Introductions

In the late 1980's I assumed the role of co-host for a late night jazz radio program with David Lewis. The program was called The Night Train and it aired Wednesday night / Thursday morning from midnight until 2:00am. David had been the sole host for the program for a while (months? years?) but generously agreed to have me "sit in" with him while I learned how to "do radio".

The Night Train was a genre-specific program - jazz - but that was only part of what the show was all about. David had devised a template by which each episode was modeled. Each week the playlist was built upon jazz recorded on the day of the show throughout the century or so of recorded jazz.

What was incredible to me was the fact that David had collected all hit discographical information before the the existence of the internet. Much of his data had been collected by manually writing down recording dates from the backs of LP dust jackets and CD j-cards! He logged all his information in a master tome which referred to reverently as "the book". Each day of the year consisted of a series of years, artists, albums, tunes and line ups. David would prepare each program to run chronologically from the earliest recordings to the most recent giving the listener a thumb nail history of jazz from a fresh perspective each week.

I once asked his why he had started such a time intensive way of modeling his show. His response was a surprise to me. He felt much of the music he heard on the radio were selections the respective hosts liked the most. He said he wanted to get away from the predictable. He felt if there was another reason for choosing a piece of music to play that he (and his listeners) would end up hearing something he might not otherwise play because of being overlooked for something he liked better at the time.

Now, more than twenty years later, I've decided to begin a podcast that mirrors this methodology. So, for the best of jazz, listen to Jazz Date.