Geoff Chambers, Volunteer
I didn’t listen to 3MBS myself, but my son was in high school and he was a great fan of classical music, so we used to listen while I was driving him to school. One morning they announced they were looking for volunteers and they mentioned jazz. I have been a great fan of jazz over the years, so I thought I’d give them a ring.
At the end of the day, the central part of my program is any piece I play must have melody and swing or beat. It’s the Great American Songbook—Cole Porter, Gershwin, Lerner and Loewe, Rodgers and Hammerstein—it’s all these songs that are commonly known as the jazz standards that are the core of my program.
Friends will say to me 'are you still doing that jazz program?'. I say 'yes, I’m still enjoying it. When I stop enjoying it, I’ll stop'.
One Saturday night I jumped in an Uber and the guy was playing jazz on the radio. I said 'I have to commend you on your choice of music'. 'I always play jazz from 3MBS' he said 'but this Saturday night program guy isn’t a patch on the guy on Friday night. That Geoff Chambers on Friday night he’s great'. My wife leant over to him and said, ‘you might be interested to know the man sitting behind you is Geoff Chambers.’ Well, he reached over to shake my hand while he was driving, I thought we were going to have an accident, but he was so effusive. People say to me do you think anyone listens to your program and I tell them that story.
There’s always something very powerful you discover through the research into a program, and you never get used to it. Inevitably in doing research you come up against the ill treatment of African Americans through the 30s, 40s 50s up to today. You read anecdotes of what happened to them, and you never get used to it.
One program I did was on Cole Porter and there is a song in his show The New Yorkers called Love for Sale. In the original show the song is sung by a white sex worker. Well, the media went mad the radio wouldn’t play Porter and Porter was encouraged to rewrite the song for a black woman. Then of course it was fine to play. In my show I recounted this story and just said ‘astounding’.