Dick Buckley retires..

[LouieB]

Those of us who live in Chicago have a love/hate relationship with WBEZ our public radio station. Programming at BEZ has been somewhat flakey for many years now, but the one bonehead move they made was to eliminate nearly all the music programming and put in talk all evening. It used to be that BEZ had jazz on all evening and into the early morning hours. That is now all gone and the sole voice of jazz on BEZ is Dick Buckley, who has held down what is now a one or two hour show on Sunday afternoons, playing mainstream type jazz. Today is Buckley's last show.

 

Now there are those detractors of Buckley, who's thirty years on the air at BEZ (and in the early days many hours on weeknights) was a mainstay. Buckley's taste is solidly mainstream and sometimes he tended to get long winded with his stories and reading record credits. I never minded and in fact I learned alot about the one type of jazz I was never all that fond of, which was pre-WWII material, such as big band, swing, and other sorts of mainstream type stuff. While Buckley played some modern jazz, his heart was in those schools that developed during the 30s and 40s. Dick's shows were often marred by his forgetting to turn off the microphone while records were playing and his somewhat narrow taste, but the breadth of his record collection and knowledge always made up for it in my opinion. Listening to him made me appreciate what I had not been listening to which always started with traditional jazz and skipped right over the big band era to bebop and other sorts of modern jazz.

 

With Buckley leaving the air, BEZ can now schedule more inane talk shows and less jazz. I am pretty sure that this show is streamed, but really listening to his last show probably won't give you an idea of how good he was when he was on or how much he loved the music he played. A person like Buckley can not be easily replaced, since the music he plays is no longer aired. Good luck Dick, its been a great run.

 

LouieB

[Duck-Billed Catechist]

I actually like their new evening lineup better.

[LouieB]

Well I am still pissed at them for getting rid of Stuart Rosenberg. I suppose there is something to be said for all the talk in the evening, but I don't turn the station on since I have pretty much gotten my fill of talk during the day.

 

LouieB

[NightOfJoy]

Buckley has that ultra distinctive voice that you cant mistake for anyone else. His was a nice show to listen to while driving somewhere on a Sunday afternoon. He'll be missed.

[LouieB]

Buckley has that ultra distinctive voice that you cant mistake for anyone else. His was a nice show to listen to while driving somewhere on a Sunday afternoon. He'll be missed.

Thats usually when I listened to it also. The final show was striking in terms of how old Dick sounded. Kind of sad and upsetting really, I guess that's just the way it goes.

 

LouieB