In Black America; The Evolution of Jazz, with Ed Love

I'm out there! From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is In Black America. When you talk about the 50s, what about Jimmy Smith, who was the first to play modern jazz on the organ?

How many organ players have you got now? You've welcomed down the streets of Detroit or maybe New York, but you can walk down the streets of Austin. And any organ player that you hear, he's coming out of Jimmy Smith. Okay. But then there were others who came after him, Larry Young didn't live long enough, Don Patterson. They weren't recognized enough, but they played and they were different, but all of them come out of Jimmy Smith. Westman government, who brought on something new throughout the guitar. Then you're going to leave out the old man, Lionel Hampton, and if you leave him out, you've got to go to Neil Jackson. Who was to modern jazz, what helped us to swing? Better in jazz, radio announcer and producer Ed Love. Mr. Love with the producer and host of the nationally syndicated radio series, The Evolution of Jazz. This is by WDET in Detroit. The evolution of jazz is a chronological journey taking listeners to the very beginnings of jazz of the 1920s through the swing era, pop, post-pop, the 1960s, fusion, and today's jazz sound. Mr. Love has devoted more than 30 years of his life to jazz music and radio.

In January of 1987, Ed Love was recognized by the city of Detroit for his endurance and special expertise in the presentation of jazz musical form. The series The Evolution of Jazz is an outgrowth of Mr. Love's vast experience and love for jazz music. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. This week, The Evolution of Jazz, with jazz and announcer Ed Love in Black America. I said, well, I'll do this series, even though my show, locally in Detroit, is a predominantly a modern jazz program. It is a modern jazz show. I said, well, I'll play, I'm talking about locally now. This is an 85. I'll run a show for about four weeks and call it The Evolution of Jazz and I'll play everything that I've got in my record library at home. I'll play everything, or if not every tune, selections from every phase of jazz, and it will be almost the entire thing, almost every tune that I have, not LP, but every tune

all for the LPs. I figured it would take maybe in what I wanted to do, and that's with eliminating some of the things, some of the selections. It might take four or five weeks, but it took seven months, and I still wasn't finished. But the forms were ringing off the wall because we had the older jazz fans calling, and I was taking them right into the present day. We had a lot of people who were modern jazz fans, and they were calling, saying, hey, let me hear some more. Well, I'm strong from the 20s and the 30s, and I was doing it chronologically. When I got to the present day, it was just like my local show is, you know, from day to day. So then it finally just died out on Judy Adams, who is our long-time program director, WDT. He came to me one day and she says, that was really some serious you did, and I said, yeah, she says, that should go national. In October of 1988, the evolution of jazz debuted as a new 13-part series of one-hour programs

hosted by Ed Love. The 13-part series went beyond most jazz offerings that concentrated on single periods or styles of jazz. The series traces the growth of jazz from the first jazz recording in 1917 to the present day. Born and raised in Parsons, Kansas, Ed Love has devoted more than three decades to radio and his love for jazz music. And Mr. Love first became interested in broadcasting when a radio station was built in his neighborhood. After friends suggested that he go along with him to the station, they both began spending time at the station after school. Also at that time, Mr. Love had an interest in playing trumpet and wanted to play in Duke Ellington's trumpet section, but realized that dream wasn't going to come true, he turned back to broadcasting. In 1960, he moved to Detroit and began working for bail broadcasting and was the first to bring jazz music to the FM Dow. Mr. Love worked at WJZZ FM for the next 17 years before coming to work at WDETFM, the public radio station in Detroit.

Recently I traveled to Detroit and spoke with Ed Love. So you must understand that I come from what I call the real Midwest, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Missouri. And my father was a country-and-western music fan. So coming up, I heard my C&W from him, Bluegrass, and I heard my jazz and blues and pop music from my mother. You see, I liked jazz best, but in investigating, I found that there weren't too many people who were able to play jazz on radio. Well, broadcasting was the number one thing in my mind. I didn't care what I played, just so I was on radio. For 10 years, I didn't play jazz. For 10 years, I played pop music. I was one of the first people to interview Elvis Presley when I knew him, someone I was working on a radio station in West Virginia, someone just brought him up. This is Elvis Presley. I didn't know him either, but I interviewed him.

