Why “My Favorite Things?”

Back in the 1970′s I was producing a weekly jazz radio show which was broadcast at 5:00p.m. every Friday.  Being a Basie fan I named the show “Jive At Five” and used the song as my theme. After a while there was a schedule change at the station and my program was moved to Monday night.

Thus, I had to come up with a new name for the show.  At the time I was playing an album by the Dave Brubeck Quartet which featured the music of RIchard Rodgers.  The Quartet’s version of “My Favorite Things” had a nice jaunty feel to it and to my ear made for a good medium tempo show opener.

Since the show was produced from my personal music collection (the station was a Classical Music station), I thought that My Favorite Things was a natural title for the program.  Thus began a long run of weekly jazz broadcasts that continued through 1991.

Over the years I played a lot of recordings and interviewed a long list of musicians.  There were a number of performances in the studio featuring area players and some visiting musicians too.

Local concerts were recorded for broadcast and there even were several live broadcasts including an evening at the Central PA Jazz Festival that was heard statewide.

It was because of my weekly broadcast that I was invited to become a co-founder of the Central PA Friends of Jazz.  My experience starting and running a jazz society then proved invaluable when I began to produce the summer concert series in Mt. Gretna, PA.

Also my long-running gig as a Jazz wriiter with the local daily paper happened in large part because of my weekly presence on the radio.

Back in 1970 when I started the first show all I wanted to accomplish was to play my music on the radio.  I never would have imagined that more than 30 years later my life and career would have traveled the path it has taken.