All Too Rare: The Rise and Fall of Jazz DJs on Utah AM Radio, 1945-1965

All Too Rare: The Rise and Fall of Jazz DJs on Utah AM Radio, 1945-1965

By LAURENCE M. YORGASON

Since the early 1960s disc jockeys have been highly visible promoters of rock and roll music on both AM and FM radio stations in Utah. They remain an integral and powerful influence in the spread and popularity of music. Almost forgotten by the general radio listening audience is an earlier group of DJs who played and promoted a popular genre of music that since the mid-1960s has nearly vanished from the AM radio dial. Jazz was that music, and those DJs who played jazz are the subject of this article.

Unlike their rock brethren, jazz DJs first made their appearance after jazz music had already reached its height of popularity elsewhere. As DJs came onto the listening scene in the middle 1940s, jazz and radio were already joined at the hip.

However, the end of World War II marked the beginning of a slow decline in the popularity of jazz music. The DJs’ on-air careers mirrored the fortunes of the music in the two subsequent decades. Jazz developed and became popular concurrently with the spread of radio, aided by that medium’s voracious appetite for music. Jazz featured rhythmic syncopation, improvisation and associations with youthful freedom, and despite vigorous opposition from conventional music authorities, its popularity began to exceed that of all other forms of music.

Hal Zogg

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

Jazz’s marriage to radio began in the first decades of the twentieth century, although the formation of jazz itself can be traced to the late nineteenth century. Before radio, early jazz performances were heard principally in cities where African Americans resided in substantial numbers. It wasn’t until live performances of white, large jazz-influenced dance bands were broadcast from large cities and heard on the newly formed national radio networks National Broadcasting Company (1926); Columbia Broadcasting System (1927); Mutual Broadcasting System (1934); and American Broadcasting Company (1943) that the rest of the country joined the listening party. And join they did, listening to Red Nichols and Paul Whiteman, moving through World War II with the big bands of Benny Goodman, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller, and finally enjoying the black bands of Duke Ellington, Count Basie and others. 1

Commercial radio in Utah utilized music wherever possible. Local radio stations in Utah featured programs with live and, eventually, recorded musical performances. The fare ranged from classical to all varieties of American popular music. However, dance music, with jazz phrasing, was limited to the radio audience along the Wasatch Front. 2

Rural radio stations KOAL in Price, KSUB in Cedar City, KS VC in Richfield, KJAM in Vernal, and a few others featured local musical performances as well as popular and western music, request shows, news and daily farm reports, mine work schedules and reports, local business happenings, weekly super-hero programs, serial dramatizations, high school athletics, religious programs, and state and church leaders’ visits. Occasionally, these rural stations carried network feeds of national broadcasts of classical performances. Two powerful stations, both 50,000 watt stations, Salt Lake City’s KSL and Denver’s KOA, were heard throughout Utah and parts of other western states. Salt Lake City’s KUTA was also heard in Delta. 3 Devotees of swing dance music during the 1930s and early 1940s likely never imagined that their favorite music would ever lose its appeal, but vocalists grew in popularity following the end of World War II, singing a new style of rhythm and blues, which developed out of the black musical community. This style would quickly evolve into rock and roll during the mid-1950s. 4 Despite the jazz characteristics found in the more structured big band swing style, many jazz musicians believed that music for dancing was esthetically limiting. Jazz music should free the emotions, encourage improvisation and on-the-spot creativity. This type of jazz was best performed by small musical ensembles at smaller venues. Such small musical groups provided the bulk of most recorded music played at radio stations by jazz disc jockeys. According to one musicologist, this jazz was less danceable, which resulted in a decline of the listening audience. 6

The radio and phonograph records were the principal means of disseminating music to America’s listening audience. Early radio broadcasts of jazz in Utah came by way of hookups to live performances from distant big cities. Radio station program directors or “engineers” turned the knobs, played the recordings, and read the news. Other employees produced in studio plays, dramas, quizzes, musical performances, and comedy pieces. Beginning in the late 1940s and through the 1950s, local remote radio broadcasts featured both Utah and celebrity swing bands. The most popular venues in northern Utah were The Terrace and the Rainbo Randevu in downtown Salt Lake City, and, of course, Lagoon, Saltair and the Avalon. These sites were large enough for big bands and numerous couples to dance. In almost all cases the featured music was Swing. For those who were unable to be present, these live radio broadcasts provided opportunities for couples and small groups to dance at home.

