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The Career Of Buddy Rich

Jazz Unlimited  for September 16, 2018 will be “The Career of Buddy Rich.”  At age eight, Buddy Rich was in vaudeville and was known as “Traps, the Drum Wonder.”  His jazz career began with the swing bands in the late ‘30’s and went through Jazz at the Philharmonic, Norman Granz and Harry James until he formed his very popular big band in 1966 that lasted until his death in 1987.  In addition to his band, we will hear Rich with Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw, Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Charlie Ventura, Flip Phillips, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, Fats Navarro, Woody Herman, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Count Basie, Max Roach, Roy Eldridge, “Sweets” Edison, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell and Lionel Hampton.

Ths Slide Show contains my photographs of some of the musicians heard on this show.

The Archive of this show will be available until the morning of September 24, 2018.

The video is from a performance of "Channel One Suite" by the Buddy Rich band in 1983.  Notice that the whole band is watching the solo.

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio since April 1983. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His show, Jazz Unlimited, airs every Sunday from 9:00 p.m. to midnight. The show has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis and was named Best Jazz Radio Show in St. Louis for the years 2005-2007 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24, 2008 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day" in the City of St. Louis. He is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. Dennis is also a noted photographer, and his exhibit, In the Moment: Photographs of Jazz Musicians, ran from September 23, 2005 to January 21, 2006 at the Sheldon Art Gallery. He is a lifetime student of jazz history and teaches short courses on the subject. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis 1985-1973, published in 2006.