One of the questions I asked him was, what kind of women did he like, because I had heard that the color didn't make any difference to him. And he says, female women. Then later on, he said it to somebody and they made a big deal out of it. He first, I guess, that he might have said it to somebody else before, but he said it to me way before he went in the army and before he had his first big record, they just introduced him as a singer, right into the station I interviewed him. But I was doing that. Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, a Saturday, was a junior, stuff like that. I once worked on one station in, not my hometown, but near my hometown. And when the country in Western, this jacket would go on vacation, they would take me off my pop show and put me on his show because nobody else knew the country in Western. But I had this stuff in mind, this training from my father, appreciation for it, which I still have. What was it like working at the bail broadcasting company in the 60s playing jazz here in Detroit? Well, I was like the pioneer jazz disc jockey on FM.

It was really nice, there were no commercials, even though it was supposedly commercial radio. But FM wasn't big, you remember in the 60s here in Detroit, any place else. And I came here and started bail broadcasting's FM jazz station, which is now WJZZ. They are far from a jazz station now. They play a lot of pop jazz, quote unquote, and just plain pop music. But at that time, when I started, the intent was for it to be a jazz station. And it was for years and years. But it was really, really nice. And the people that I worked with, I still haven't found memories of those days. I worked there for about 17 years, you know. How has the evolution in your opinion, you mentioned they're not playing a lot of jazz? But the evolution of jazz, radio or jazz formatted radio in the last 20 years, have we gotten away from the traditional jazz as we would know it from the 50s and 60s?

Now, do you mean that's what we were talking about on radio? Programmers, if you listen to public radio stations and stations which really have to worry or play the ratings game, radio is very fine on public radio because they're still playing the, I hate to use the word traditional, but I would say jazz that's heavily linked to the traditional aspects of jazz. Whereas most commercial radio stations that play jazz, they have to deal with the ratings game, the numbers game. And I've always said that you cannot play authentic jazz if you have to have one half of your mind on ratings because traditionally jazz has been a music that has been underappreciated and I guess it will always be that way in this country.

You know, we are minority, that's what it is, so how can you be a majority when you are in the minority from the beginning and then half of that minority is not paying any attention to jazz even though they want word jazz fans, they have television they're doing now, you know, they have kids to bring up and time they get through working, the women are working also, time they get through working and especially if the jazz show comes on at night, they have their minds on going to bed in order to make it that next day, if the jazz show comes under the day they're working. So I say that it has to be done by public radio stations and people who support public radio. You've been a night announcer, probably going on two, maybe three decades, is there something about working at night that appeals to you and working, saying they're daylight hours? Yeah, you don't have as much confusion at night and that you are manager, program director, everything at a station.

The only disadvantages that you have, like non-month vacation and I've been able to spend the last two or three nights at home and it's really nice, you know, I'm really realizing after all these years how nice it is because usually when I take a vacation I'm out of town but this time I just stayed home and it's really nice, the world series is on and I'm out there not even listening to radio myself, I'm watching the world series Eatin' Popcorn, it's nice. I also understand what I know for a fact, you had a stand back in the, I guess late 60 or early 70s as an announcer for a television station in a Detroit area, how did that come about? Well I ran into this man, he was a TV producer with a show, had a definite plan in mind for a jazz show. He brought it to me because I had been in jazz radio in Detroit for so long and he wanted me to help him kind of like smooth it out, you know, work out the kinks which we did