A new, regularly scheduled radio personality, the “disc jockey,” began airing his voice over the radio in the late 1930s. 7 In the greater Salt Lake City radio broadcast area, the voices of disc jockeys Bill Sears, Paul Alexander and Bill Agee at KUTA, Emerson Smith at KDYL, Salle Caprice at KUTA, and “Cousin” Ken Bennett at KLO were heard in the mid- 1940s. They played popular music during the morning hours and midday’s shows were frequently identified with their own names. These local radio shows lasted an hour. During other times of the day, stations interspersed these onehour programs with other short music programs of fifteen to thirty minute time blocks along with radio dramas, local and national news programs, celebrity sports and comedy. These “fillers” had titles such as “Sweet and Hot,” “Breakfast Time Tunes,” “Melody Minutes,” “Musical Mirage,” and “Moods in Rhythm,” to name a few. This programming pattern continued through the war years.

The first jazz disc jockey in Utah was Al Collins. Collins was probably not exaggerating when he described how the radio audience of 1945 responded to his music: “When I came out here people hadn’t heard hardly anything of jazz, really. I remember, I put Benny Goodman and Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge and Slim Gaillard and things like that on the air, and people never heard about them around here. So, they got a kick out of it. ” 8

Collins was quite optimistic about the place of jazz in American culture. Known as “Jazzbo” or “Jazzbeaux” before arriving in Salt Lake City, Collins had appended his nickname at the urging of a fellow employee, an “engineer” at station WIND in Chicago. 9 That nickname epitomized Collins’s casual and playful attitude, an outlook reflected in his approach to broadcasting. Because Collins found jazz an important musical form, he tried to present it accessibly and spontaneously to grab attention of the radio audience in Salt Lake City. But for Collins, jazz was also a means to an end. He paid close attention to the audience’s tolerance for this fairly new and unknown music: “Luckily I had enough controls on myself so I didn’t play any loud, steaming brass, and a lot of drum solos. I kept it all very tasty, and all within the realm of credibility. And I was able to get away with playing jazz under those conditions. See, that’s an important point for me.” 10 His audience became as interested in his antics as in the music he played. Jazzbo described a typical stunt while at KALL:

But [regarding] the Man on the Street Show, from the second floor, they hung a micro- phone down and onto the sidewalk. And I would take it and start broadcasting from there. But I noticed that every time I started a broadcast with that microphone, everybody would run away and go on the other side of the street.

So, one day I … took a blanket out of my car and put it down on the sidewalk, and I stretched out like I was either dead or unconscious. Pretty soon there were about twenty people standing around, and Nephi Sorenson, who was the engineer, gave me the sign, and I jumped up and I had a ready-made audience, and they never left after that. I used to do it everyday. Then it got to be a gag…. You didn’t see guys doing that in Salt Lake at that time. 11

Jazzbo’s unusual antics carried him beyond his usual broadcast studio and listening audience. He was invited to perform as a rodeo clown because the professional clown, who was also named Jazzbo, had been killed just before the rodeo arrived in town. Collins recalled:

that the rodeo producers had heard about me and my on air name and asked, “Why can’t you be the clown for the afternoon at the rodeo?” I said, “what do you do?” They said, “oh, you don’t do anything. You just come out and you do this to the bull and he looks like he’s gonna chase you. And we have another guy who does this over here and he goes over there. In the meanwhile you stand inside this barrel which had a rubber tire around both ends of it and in the middle. I said, “OK, I’ll do that.”

So I stood in the thing, and I didn’t know, but the guy standing in back of me doing that with his hands, and I’m just sitting there, and the bull did like he does in the cartoons. He turned into a locomotive, and headed straight for you-know-who. So when he gets about ten feet away, the clown that was coaching me says, “geez, get down in the barrel, get down in there, and put your arm up against the inside and cushion yourself, because he’s comin’.” He came, and hit that barrel and it took me off the ground and went around at least once, then came down and hit. And when it hit, it broke my glasses and gave me a helluva bruise on the arm.

