Author Aaron J. Johnson covers a lot of ground in Jazz Radio America, detailing the rise and fall of stations and their changing formats, the careers of important DJs, and some of the regulatory activity surrounding the radio industry.
Understanding the relationship of any art form to mainstream media in America means looking at the push-pull between commercialism and art and the book links the relative presence or absence of jazz on radio with the rise and fall of its popularity. Although Johnson considers financial exigencies, he analyzes format changes through a lens that is politically and racially infused. I found the book’s value to be in its historical scope, so that even if one doesn’t necessarily agree with his analysis, one still gets an excellent overall view of the long relationship between radio and jazz.
Johnson, himself a musician and former radio person, counts anti-black sentiment as an important element in programming decisions. No doubt this was true and parallels the segregation that held sway through much of the 20th century. However, at times he overdraws the point. For example, he says “Black music could be used as a boogieman whenever needed to support a decision…”—for example, the decision to not program rock and roll. However, there was as much cultural noise about Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and company as there was about Big Joe Turner or Fats Domino.
Similarly, jazz began to be programmed in very late slots or overnight, about which Johnson writes: “Perhaps it is thought to belong there [late-night] with jazz representing nightlife in some people’s minds, but also those hours are safely distant from the ratings-crucial morning and evening rush-hours.” To which I say, both things are true and don’t need to be separated by a “but.” Finances always matter.
It was interesting to learn that the 1922 radio act championed by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover prohibited “mechanically reproduced” programs. The act required an announcement be made before any recorded music was played. Using radio as a platform for live versus recorded music was intertwined with the struggle by recording artists and record companies to get royalties for playing their records—a 75-year struggle, which I wrote about in my review of Beyond the Bandstand: Paul Whiteman in American Musical Culture (TST March 2025).
The author writes that boosting the fortunes of live music over recorded music, at least in the early part of this struggle, favored large corporate stations over local ones; his point being that the studio facilities needed to produce live music were not as available to local stations. I would like to have seen more statistical proof of this, as many of us are familiar with many locally produced music shows like WSM’s Barn Dance, WEAF’s The A&P Gypsies and WFJZ’s Light Crust Doughboys. More about the long struggle for performance royalties would also have been welcome.
A lot of jazz (or at least dance music/jazz) was heard in earlier radio days, but it was live. Country music programs arose (see above), some hosted by country musicians, but the same can’t be said about jazz. There was, however, a program begun in 1931 by a black radio man Jack Cooper that Johnson writes about here. Cooper produced the first weekly show featuring black performers, The All-Negro Hour, on WSBC in Chicago in 1929. WSBC was a station that “brokered” programs—sold blocks of time to different ethnicities. I’m not sure it’s irony exactly, but racism actually helped Cooper succeed: Because so much black music was not accepted into ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers), the sole music licensing agency at that time, Cooper was able to play “race records of gospel music” without having to pay the high ASCAP fees (which ASCAP paid to composers, not performers).
There was a trend, starting in the Bop era of the 1940s for jazz to divide into what became known as “mainstream,” “traditional,” and jazz that was more influenced by R&B. Johnson describes this same bifurcation happening on radio, with some stations picking up on jazz that was more critically acclaimed and black stations playing jazz that was more popular in the black community.
Post WWII, there was an explosion of new stations. There were more jazz shows, but the percentage of stations with jazz went down. By the mid-’60s, there was a drive for more black radio ownership, the rise of Black Liberation radio, and the development of the Urban Contemporary format to try and get both races to tune in.
As the ’60s moved into the ’70s, jazz moved more and more to the non-commercial end of the radio dial. Jazz was saved, Johnson says, but something was lost. He thinks the traditionalist mainstreamers won out over funk, soul, and other types of jazz. (He also has a problem with how little free or experimental jazz is played on NPR).
“The Jazz programming heard today,” he says, “is shaped by largely conservative aesthetic principles, as a baseline determined by the ideological position of the license holder concerning jazz but further constrained by conventional wisdom in audience research that stresses a consistent sonic approach to music that discourages innovation and diversity in jazz on the radio.” By consistent sonic approach, he means music that doesn’t vary significantly in style or volume from one track to the next.
He acknowledges the economic issues posed by a fading jazz audience, but says that stations, rather than responding with creative programming, “innovated cost management practices and used its lobbying power to obliterate restrictions on ownership.” He refers here to NPR’s opposition to Low Power FM. Around 2000, I was involved in the push to get LPFM and was unhappy to see NPR siding with NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) against that service.
Johnson makes the case that NPR stations need national programming in order to reach funding targets, but acquiring it is expensive. He says the need for CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) money moves stations away from their mission. But he also says how expensive it is to do local programming; a bind to which he proposes no solution except, as noted above, “more creative programming.”
As it stands today, the medium of audio is as fractured as any other, with radio shifting resources from the AM and even the FM dial and moving first to HD (High Definition), then to satellite radio and to streaming services that can be picked up in internet-ready automobiles. The regulatory arena in which radio and television has shifted to questions about Net neutrality and other internet-centric questions.
A person seeking jazz on the radio still has many choices. There are scores of internet jazz stations and in many large city markets, there are college stations and even a few indies that play jazz. As Johnson says: “The postwar history of jazz radio has demonstrated that jazz is at a disadvantage on social networks that require or demand popularity. Still, jazz has dedicated fans who will seek it out wherever it is available, and it has adherents who will make it available to listeners, one way or the other, at great personal sacrifice.”
Jazz Radio America
by Aaron J. Johnson
University of Illinois Press
www.press.uillinois.edu
328 pages; Cloth: $125
ISBN: 978-0-252-04622-3
Paper: $29.95
ISBN: 978-0-252-08830-8
eBook: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-252-04749-7
Steve Provizer is a brass player, arranger and writer. He has written about jazz for a number of print and online publications and has blogged for a number of years at: brilliantcornersabostonjazzblog.blogspot.com. He is also a proud member of the Screen Actors Guild.
