Longest serving music broadcasters
mainLeigh Kamann has died, aged 92. He went on air in 1940 and Saturday nights, from 1980 to 2007, he spun jazz on MPR.
David Jacobs, who died last year aged 87, played music on the BBC from 1950 to a few months before his death.
Anthony Hopkins, who died in May, broacast about music on the BBC for almost 50 years.
Anyone of equivalent longevity and influence?
Oscar Brand has been hosting the Folksong Festival on WNYC in NY since 1945. I think the show has been in repeats for a couple years now but he’s still doing well, I hear, at age 94.
http://www.wnyc.org/people/oscar-brand/
way to go!
My friend and colleague Humphrey Burton started broadcasting in 1957 – not a bad innings so far.
Ivor Hugh who died in 2013 aet 86 hosted a classical music program weeknights from 8 to midnight for 35 years on radio station WJMJ of Hartford, Ct. He had no inhibitions about lining up three or four major symphonies on right after the other.
Although born in London, he was of Welsh heritage.
I echo the ‘Bravo.” Robert Conrad of WCLV in Cleveland has also been on for many years. Although not nearly approaching the fame of those broadcasters mentioned, I have been broadcasting classical music here in Virginia for 54 years (now on WHRO-FM Norfolk). My broadcasting colleague Dwight Davis and I have worked together for 40 years doing classical radio – I wonder if that is some sort of record? I would certainly like to hear about other “ancients of the airwaves!”- Raymond Jones WHRO-FM Norfolk VA
Chuck Cecil has been broadcasting The Swingin’ Years since 1955 in Los Angeles. He just recently went off the air in LA but still heard on WPPB.
Tom Dixon in Southern California was a classical broadcaster for 52 years from 1946 to his retirement in 1998.
He passed away in 2010:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/01/local/la-me-tom-dixon1-2010apr01
Vin Scully has been the radio voice of the Dodgers baseball club since 1950, announcing games from the original location of the franchise in Brooklyn and following the team to its current location in Los Angeles. For many of those years, it was a solo gig for Scully, much like Milton Cross or Peter Allen at the MET. Although a sportscaster by title, Scully narrates the action both on and off the field in a way that conveys the true art and beauty of the game. While not introducing masterpieces of Western Music, his descriptions of the proceedings on the field and his off-the-cuff analogies have aptly been described as sheer poetry.
One can certainly add his name to any list of mellifluously timbred hosts in the classical music realm. At almost eighty-seven years old, Scully is still going strong. He confirmed this past July that he will be returning for the 2015 season–his 66th with the Dodgers.
“Uncle Ray” Cordeiro, MBE, who will be 90 in December, has been broadcasting jazz on Hong Kong radio since 1949. His current program, “All the Way with Ray,” began on Radio Television Hong Kong in 1970.