I crawled out, and everybody at the place thought it was great. They didn’t know that I was in a state of shock, I really was, and I had to go home and rest the rest of the day. And the next day they called me up and asked what time I would be coming out for that afternoon’s performance. I just laughed for fifteen minutes just like you did. I said, “I don’t remember what you are even talking about.” But that was just one of those things. I just did it without even thinking, which was dumb. 12

Collins began his radio career in Utah at KALL on December 31, 1945, with a daily program he called “Jazz Band Jamboree” lasting from 4 to 4:30 p.m. 13 Collins also read the news and produced other programs for which he was not the host. His jazz show remained at the same time slot until April 1947, when he moved to KNAK where he hosted a daily two-hour show from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. The newspaper radio logs hint at his increasing popularity: “Jazzbo - with his big, fat satchel full of vout records. Mello, groovie bands, hits and bits of info. Solid jive. Before and after 5. If in doubt, vout!” 14

Jazzbo’s adoption of “hep” or “hip” jargon followed new developments in jazz. Shelly Hyde, a jazz pianist in Salt Lake City in the late 1940s and the 1950s, was a friend of Jazzbo. His son Jan attested that Shelly and Jazzbo often used this language in both public and private: “They were always talking this ‘jive’ language. I mean it was a completely different thing, and in those days it was really different. Not Beatnik, but a hipster thing: ‘Hey man, that’s a great short you have there;’ a car, you know. And ‘crazy, man.’ ‘I dig it.’ ‘Get with it,’ ‘Well, all-reet,’ ‘Macvout-o-rooney,’ ‘eee gad zooks, man!’” 15

While at KNAK from July 1948 to March 1949, Collins was simply listed as “Jazzbo.” That latter date marked the end of Collins’s stint at KNAK; he then returned to KALL with fanfare. The station promoted his return in the morning paper with the advertisement on the newspaper’s radio log page on April 1: “It’s April Fools Day! But We’re Still Not Talking To find out who came to KALL – Dial 910 KC at 8:15 A.M. and 4:15 P.M. Today and 1 P.M. Saturday KALL where anything can happen.” The radio log entry read: “Surprise. Don’t miss KALL’s newest disc jockey. Tune in. Who is he?” 16

From April 1949, through early February 1950, Collins was featured at KALL with shows variously titled as; “Jazzbo’s Hit Parade of music—Music of such stars as Kay Starr, D. Shore, Stan Kenton, F. Martin, King Cole, Woody Herman. All the Top recording Stars;” “Jazzbo the Mellow fellow, Top Stars such as Mel Torme, Lionel Hampton, Kay Starr, Les Brown;” “Happy Al - Music, ph. calls, Music, jokes, Music, interviews, music, gab.” 17 Significantly, the time slot for his jazz shows changed during this period, airing live from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. weekdays and 1:00 to 4:15 p.m. on Saturdays. Beginning in January 1950, his broadcast times shifted to late evenings, from 10:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m., a time slot in which all jazz programs in Utah were soon placed. This change was probably driven by economic factors, reflecting the changing nature of the music played, its altered social function, and its diminishing popularity.

In February that same year, Collins moved his jazz program to KDYL. The ad on the radio log newspaper page announced: “He’s on KDYL the new 1950 ‘Jazzbo’ Al Collins with all his old tricks and a bag full of new plus novelty platters latest tunes 11:15 tonight and every night except Sunday KDYL Utah’s NBC station.” 18

Collins simultaneously worked afternoon television at KUTV, where he had his own show. Like some of his radio shows, the TV show had nothing to do with jazz. His jazz broadcasts continued until September 1950, when he left Utah for New York City. He returned to Salt Lake City in September 1957, for a three and a half month layover on KALL. In January 1958, he left for San Francisco. 19

John Brophy in his home studio, 1958.

