[Trombone-l] Dick Buckley

[Bill Dinwiddie]

Dick is one of the best friends that jazz ever had.

BD

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A radio voice at a crossroads.

By Charles Leroux
Tribune senior correspondent
Published October 20, 2006


For 29 years, Dick Buckley has been the voice of jazz on WBEZ-FM 91.5, his 
rich baritone as much the music of "Jazz With Dick Buckley" as the 
Ellington, Sinatra, Armstrong and Goodman LPs he spins.

Now, at 82, a quaver has crept into that voice, and its owner has been 
facing a similarly tremulous future at WBEZ. Earlier this year, the station 
announced that, early in 2007 (Buckley's 30th anniversary year there), it 
will change to an all-talk format. Buckley's fans -- a sizable portion of 
the station's listeners -- thought that would still Buckley's voice and stop 
his turntable, and many objected vehemently.

On Monday of this week, WBEZ's vice president for programming, Ron Jones, 
said he wanted Buckley to stay on after the format change and co-host a 
one-hour, Sunday night show with Dan Bindert, a producer of WBEZ's jazz 
programming.

"We're pretty excited about it," Jones said.

Buckley, reached on Wednesday, said he had not yet met with Jones and, 
although he is pleased that the station wants to keep him on, he "isn't 
thrilled" with the show that was proposed.

Jones said that he, Buckley and Bindert would work out the details, but the 
show will likely be "on topics of jazz with a focus on the region's musical 
heritage. That would include interviews with jazz artists, aficionados and 
historians. They'd play music to underscore the interviews and the themes 
discussed."

Jones noted, "Dick is a treasure."

During World War II, Buckley began to unearth the treasure he became.

"I was in the Air Force stationed near Denver," he said. "I decided to take 
a course in radio announcing. The sergeant who was in charge asked me to 
read some copy. Afterwards he said, `We have a lot of people in this course 
with no experience and no voice. You don't have any experience, but you've 
got a hell of a voice.'

"Suddenly it was clear to me why I always had so much success with girls 
over the telephone." Thus began Buckley's long odyssey riding the airwaves.

He had been born in Decatur, Ind., son of a factory worker. The factory was 
a General Electric plant, and that made all the difference.

"Even though it was the Depression," Buckley said, "for my 10th birthday, he 
gave me a table radio, a GE, of course. That caused some havoc in the 
Buckley household."

Up in his room, Dick would tune into the many live big band feeds from 
ballrooms around the country, while, in the living room, his father would 
search the dial for the country/western sounds emanating from the Grand Old 
Opry and the National Barn Dance.

The younger Buckley would go on to become a jazz fan, a jazz collector, a 
jazz historian of encyclopedic knowledge and a promoter of the art, but 
never a particularly jazzy guy.

"I'm a child of the Midwest," he noted, speaking especially of his prosaic 
taste in food. "My mother wasn't much of a cook. If you couldn't boil it or 
fry it, she wouldn't do it."



Engineering a career

Aware of the Hoosier quality of his speech as well as his palate, Buckley 
spent six months at the Radio Institute of Chicago to excise that accent, 
then began to seek a place where his voice would make his living.

"I borrowed my Dad's Olds, a Delta 88 I think, and drove to every small town 
around that had a radio station," he recalled. After a long series of 
strikeouts, he decided to move to California and shop his pipes there. His 
parents weren't happy with that plan, so he agreed to one more assault on 
nearer stations, and, this time, was offered a job at WANE-AM in Ft. Wayne, 
all 250 watts of it. (For comparison, WGN is 50,000 watts.) It was 1948, and 
while the station was on air, dawn to dark, Buckley was on duty. When the 
day's broadcasting was done, he'd sweep out the place. He made $40 a week.

He bounced around -- "I got a call from Indianapolis saying, `One of our low 
voices is leaving, and if you want the job it's yours,'" then he went to 
Springfield, Mo.'s, KWTO (Keep Watching The Ozarks), until he realized he 
could watch the Ozarks no more.

In 1956 he came to Chicago's WAAF-FM and was, among other things, the 
announcer for Studs Terkel's show, "Studs Place." That same year, he married 
Marge Ruder, who worked at an insurance company down the hall from the 
station. They had three kids [a daughter, Jan, 50, and sons Jim and Jeff, 
who are 49 and 47] and realized they couldn't raise a family on an 
announcer's salary.

He turned to commercials. He worked for Schlitz in a show featuring then 
Cubs manager Leo Durocher. "Leo pronounced it `Slits,'" said Buckley, who 
would add the ending tag line, "Milwaukee and the world." He spoke on behalf 
of CNA insurance and was the first announcer to say the word, 
"quarterpounder," in a McDonalds test market ad in Birmingham, Ala. When the 
sandwich went national, McDonalds chose a different voice.



Nodding off and dead air

One reason his career bounced around so much was he got fired a lot --always 
for the same reason. One station let him go when he slept through the local 
introduction to the station's most popular show, a network feed of "The Lone 
Ranger." Dead air on another station earned him a pink slip in his next 
check. "It was a real pink slip," he said. "I had no idea anyone actually 
did that."

Nodding off was an old companion. "I slept through four years of high 
school," he said, "then two years of college and three years in the army."

But the reason he'd drop off for a moment or several of them was a mystery 
until later in life, when he was told he had narcolepsy. It's not known what 
causes the neurological disease; and, so far, there's no cure.

That's not the disease that haunts him now though. It's his wife's 
Alzheimer's. "She often doesn't know me or the grandkids she sat for," he 
said, "but one day she looked up and said, `I know you, you're Dick 
Buckley.'"

Buckley sold the Oak Park house he and Marge shared for 42 years and where 
he would tape his shows in a home studio. In January, he moved about a third 
of his record collection to a small apartment near the nursing home where 
she is cared for; sold the rest.

"I found out in dealing with collectors," he said, "that, for a deejay, I've 
kept pretty good care of my LPs, but for collectors, not so good."

His remaining LPs fill a cabinet along one wall of the living room. He has 
never counted them. The Filipino man who used to take care of Marge at home 
alphabetized them for the first time.

"I wanted to see how it was going," Buckley said, "and he showed me -- Art 
Pepper, Art Tatum. I had to explain that in English we go by the last name."



Treasured memories

On his walls are some photos of Duke Ellington, one of the Duke standing 
with a 23-year-old Dick Buckley after a concert at Northern Illinois 
University. A beautiful, old Technics turntable is arguably the most 
decorative thing in the room.

There's no space in the apartment for recording equipment. The people who 
bought his house dismantled his studio and stored the parts in the garage. 
So each Monday Buckley loads 60 LPs into a wheeled suitcase, struggles into 
a cab (he doesn't drive anymore, has had one knee replacement and needs 
another) to go to WBEZ's studios at Navy Pier where he tapes his show for 
the following Sunday.

His play-list is heavy with the classic tunes and great performers of the 
golden era of jazz. He's not much for the avant-garde stuff, and he said of 
so-called "smooth jazz":

"Somewhere there's a studio with a guitar player and an after-beat drummer, 
and they crank it out 24 hours a day."

He was asked what cut he would choose to play as a farewell at the end of 
his last show.

"I haven't really thought about it," Buckley said. "I guess I should have."

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Forwarded by Bill Dinwiddie
billdin at comcast.net

I, for one, would certainly like to see Dick stay on at WBEZ. Perhaps the 
only "voice of sanity". BD