An early FM radio freak, I had discovered WRVR a few years earlier, when I was listening (and taping) from WOR, WKCR, and NY pacifica outlet WBAI. But it was while I was bedridden, and studying jazz as a listener, that Ed Beach was my lifeline, and continued to be from 1968 through the 1970s. I think that WRVR continued to play Ed’s shows into the late seventies, and I was crestfallen when WRVR began playing pop-oriented jazz, and then horrified when the station was sold by Riverside Church and eventually went country. I’ve always been interested in what the LOC was going to do with his tapes. I’ve tried to dub as many of the shows as I could, however, now the VHS tapes are in danger of deteriorating. I still maintain my Pionee RT-909 reel-to-reel, mostly to co plate the process of dubbing and digitizing my Just Jazz treasures. I pray that they will be made available online via University libraries. I would never want to profit from the music on my tapes, but would like to share the joy of having Ed warmly leading us through the history of these great artists.

Thanks Ed.
R.I.P.

I listened to him 1960-1963 on WRVR. I would come home from school when I was in 6th-9th grades and tune him in. As a kid, I was always fiddling with a radio knob wherever I was, in the kitchen, in the car, in my bedroom, etc., absorbing all kinds of music without regard to genre, or anything else. All I knew or cared about was whether I liked it or not. If I didn’t like what was on Ed Beach’s show, I would check out the rock and roll on WPRB from Princeton Univ. or the classical music on WNCN. There was a wealth of music on the radio in the greater New York metropolitan area back then.

Ed Beach played complete discographies. For instance, he devoted 2 or 3 consecutive shows to the recordings of Thelonios Monk, 1953-1955. He would back announce by giving a precise, clinical description of each and every tune: the personnel, how many bars, whether it was a blues, order of solos, and date and place of the recording. His repertoire was as broad and deep as jazz itself. Just to give a sampling, I learned about the music of Eddie Condon, Willy the Lion Smith, Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, Maynard Ferguson, Woody Herman, Jimmy Guiffre, Jerry Mulligan, Wes Montgomery, Dizzy Gillespie, etc. etc.. It never felt like a lecture, never felt like he was talking down to me. Rather, he leavened everything with a dry understated, hip sense of humor that was always a pleasure to listen to.

There never was or has been since anyone like him. For instance, Phil Schaap on WKCR also plays jazz discographies, but is, by comparison, charmless, boring, laborious and endlessly verbose. Ed Beach’s mike breaks, by contrast, were short, to the point and always fun, revealing the play of an intelligent, witty, spry mind and humbly hip soul.