After Collins left Utah, the on-air priorities of Utah disc jockeys focused their attention to promoting (an evolving) jazz. The jazz disc-jockeys who came after Collins were more dedicated to the new music, white though they were. For them the “swing” of the war years gradually became old hat. The up-and-coming generation, while still dancing to swing orchestras, began to explore new forms of music. Increasingly public preferences for radio music moved to pop, with African American vocalists turning eventually to rhythm and blues. With the decline of jazz’s popularity, Salt Lake City DJs focused their appeal on a more “sophisticated” listening audience: the white connoisseurs of jazz who aspired to an upper-middle-class lifestyle. 20

John Brophy exemplified this new approach. In 1947, while a student at the University of Utah, he began broadcasting jazz on weekends. He also worked as an advertising salesman at KUTV television. But jazz “was the love of his life.” Because the radio station owned no jazz recordings, he tape-recorded jazz in a studio he set up in his home and then played the program over the air from KUTA. He followed this procedure throughout his broadcasting career in Utah.

He left Utah for a time working in New York and Los Angeles before returning to Salt Lake City where he resumed DJing at KCPX in November 1962. 21 A recording of one of his shows in 1962 reveals a laid back, reasonably well-informed and earnest salesman of jazz. 22

Brophy’s jazz programs into the mid 1960s were sponsored by high-end men’s stores, Arthur Frank’s the Racquet Shop, Al Hohman’s Florsheim Shoes, as well as the House of Music, which featured high-end home sound equipment and recordings of all types of music.

The third jazz disc jockey to appear on radio in Utah was Hal Zogg. Zogg was born in 1924 in Ohio, where he grew up and was drafted into the army. While Zogg was in the service, his father took a job at Kennecott Copper and his parents moved to Magna. After his discharge from the army Zogg joined his parents in Magna. He found Utah to be “…quite a culture shock, and he couldn’t believe there was no place to relax and listen to jazz.” To provide such a place, he started the first VFW club in Magna. Like Brophy, he began his radio career while attending the University of Utah in 1948. 23 He continued his work as a DJ until 1955.

Although we have no record of his time slots from 1948 to 1952, it is likely that Zogg’s shows aired on KUTA in the late evening hours. Like Brophy, he was very interested in jazz, which probably came out of his experience in the army. After ending his career as a DJ he worked as an advertising salesman for both KUTA and KUTV, where he eventually became sales manager. In 1970 he died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age forty-five.

While John Brophy and Hal Zogg worked to bring nationally known small jazz groups such as Dave Brubeck’s Quartet to Utah, jazz was seldom performed on the formal concert stage in Utah until the 1960s. 24 Unlike Zogg and Brophy, Jazzbo Collins was not interested in arranging for nationally recognized musicians to play in Utah. Collins was more interested in making a name for himself whereas Zogg and Brophy were more interested in educating the public about new developments in jazz. Their approaches to broadcasting jazz were perhaps both competitive and complementary. Collins was the zany one, using jazz and other attractions to increase his audience. Zogg and Brophy were the serious advocates, basically volunteering their time for jazz, but making their livings in sales. As Zogg said as he signed off his late programs, “Take care, and listen every chance you get, ‘cause it is all too rare.”

Paul Smith at the KDYL microphone, 1959.

Occasionally, Brophy and perhaps Zogg as well did indulge in some antics. Jan Hyde recalled that while his father, Shelly Hyde, who was rather spontaneous himself, was playing nightly at Olie’s Terrace Room, located at 158 South 300 East, in the early 1950s, Brophy also had a fifteen-minute show there and one night Brophy began his show with: ‘“Well, this is John Brophy at the Olie’s Terrace Room…We have Shelly Hyde here; hey, Shelly, what have you got up your sleeves tonight?’ And he [Shelly] says, ‘a couple of bloody elbows.’ That really happened. Well, Brophy just came apart.” 25

Beginning in the late 1950s an increasing number of jazz shows competed for audience in the greater Salt Lake City radio listening market. These new jazz programs featured several new disc jockeys: Paul Smith, Jack Warren, Ron Ross, Wes Bowen, Rob Branch, Michael Kavenaugh, “Daddy Wiggins” (Ron Silver), Starley Bush, Murray Williams and Joe Meier; all had great love for jazz.