then he wanted me to host it. So we go to the ABC TV station here, he had the connect, I didn't and we go there and the show was pretty good. I mean we did a pilot, maybe a couple of pilots, they sent it to ABC New York, they accepted it. Okay now, the only mistake that we had, everyone and it's interested in expense, we had like a eight or nine piece band, I think it was an eight piece band that played two minutes to open up the show theme song, a minute and a half to take it out and well over half of the budget including what I was getting to do the show and what he was getting was going to the band, this eight piece band. Well, eight roughly three minutes in the program, yeah, now the local ABC affiliate incidentally was an ABC owned station at that time too, WXYC TV, yeah. They wanted, even though the national ABC station had approved the budget, they didn't

want to pay that much, you know, for the band and I agreed, I said well, you know, we could just play a record and that would cut the expense, anything to get the show on until the ratings, you know, were kind of high. And then maybe we wanted to do something for local musicians, we could have brought them back in. Well, I had a mind of my own, the producer had a mind of his own, unfortunately in this case, he had the connection and I didn't and he would not resist or would not compromise with the station, I wanted to, but he didn't. So it was down the drain, a guy came along with one of these talk shows, one of these black talk shows and I think he was doing it for $150, you know, same hour that we would have been doing and naturally they took him. And at that time, the black consciousness was still on everybody's mind and so they saw this as an opportunity to do something for, look good in the black community, whereas

I have this producer that I'm thinking of, had he just made the compromise and said, okay, we'll go with the records, cut the expense, then we would have been in there. I had friends who were willing to come in and do the show for nothing, Stevie Wonder was going to come in. So he was not just a jazz show, we were going to have jazz people on it, but it was going to be a variety show on a bear in mind. This was before Soul Train, this was before all the black music shows on TV now. And I had a wreath of Franklin coming in just because we were friends. And Stevie Wonder, the late groove homes, the originals remember that groove, everybody, everybody was lined up, G.A.J. J. Austin, Tromboncle area. And anyway, I never materialized because we couldn't get it off the ground because of this band and the expense. Now, how did I wind up out there? They, I'm going to make a long story short, it's got whiskers on it already. I wound up out there because they needed a staff announcer, and they heard me, and they

asked the producer, well, who's the guy you got as the host? Have him call us. So he did tell me that not to call him, and I was out there for seven years. But at the same time, I was out working for Bell Broadcasting, and it got to be a bit much. And then when Channel 7 was, when they wanted me to come out there full time, I couldn't so I had to quit. But I worked there for about six and a half, seven years. But that's how it came about. You're now the host of the Evolution of J.A.J. was its produced at WDET and syndicated through the NPR interconnect system and also by the Longhorn Radio Network. How did you become involved with the Evolution of J.A.J.? Okay, that was an original idea, and that, in my long tenure of working as a J.A.S. Jockey in Detroit, I mainly worked as a modern J.A.J.S. Jockey.

But at the same time, record companies. And they were a lot more liberal with their samplings and records than they are now. So I would get all kinds of records, historical records. And one day, I was in my basement at home, and I was just going through trying to organize all the records I had, it's the time I think I had about 12,000 LPs. This was before CDs. This was like in 1984, 85. And I see all these historical records, including the first record, the first jazz record I've ever made in New York. See, I remember the date, it was January 24th, 1917 in New York by the original Dixie Land Jazz Band. And they did about four cuts, and one cut was on a record that I had. So I said, well, this is a real good idea. I've always contended that jazz fans, as opposed to separating and dividing the way they do, I like modern jazz, I like traditional jazz, I like Dixie Land or whatever, I like

