the station, and the opportunity to do my part to keep great jazz alive and on the air.

Young Gerry Mulligan

I have always loved this pic of young Gerry Milligan becoming cool!

Gerry Mulligan

Here he is being cool: https://youtu.be/7DCQVyD3whM

Japanese Fusion Jazz Riot

https://youtu.be/Wk6OxKlKdFc

When Jazz Finds You

When Jazz Finds You

I will never forget when I first "got" jazz. It was in 1989, during a lull in exciting new music- hair metal was getting old, 80s pop was way overplayed, and grunge was still a few years off. I was tired of the radio, my tapes, my music.

I was living at home, working and attending college. On a particularly sunny Sunday afternoon, I had the house to myself. I was going through the FM dial, looking for something new. On WYMS, at the time a jazz station, a song by Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers called "Moanin" came on. And I was simply blown away at how much that song colored my mood, the mood of the afternoon, the mood of the house, everything. Plus, Art was really pounding the skins.

Art Blakey

Please have a listen: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers- Moanin

In those 14+ minutes, I was transformed. I had discovered a new, deeper universe that I needed to inhabit. Time stood still. It was magical. Just stopping, listening & being. Thus began my love with jazz.

Afterwords, I had somewhere to go in my car. I reset my station presets to now include the jazz station, tuned in, and set out on my ride. It was still sunny, but rain began to fall, just painting the day in a beautiful & bright translucence. Being 19, my beater without a heater didn't have functioning air conditioning either. The humidity sky-rocketed and the streets and sidewalks were steamy in the afternoon heat as the rain fell. All my car windows were open, and the only good thing in the car- the stereo system- was blaring John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme". Just sublime and other worldly:

John Coltrane

Please have a listen: John Coltrane- A Love Supreme

I recently had the pleasure of sharing this experience with my friend Carl Raven, who has been playing music for over 50 years. His current band is Collective Neurosis, whom I will be featuring on Freeze Frame Radio's The Jazz Hour in the near future.

Carl shared with me when he discovered jazz as a kid. It was Sonny Rollins

" Heard Sonny playing “Wagon Wheels” in my Dad’s car on a family ride back home late at night on Dr. Stu’s Jazz radio show--WTMJ AM. If someone could do that with that tune--or any tune-- I just had to play jazz. I was sold for life!"

Here is Carl's discovery of jazz: (I'm excited to hear this, it's not a song I believe I have heard!)

Sonny Rollins

Please have a listen: Sonny Rollins- Wagon Wheels

I will use this blog to share some more truly beautiful songs of jazz that I found me over the years and share these with you. Conversely, I would love to hear your story as well, maybe even share it here or on the air. Shoot me an email: jdthejazzdoctor@gmail.com and tell me your story of how you came to love jazz.