Paul Smith began his broadcasting career in Provo at KEYY sometime before 1955, when he moved to KDYL. He enthusiastically promoted jazz and MC’d celebrity performances and interviewed many musicians. By 1962, citing jazz’s “decline of popularity,” he explained, “I saw the handwriting on the wall. I’m not that good, and I’d better get me another career or I’m just going to be nothing here. And I don’t want to play rock.” 26 He returned to school, worked at KUER, and then joined U. S. Senator Orrin Hatch’s staff as his press secretary. Smith worked for Hatch for twenty years.

Ron “Erik the Red” Ross DJd at KDYL where he played the same artists as Smith. He was one of only two DJs who were also musicians; the other was Murray Williams, whose son Steve Williams, is the jazz DJ for KUER. Ross claimed he was “never a really good musician,” while Williams, on the other hand, was quite accomplished. Neither focused his career on being a DJ. Ross had multiple interests: he played piano in jam sessions in Ogden with jazz saxophonist Joe McQueen in the 1940s; obtained graduate degrees in dance and theater and was an instructor in dance at Utah State University. He was “Fireman Frank” on Channel Four and “Engineer Ron” on Channel Three in Salt Lake City, “Doc Ross” the weatherman on TV in Las Vegas and he was an advertising manager for a car dealer in Nevada. 27

Murray Williams, a DJ at KALL, came to Utah from the east coast for family reasons. He was a professional clarinet and saxophone player, who played with the very best from Red Nichols in the 1930s to Charlie Parker in the 1950s. In Utah he discovered that music would not pay the way, so he became involved in various business endeavors, including a short stay in the early 1960s on a radio program called “Moondial.” He never returned to music as a full-time occupation, but did play with numerous Utah bands until his death in 1995. 28

Rob Branch worked for Starley Bush, owner of KWIC in the mid-1960s. The station originally featured mixed programming, but when it lost its lease in the Newhouse Hotel on Main Street and 400 South and its program director left programming changed. The staff followed Branch’s suggestion to change the format to all jazz. The new format lasted less than a year as country and western music replaced jazz when a new program director was hired. 29

Bush also DJ’d briefly on his radio station until he realized that the jazz format could not be profitable. Michael Kavanagh worked as a DJ spinning jazz music under Starley Bush as well. The crowded market made jazz programming unprofitable, especially in the face of rock and roll’s increasing popularity in the 1960s. Starley Bush eventually converted his station KSXX to a successful “talk” format. Kavanagh made the switch playing rock and “smooth jazz’’ at the radio station called “The Breeze.” 30

From 1960 to 1965, the two most influential jazz shows in Utah were on KSL in Salt Lake City and KEYY in Provo, although the latter station’s signal rarely reached beyond the Point of the Mountain. These two shows featured disc jockeys Wes Bowen and Joe Meier who developed loyal and growing audiences. Bowen came onto the scene first, broadcasting on KUTA from midway through 1955 to the middle of 1956, moving to KMUR from the end of 1956 to October 1958, and finally making the switch to KSL where he broadcast jazz until the end of 1965. Joe Meier began at KEYY in Provo in January 1956 and continued the longest run on one station of any jazz show in Utah, ending in 1965 at virtually the same time Wes Bowen terminated his show.

Bowen’s success in part was due to the huge KSL reception area. KSL was a clear channel 50,000 watt station that was heard, at least at night, throughout the western states, and sometimes in the Midwest. As a result, several San Francisco businesses frequently advertised on Bowen’s show.

Dick Nourse, a well-known KSL news personality, recalled that when he “discovered Wes Bowen and all his jazz,” as a teenager in Ennis, Montana, he “would lie in bed in the dark with my portable radio, and listen to him ‘til I fell asleep.” Nourse said he became a jazz pianist, arranger and composer because of Bowen’s influence. 31 Larry Jackstien, a noted Salt Lake City jazz pianist related a similar story. He first heard Bowen on station KMOR (KMUR), and became fascinated by his approach to jazz. He eventually met Bowen, which led to much collaboration over four decades in producing jazz shows, celebrity concerts and other jazz related events in Salt Lake City. Bowen’s commanding knowledge of jazz and the power of KSL were a distinct advantage over other jazz DJs.