Alvon Garde, I like vocal jazz. That was coming this way. They ought to be more like classical jazz fans, and have a background in all of it. So I've always said that if I had an opportunity, I would try, and I hate that word, educate, but I would try to show my appreciation by way of the records that I played to my listeners. And maybe they could just hear something from another period that they liked. As you know, there are jazz fans who are so hardcore that they'll say, I like nothing, but modern sounds. I have an old magazine at home, Downbeat, which I subscribed to. And Clifford Brown even said, I can only dig modern sounds. You know, there he was influenced by other people, other than modern people, but as far as he was concerned, he was only digging modern sounds. He said this back in the 50s. And it surprises you, you know, and I say, because at the same time, the jazz historians who are preaching that you've got to have an appreciation of everything, which I did

anyway. Okay. So I said, well, I'll do this series, even though my show, locally in Detroit, is predominantly a modern jazz program. It is a modern jazz show. And I said, well, I will play, I'm talking about it locally now. This is an 85. I'll run a show for about four weeks and call it the evolution of jazz. And I'll play everything that I've got in my record library at home. I'll play everything. Well, if not every tune selections from every phase of jazz, and it'll be almost the entire thing, almost every tune that I have. Not LP, but every tune off of the LPs, I figured it would take maybe, and what I wanted to do. And that's with eliminating some of the things, some of the selections. It might take four or five weeks, but it took seven months, and I still wasn't finished. But the forms were ringing off the wall because we had the older jazz fans calling, and I was taking them right into the present day, you know.

We had a lot of people who were modern jazz fans, and they were calling, saying, hey, let me hear some more. I'm strong from the 20s and the 30s, you know. And I was doing it chronologically, okay, when I got to the present day, it was just like my local show is, you know, from day to day. So then it finally just died out. Well, Judy Adams, who is our longtime program director, WDT, came to me one day and she says, that was really some serious you did, you know. And I said, yeah, she says, that should go national, well, this was in 85. She says, one day we're going to put that on the national satellite. I said, sure, Judy, yeah, okay, you know, it's like that. I didn't, you know, as far as I was concerned, I've told her this many times. I thought it was just talk. So at the time we were in the school center building, you might know where, you know, it was quite an old building matter of fact that building called on fire, our studios did, which prompted the university, Wayne State University to look for better quarters for us, where we are

now. And when we moved here in 87, we had all the studios to record the evolution of jazz. You know, it was just a completely different atmosphere with the new studios that gave everybody who had been a professional, that feeling of being a professional again, and we were ready to go to work. So Judy came to me, maybe a month after we were here, and I said, okay, you ready? And I said, ready for what? And she says, ready to put the evolution on a satellite. And I said, you got to be kidding. She said, yeah, I said, well, you know, I can't do it the way I did it locally. I'll have to cut it down because as opposed to being three hours a day, which is at the time I was on five days a week, as opposed to being 15 hours a week at only be one. So I've got to cut it down. So what I had done, I had made cassettes of the entire series. I mean, I had like box of cassettes, you know, and I went back and I listened to every last one of them.

Well, the evolution is going into its fourth year. Now, okay, the first year, especially the first 13 weeks, it was pretty much what had been done on the early part of the local. You know, I was listening and just cutting eliminating tunes and almost doing it the same way, not word for word. But selection for selection, yeah, the first 13 weeks. And after the first 13 weeks, I figured we were over to hop then. So then I started doing it the way it is now. Well, hi there and welcome to the evolution of jazz, I'm Ed Love. On this series, we're playing jazz from the first recording in 1917 to the present day.

This time we'll listen to some great trumpet players and along the way we'll hear some other jazz grades. In the mid-30s, early 40s, there were two outstanding trumpeters in the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Cudi Williams and Rex Stewart. Rex Stewart actually played Cornette and he had a special way of playing that was nice. He would sometimes play by only pressing the valves of the Cornette partially down. We'll hear Rex use that technique on the first tune that we'll play. Cudi Williams is featured on the second tune and he was equally as great, playing trumpet with a mute or an open horn. We'll hear Rex Stewart featured on the first tune and the Cudi Williams featured on the second tune. Cudi Williams is featured on the second tune and the Cudi Williams featured on the second tune and the Cudi Williams featured on the second tune.

