Al Jazzbeaux Collins Movie with Jon Hammond KCSM Jazz 91
  • 9 years ago
Al Jazzbeaux Collins Movie with Jon Hammond KCSM Jazz 91


The late great radio and TV broadcaster personality Al Jazzbeaux Collins in the studios of KCSM Jazz 91 with organist Jon Hammond - aka Al Jazzbo Collins, one of the greatest and most definitely coolest broadcasters who ever lived. *Note: I dearly miss Jazzbeaux, he was a huge inspiration to me personally. He broke out my music on the air back in New York on WNEW 1130AM huge powerful door he opened for me, we had a lot of fun together on both coasts - he introduced me to folks like Lionel Hampton, David Panama Francis, Lew Anderson band leader and Clarabell the Clown from It's Howdy Doody Time! TV Show, Joe Bushkin pianist, and his Family the Collins Family - he knew every door man garbage man and taxi drivers on the street - rest in peace Albert! sincerely, Jon Hammond *including a clip from Live performance in Horizons Sausalito with funky James Preston drums on Jon Hammond Band https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_%22Jazzbo%22_Collins Albert Richard "Jazzbo" Collins (born January 4, 1919, Rochester, New York[1] — d. September 30, 1997, Marin County, California) was an American disc jockey, radio personality and recording artist who was briefly the host of NBC television's Tonight show in 1957.

The name "Jazzbo" derived from a product Collins had seen, a clip-on bowtie named Jazzbows. Just as Martin Block created the illusion that he was speaking from the Make Believe Ballroom, Collins claimed to be broadcasting from his inner sanctum, a place known as the Purple Grotto, an imaginary setting suggested by radio station WNEW's interior design, as Collins explained:

I started my broadcast in Studio One which was painted all kinds of tints and shades of purple on huge polycylindricals which were vertically placed around the walls of the room to deflect the sound. It just happened to be that way. And with the turntables and desk and console and the lights turned down low, it had a very cavelike appearance to my imagination. So I got on the air, and the first thing I said was, "Hi, it's Jazzbo in the Purple Grotto." You never know where your thoughts are coming from, but the way it came out was that I was in a grotto, in this atmosphere with stalagtites and a lake and no telephones. I was using Nat Cole underneath me with "Easy Listening Blues" playing piano in the background.
Collins grew up on Long Island, New York. In 1941, while attending the University of Miami in Florida, he substituted as the announcer on his English teacher's campus radio program, and decided he wanted to be in radio. He began his professional career as the disc jockey at a bluegrass station in Logan, West Virginia. By 1943, Collins was broadcasting at WKPA in Pittsburgh, moving in 1945 to WIND in Chicago and in 1946 to Salt Lake City's KNAK. In 1950, he relocated to New York where he joined the staff of WNEW and became one of the "communicators" on NBC's Monitor when it began in 1955. Two years later, NBC-TV...
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