Gene Minshall, a colleague of Bowen’s at KSL, recalled an incident with film music composer Henry Mancini that manifested Bowen’s influence in the West:

I remember I had gone to L.A. one time. I was independent from KSL, but still had close ties; they wanted me to do a spot for their counterpart in Los Angeles that was owned by Bonneville Productions. I went over and they set it up with Henry Mancini. I went to his home. This happened several years after I had met him.

When I arrived, Mancini was not in the right mood to do anything. He was cantankerous when we went in and I showed him the copy. But he was just miserable to work with. Finally, I said, “wait a minute; screw this. [I said to my cameraman—Peter] pack up your camera and let’s get the hell out of here.” I went over to Mancini, and I said, “You don’t remember me, but we met one time, and I’m a very good friend of Wes Bowen. Wes worships the ground you walk on.”

He said, “You know Wes Bowen?” I said, “Yes, very well.” Peter had packed up his camera and was on his way out, and I had turned and walked out. [Mancini] followed me and caught me in the driveway: “I haven’t talked to Wes for a long time. Tell me, how is he?” I told him that he was just fine. He said that he needed to call him. He said, “Come on in; let’s do this thing again.” He couldn’t have been nicer then. “Don’t tell Wes that I was such an *******.” I said, “All right, I won’t.” So we got a great sound-bite from Mancini. He loved Wes, and he said, “This guy has probably done more for jazz and the enlightenment of jazz in the West than anybody.” 32

Jackstien said Bowen employed a certain technique to educate the audience.

[He would] pick out an artist — I can think of some examples like Mose Allison and Charlie Byrd — who weren’t very well known at the time. He would pick out some of their best cuts, and like any good pop DJ, he would play them on a regular basis. Not once every month or once every three months. He’d play them every night or every other night, either a different selection or the same cut. The artists that he wanted to push would sell all kinds of their records in Salt Lake and become a phenomenon. People would say, “How come all those records would be sold in Salt Lake?” It was because Wes had great taste; he’d pick a good artist, and he made Mose Allison and Charlie Byrd big stars in Salt Lake. 33

Bowen’s taste in jazz was mainstream: Oscar Peterson, Charlie Byrd, Stan Getz, Herbie Hancock, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Ray Brown, among others. He had no use for the rock-crossover groups emerging across the United States in the last years of his shows. Bowen’s erudition was broad; he loved poetry. He was generous with his time and name. He used his influence to provide help for needy children in India. Minshall said “he was also a world class authority on warfare and the structure of war. He could talk for hours on the Napoleonic era and the techniques and strategies of people like Wellington and Napoleon and Nelson would use to defeat an enemy.”

Bowen was a pioneer, at least in the KSL broadcast area. He inaugurated a ground-breaking public call-in show in March 1961, where community, state and national issues were discussed each night for a half hour or more preceding his jazz show. Public Pulse continued well after his jazz show ended in 1966. He was also a member of the station editorial staff and became a vice-president at KSL before leaving for other business opportunities. 34 Bowen later returned to the airwaves, where he hosted a jazz program at the University of Utah’s KUER-FM station. He died in 2003.

The last jazz DJ on a Utah AM radio station was Joe Meier. He worked for KEYY which had 250 watts and covered only Utah County. Meier, hired in late 1955, was instrumental in KEYY’s decision to stick to the bigband repertoire, and he gradually added mainstream jazz performers. Two radio stations in Provo, KEYY and KOVO, catered to the young listening audience in the 1950s and 1960s. KOVO played the latest musical trends: Elvis, the Beatles and other popular artists. The big band jazz format remained alive in Utah Valley well into the 1950s because of its popularity at dances at Brigham Young University. KEYY decision makers liked the same music, and opted for the Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole crowd at BYU.

