A JazzWax reader once asked me an interesting question: "How come so many people in New York know so much about jazz?" While there's no real answer to that question or whether the person's premise is even true, I took at shot at an answer: "We all came up listening to Ed Beach." [Photo above of Ed Beach]
Many jazz fans who aren't from the New York metropolitan area roll their eyes whenever jazz fans who came up in the 1960s and '70s begin waxing nostalgically about Beach's shows and on-air style. Which makes perfect sense, since the eye-rollers didn't have the privilege of hearing him and therefore found it painful to put up with those who had and consider him the best jazz DJ ever.
Here's the late Phil Schaap on Ed Beach as quoted in the New York Times's obit of Beach in 2010:
"He was a real illustration of how to do it with class, discographical information and reverence,” the jazz historian Phil Schaap said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “It hadn’t been done that way before.”
My only edit would be to add the word hip before the word reverence. Beach sounded as if he grew up pickled in the jazz world, and his cool delivery was natural and effortless. Listening to him, you wanted to be in the know, too. It's why I waited eagerly each week for Saturday evening to roll around, when Just Jazz aired. I even wrote him a letter once and received a typed letter back. Treasured correspondence.
Rather than yammer on about my own Beachian jazz education, I'm going to let you hear Ed Beach for yourself. That's right, a two-hour show on Billie Holiday. A footnote: I don't believe the 1961 air date listed is accurate. The broadcast does predate Beach's use of Wes Montgomery's D-Natural Blues as background music from The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, so it's not the early 1970s. But it's hard to fathom that this is 1961. For one, when Riverside Church launched WRVR-FM in 1961, it broadcast religious programming. Second, the FM radio band didn't exist on most radios until the late 1960s, so the church and Beach wouldn't be reaching much of anyone. My guess is that the following Just Jazz show is from 1967, though others think it's closer to 1963 given his mention of a Billie Holiday album release.
To listen to Ed Beach's complete Just Jazz showcasing Billie Holiday, simply go here. To my non-New York friends, now you know the secret.