Thank you for joining us for the Evolution of Jazz. For more information or comments regarding this program, please write to the Evolution of Jazz, W-D-E-T-F-M, 6-0-0-1-Case, Detroit, Michigan, 4-8-2-0-2. Program is produced at W-D-E-T Detroit. Hope to see you next time as we follow jazz on record and the way it evolved through the years.

In your opinion, in your many years, listening to jazz as a fan, but also one who chronicles jazz music, who have been, in your opinion, the heavyweights who have taken jazz as its art form to the next level? Well, there have been many, I'll try to do this chronologically also, there have been many people say Buddy Bolden, but we have no recordings about Buddy Bolden, so all we can go on is what we read and not even what you hear because you don't even hear people talking about him, you see it in print. So we want to, we'll just mention him because they say he was the first one to really agree, you see a turn hit, okay, but I would say the first major star in jazz, the first one would be Louis Armstrong, with an assist from Jelly Roll Morton, people like that. But Louis was the man who came out of that decade, now of course you've got to remember

Fletcher Henderson, you've got to remember Duke Ellington who was there, but then I don't consider Duke as coming out of that decade, the 20s, I consider him a fall time. Yeah, okay, but I would say this way, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, we're talking about people who have major figures, that's not to say that Fast Waller and James Fee Johnson were not, but she can't sit her name off of every musician that played the music. So let's just say, again, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, then we move to the 30s and we go with Coleman Hawkins because he definitely set a style, Swords Playing Tender Sacks, Roy Aldridge who carried on what Louis had started, Lester Young who came up with a new school, a new way of playing Tender Sacks, because of the popularity of the music, you would have to cite Benny Goodman who came out of Fletcher Henderson, okay, also

in Swords and Drums, you would have to cite Gene Cooper who, if he was not the best drummer in jazz, by him being white, he brought more attention to the drummer in jazz than anybody else, therefore allowing attention to be brought to other drummers like Chick Webb and Sid Catlett drummers like that, okay, in the 40s, you know who I'm going to say, Charlie Parker Dizzy Gillespie, I mean there's no other, so they did it, and then you had a young kid who used to trail behind him who recently died and might have been your most controversial figure ever in jazz, the most talked about in that smile's Davis, you've got to mention smile's Davis, okay, you can't mention those three or four without mentioning Thelonius Maas and Kenny Clark who changed the modern jazz drumming around and probably the greatest drummer that ever lived, Max Roach, okay, you wanted to keep going, that's singers, you got to go with Lady Day and you got to go with Bessie Smith, okay, I also got singers,

let's see Bud Paul who influenced so many bebop piano players, so you got to go with him, you've got to leave some people out, yeah, then you go with Fast and Farrow Clifford Brown because they definitely had a way, and I named Dizzy, I'm pretty sure Dizzy Gillespie, all guitarist Charlie Christian who, so many guitar players and they still following what he did back in the late 30s and early 40s, Jimmy Blanton who changed the bass playing around, so you got to go along with people who made innovations in the music and you got to go with the young giants of the 60s, which to me was one of the best periods for jazz and we talk about Lee Morgan, we talk about Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, people like that, okay, then you go to the 70, well Rasson Rool and Kerr, what about Charles Meagas, all the people that he influenced and he brought through his room, yeah, and you go to the 70s and that's when

it got kind of turned around with the electronic sound, you know, it dominated it, but then if you look at it that way, you got to go with Eddie Harris. It love producer and host of the Cinecated Radio Series, the Evolution of Jazz. If you have a question or comment regarding this program, write us, remember views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin, until we have the opportunity again for in black America's technical producer Walter Morgan, I'm John L. Hanson Jr., please join us again next week. Reset copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America cassettes, Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, that's in black America cassettes, Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, from the Center for Telecommunication Services,

the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John L. Hanson Jr., join me this week on in black America. I started out as a local, just a series on my local program that was to go no longer in four or five weeks. Originally, it went about seven miles, it wasn't dropped, but by me, the Evolution of Jazz could add love this week on in black America.