Gary Madsen, a part-time DJ at KEYY during the last two or three years of Meier’s tenure, led one of the big bands that played for Utah Valley dances. Meier produced concerts, interviewed celebrities and involved the community in his programs. He said his show’s format was mostly left up to him: “We were amazingly loose back in those days.” BYU brought Stan Kenton to town in the late 1950s, and Meier interviewed him on air for three hours:

Wes Bowen.

We kept playing his records and he kept saying, “Don’t you have to play some commercials?. . . ” I said, “Stan, don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of that.” Two hundred fifty-watt radio stations, even in college towns in those days, were not known for their great revenue potential. We actually added it up and found we averaged $0.67 a spot if we counted all the programs. So we weren’t missing much. But we gave him virtually the entire afternoon of the concert, and I loved every minute of it. 35

Meier, with the support of KEYY and other financial backers, also brought in Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Pete Jolley and Richie Kamuka to perform at LDS stake centers and in the old Provo Tabernacle.

Meier continued at KEYY until the end of 1965, when he was hired by KSL. The move coincided with the termination of Wes Bowen’s jazz show. Meier stayed with KSL for seven years, leaving in 1972 for CBS. The departure of Meier ended jazz programming at both KSL and KEYY in 1965, and jazz programming on AM radio in Utah.

As in other parts of the country, the fortunes of jazz on Utah AM radio reflected the value of jazz in the public eye from the mid 1930s to 1965. Radio exposed listeners and dancers to the likes of Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Glenn Miller, all of whom played danceable jazz.

Joe Meier

The end of World War II brought to the public listening audience new forms of jazz, which featured longer improvised solos, faster tempos and tricky melodies. This musical style was not well suited for dancing. At the same time, vocalists began to dominate the popular music scene, and jazz became more specialized, appealing to fewer people and requiring much more of the listener. Jazz radio programming in Utah reflected this narrower style which appealed to middle-class aficionados. With the exception of Al Collins, Salt Lake Valley’s radio jazz disc jockeys were usually willing to produce their programs as a hobby and as an expression of their zeal to spread the word about jazz and expand the audience; they were among that smaller group of devotees who felt that the music was “all too rare.”

When the early forms of rock and roll and talk radio entered the picture, radio management saw the financial handwriting on the wall: jazz programming was no longer supported by radio advertisers. Bowen and Meier continued to host jazz programs on the AM dial until 1965. Their style was unique. When they left the AM airwave, jazz radio was done. Today, only KUER radio schedules a late evening program of jazz.

Notes

Laurence (Lars) M. Yorgason is a free-lance author and jazz musician with degrees in music and history from Brigham Young University. He is currently researching and writing an historical study of jazz music and jazz musicians in Utah.

1 The following general histories of jazz trace these developments: Mark C. Gridley, Jazz Styles: History and Analysis, 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000); Brian Harker, Jazz: An American Journey (Upper Saddle River, NJ Prentice Hall, 2004); David D. Megill, Paul O.W. Tanner, Jazz Issues: A Critical History (Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark, 1995); Frank Tirro, Living with Jazz: An Appreciation (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1996); and Jack Wheaton, All That Jazz! (New York: Ardsley House, 1994).

The relationship of cities to jazz music is discussed in Charles Nanry, The Jazz Text (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1979); and Leroy Ostransky, Jazz City: The Impact of Our Cities on the Development of Jazz (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978).

Analysis of relationships between black and white musicians and their audiences in the period are found in LeRoi Jones, Blues People (New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1963); Burton W. Peretti, The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992); August and John H. Bracey Meier eds. Music in American Life and Blacks in the New World (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); and Ben Sidran, Black Talk (New York: Da Capo Press, 1981).

2 This analysis was made from examining radio logs in Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Provo newspapers from 1930 to 1950.

3 Tim Larson and Robert K. Avery, “Utah Broadcasting History,” Utah History Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Kent Powell (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1994), 55-58. Tom Mulvey, “Denver Radio: 80 Years of Change,” www.broadcastprofessionals.net/denver-radio.html (accessed September 20, 2007).

4 Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm & Blues (New York: Penguin Books, 1988).

5 For more on this subject see Scott DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997) and Neil Leonard, Jazz and the White Americans (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962; reprint, 1972), 133-55.

