Ray Smith | Jazz Decades
Background: On April 13, 1922, Bailey's Lucky Seven recorded the Carolina Rolling Stone Blues - and I was born. Jazz and I grew up together. First musical experience (and only training): learning to read single notes as a boy soprano soloist in a church choir. As a teenager, I taught myself to play piano by ear. Later, in my 40s, drums. I was the charter drummer in the Concord Junction Golden Redeemer, the Black Eagles, the Yankee Rhythm Kings, the Rent Party Revelers, and my own Jazz Decades and Paramount Jazz Bands. My first broadcast: April 1958, WKOX, Framingham, Massachusetts, a daytime commercial station. When it was sold to a rock 'n' roll syndicate, Jazz Decades moved over to WGBH in August 1972 without missing a beat.
First album I ever owned: Albums were for rich kids! In 1936, my first 78-rpm recording was by the Mound City Blue Blowers playing "I Gonna Clap My Hands," backed by High Society. It is still in the Jazz Decades library.
Five desert island albums: With today's hi-tech, I'm sure I could store the best part of the Jazz Decades collection — augmented by a solar-powered battery charger!
Favorite podcast: I started with a hand-wound Victrola and bamboo needles — what's a podcast?
Greatest place to hear live muic: I have played hundred of venues in the last 40 years, from Friday Harbor to Bar Harbor to the British Isles. Nothing has ever replaced, in fond memories, Foster Yeadon's Sticky Wicket Pub in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, where I devoted many nights and Sunday afternoons, both as a spectator and a performer.
Most memorable concert: Turk Murphy's concert at Carnegie Hall, Jan. 10, 1987, with Jim Cullum's Jazz Band of San Antonio and the Hot Antic Jazz Bands of Paris. I put together a party of 40 Boston jazz aficinados in a minibus, and we made a weekend of it with fantastic seats right on stage. It was a magical night hearing the great music and viewing the magnificiently refurbished Carnegie Hall — and the reaction of the full house audience. Turk Murphy lost his long battle with cancer four months later, in May 1987.
Favorite movie about music/musicians: Amadeus. Nothing comes close to it! Jazzwise, The Cotton Club, with Ellington's music arranged by my longtime friend Bob Wilber.
Favorite book about music/musicians: The late Dick Sudhalter's learned tome, Lost Chords. Gunther Schuller's The Swing Era comes in a hair-breadth second.
When not listening to jazz, I listen to classical: The 3 Bs... The FIVE...and especially Katchaturian, Prokifiev, Shostakovich. Movie scores: Herrmann, Korngold, Morricone, Rozsa, Steiner, Waxman, Hans Zimmer. New digital recordings by the City of Prague, Moscow, Royal Scottish Symphony Orchestras, plus Gerhardt's landmark National Philharmonic Series.
Finest moment on the air: The night Jazz Decades almost caught A Prairie Home Companion in total dollars during a pledge drive!
Most embarrassing moment on the air: I don't remember any, but thanks to Ray Fallon — my audio guardian for 26 years — if I did have one, you would never hear it.
If I weren't a radio host, I'd be what I was before I retired 21years ago — a graphic arts production head with Onicom Advertising. Music and radio have always been a "closet" hobby, an avocation I never let interfere with my #1 priority, my family, nor my professional career. I am proud I have spent 51 gratifying years playing my beloved music on the air!
The best part of my job (hobby!) is: I've said it many times: the intellectual, adventurous, diverse, and loyal WGBH listening audience and the WGBH professionals who have made it all possible.
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