Ron Pelletier

As a drummer, I was sharing the bandstand with vibraphonist Dave Pike at Hungry Joe's on the Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach. It was there I met Dennis Smith who was a DJ at L.A.'s flagship Jazz station, KBCA-FM. During one of Dennis Smith’s visits to the club we had a conversation about him doing the mid-day shift on Wednesdays with Gerald Wilson during which Gerald was conducting interviews with many Jazz greats. When Dennis invited me to come to the station, of course I took him up on the invite. I went there every Wednesday to listen to every word and watch Dennis and Gerald working together playing the music and conducting the interviews. I knew then that I would love to get onto radio.

Fast forward a year or two and I’m sharing the bandstand this time with Sam Most who Leonard Feather considered to be “…the first great Jazz flautist!”. On several nights a gentleman named Tom Schnabel came to the club. Tom told me he was not only studying how to play the flute; Tom was also the music director at KCRW-FM in Santa Monica. I asked Tom how I could get on the air, one thing led to another and before long I was doing shows named “Strictly Jazz” on KCRW.I focused on recording interviews with musicians and getting them on the air to entertain and to educate the audience about Jazz from the Blues to the Avant-garde. Joe Williams, Joseph Jarman, Leonard Feather, Vinny Golia, Roberto Miranda, John Carter, Horace Tapscott, Nels Cline, Carla Bley, Arthur Blythe, Shelly Manne….to name a few, and the list keeps growing. Given a grant at this time from the Musicians Union Local 47 in Hollywood, I also produced live performances broadcast from Pacifica Foundation’s KPFK-FM with a signal that reached the San Diego border. KPFK studio’s building had a loft space upstairs large enough to fit an audience of 200 or more for the weekly Saturday afternoon performances. I was also awarded an N.E.A. grant to bring Jazz artists there and into classrooms in South Central L.A., otherwise known as Watts, to talk to the young students and to play music for the kids to expose them to a rich part of their cultural heritage; this music called Jazz.

Was in 1982 I met Bud Spangler and decided to move to San Francisco for an opportunity to produce shows at KJAZ in the early to mid-80s.In 1989 I joined KCSM and also joined the board of an organization named Jazz in Flight that produced weekly shows as well as an annual world class Jazz festival whose namesake was in honor of legendary Bay Area drummer Eddie Moore.

I've since devoted a great deal of time converting and preserving a literal mountain of taped performances and conversations I’ve had with so many historical Jazz figures from the Blues to the Avant-garde.

I now of course still feel blessed and extremely fortunate to be on the air at KCSM-FM 91.The finest 24 hours a day, 7 days a week Jazz station remaining on this planet.