6 See Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 845-49; David W. Stowe, Swing Changes: Big-Band Jazz in New Deal America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 204-205, 209-210, 241-45. At the same time that jazz DJs first appeared, a new music style, bebop, was also developing. This new style found its roots in New York City, beginning in the early 1940s, but remained silent to many of the listening audience. In June 1942 and for the next two years the American Federation of Musicians struck the major recording companies, which limited new recordings and which thwarted for a time the new bebop sound. See Veaux, The Birth of Bebop, 17-27.

7 Peter Gammond, “Disc Jockey” in The Oxford Companion to Popular Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 156.

8 Al “Jazzbo” Collins, interviewed by Paul Smith in the late 1950s; and Al Collins interviewed by Tim Larson and Greg Thompson, April 8, 1992. Transcript copies in possession of the author.

9 Al Collins interview by Larson and Thompson.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Salt Lake Tribune, December 31, 1945.

14 Salt Lake Tribune, April 21, 1947.

15 Jan Hyde interview by Laurence M. Yorgason, December 7, 2000. Transcript copy in possession of author.

16 Salt Lake Tribune, April 1, 1949.

17 Salt Lake Tribune, July 9 and 15, August 27 and 29, 1949, January 2, 1950.

18 Salt Lake Tribune, February 27, 1950.

19 In New York Collins fashioned his most memorable gimmick, one for which he became nationally famous. As Dave Cavenaugh wrote in a New York Times October 4, 1997 obituary reporting Collins’s 1997 death: “At WNEW, he decided to situate his show in a fantasy underground landscape, the Purple Grotto, populated by creatures like Harrison, the purple Tasmanian owl, and Jukes, a purple chameleon. Speaking in beatnik-inspired slang with a low, leisurely voice, he drew a loyal following. He was known for his horn-rimmed glasses and his wardrobe of jump suits, including a formal one.

20 Ball rooms such as the Coconut Grove, the Rainbow Randevu, and Danceland flourished in Utah from the 1950s through the 1970s. For more, see Jarren L.Jones, “Close Enough for Jazz: An Autobiography,” (Salt Lake City: self published, 1982), copy available in the Utah State Historical Society Library.

21 Salt Lake Tribune November 22, 1962.

22 A copy of the show is in the author’s possession.

23 Christie Lueders, e-mail correspondence, August 24, 2004.

24 Ibid., Hyde Interview. Jan Hyde remembered that Dave Brubeck played in Utah in 1948-49. Carol Brophy recalled that Zogg and Brophy worked together to bring several musicians to Salt Lake City. Sometime after 1953 Red Norvo (1908-1999), born Kenneth Norville, an early jazz vibraphonist and composer, appeared at the Old Mill, a dance hall at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon. Brubeck played at the Casbah, a club directly across from the City and County Building on 4th South. Starley Bush remembered that Brophy and Zogg were the first to bring national jazz names to Utah. Starley Bush interview by Laurence M. Yorgason, January 28, 2006. Transcript in author’s possession.

25 Hyde Interview.

26 Paul Smith, interview by Laurence M. Yorgason, February 3, 2006. Transcript in author’s possession.

27 Ron Ross, interview by Laurence M. Yorgason, December 3, 2000. Transcript in author’s possession.

28 Steve Williams, interview by Laurence M. Yorgason, December 15, 2004. Transcript in author’s possession.

29 Rob Branch, interview by Laurence M. Yorgason, 2005. Transcript in author’s possession.

30 Bush Interview; Michael G. Kavanagh, interview by Laurence M. Yorgason, September 10, 2004. Transcript in author’s possession.

31 Dick Nourse, unpublished comments at Wes Bowen Funeral, September 12, 2003. Copy in author’s possession.

32 Gene Minshall, interview by Laurence M. Yorgason, September 20, 2004. Transcript in author’s possession.

33 Ibid., Larry Jackstien, interview by Laurence M. Yorgason, January 20, 2005. Transcript in author’s possession.

34 Minshall Interview, and Nourse, Wes Bowen funeral comments.

35 Joe Meier, interview by Laurence M. Yorgason, February 11, 2006. Transcript in author’s possession.