Friday was one of the darkest days in the history of Connecticut, but miles away from Newtown in a dank radio studio in Hartford, there was another loss.Chet McPhee had been running his Sunrise Serenade jazz program Friday mornings for nearly 40 years. He had a familiar soothing voice, a wide ranging knowledge of jazz, and was a player himself, working as a bassist on weekend gigs sometimes at the Hartford Club.
All of this was retirement fun for him — he had already had a long career at Trinity College, home of WRTC 89.3 FM, and influenced untold numbers of kids, with many degrees and as swimming coach and assistant coach for a number of years.
He put a lot of time in on his jazz show, actually recording it at home and then playing it at the studio, answering phones only when music was on to keep up the illusion.
He had a patter that was so familiar, I could almost imitate it on the air, but I never did. “Oooh kay,“ he’d say at the end of a track. “And now, here’s …”
He gave the listeners what they wanted, with lots of details about players, track names and albums. When it came time to raise money, his listeners called in so fervently he had to have a staff of people answering phones. I told him my annual fundraising goal was always 10 percent of his pledge total –and that was an ambitious goal for me most years.
I got to know Chet because my rock show followed his show every Friday for 12 years or so. At first I got a little ticked off that he let his music routinely run after the 9 o’clock hour before putting on his theme song, Glenn Miller’s rendition of “Sunrise Serenade” that I toyed with fading early to get to my show. But I never did.
Because I’d like to bridge the transition from jazz to rock without being too brash, I’d try to keep Chet’s legion of fans around long as I could by starting with some world music, instrumentals or R&B to kind of pull them into my show, which would more subtly shift to rock and beyond.
Sometimes I’d play something odd like “Connie’s Got Connections in Connecticut,” he’d pop his head in the door and identify it: “The Hoosier Hot Shots?” Couldn’t stump the guy.
Chet McPhee was a perfect name for a jazz DJ, but because the college station needed somebody to do the weekly Sunday afternoon classical show, he volunteered and kept up that show for years, too, learning the genre as he went along, too.
The guy was in his 80s, so he made me feel young, but he was freindly and familiar presence to most of the people at the station (who largely volunteered from the community, not the college).
When he died after a heart attack at the studio last week, it’s very possible that one of his CDs just kept going after he stopped. If I still had the 9 a.m. show I might have found him there.
He was likely promoting the annual Christmas show he did for more than 40 years with the jazz coordinator Bob Parzych: corny novelty Christmas songs and silly banter. It was scheduled for Monday.
Parzych still threw it but it was hard — he wanted to mourn his old friend, but didn’t want it to take precidence over the tragedy in Newtown or put a damper on the usual Christmas show. So he went ahead, he figured, because Chet would want him to. Parczych will preside over a more formal memorial show in the 6 to 9 a.m. slot Friday night for what will be the final Sunrise Serenade. And just as in Monday’s Christmas show, you may just hear Chet’s voice once again.
It was all on CDs.