The Jazz Ark

 

At some point in my teen years I stumbled upon the best radio station ever!  This was WNOP, broadcasting from a seedy hotel in Newport, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati.  Newport was famously the repository of all the vice that Cincinnati would not allow in its city limits, and WNOP was just the kind of radio station one might expect that city to produce.  In fact the station was nicknamed Radio Free Newport.  The station programmed jazz but not the kind meant to educate or inform.  The DJs played what they liked—greasy soul jazz, blues, big bands, and saloon singers.  They even signed off every night in a signature style by playing The Star Spangled Banner by Lou Rawls. 

Leo Underhill was the morning DJ and always seemed to be nursing a hangover.  (On snow days he would broadcast neighborhood bar closings!)  His musical tastes ran to the likes of Sinatra and Woody Herman and he was wickedly funny.  In the afternoon Ray Scott took over the chair.  Calling himself the Grey Wolf he came across as more urbane but still a bit of a drunk.  Scott played lots of Jimmy Scott, Stanley Turrentine and Gene Ammons/Sonny Stitt.  On weekend afternoons Oscar Treadwell had a show called The Eclectic Stop Sign featuring pioneering jazz from Ornette, Miles, Coltrane and friends as well as burgeoning underground rock.  This was heady stuff for a 16-year-old! 

Somewhere along the line the crew moved out of the hotel and into a small orange enclosure that floated on the Newport side of the Ohio River.  It was quickly dubbed the Jazz Ark.  So now Underhill would complain about speedboats caroming too close for comfort and kids who insisted on stepping out onto frozen river ice.  And Scott would occasionally broadcast right from the little café next door where he liked to hang out.  This is the place where I developed my taste for the Jazz Crusaders and Boogaloo Jones, where I first heard of the jazz nightspot The Viking Lounge, where I discovered Dodds Music–the only place in the area that sold component stereo equipment.  I still recall driving across town in my dad’s old Fairlane listening to Gary McFarland’s 60 Miles An Hour Through Beer Can Country! 

Of course this couldn’t last.  Today the Ark is gone, WNOP is a Catholic religious station, and Newport is a gentrified ghetto.  Progress…sheesh! 

Footnote: in checking out a few details on the web to refresh my memory I found someone selling an air check from an old Underhill broadcast in 1962.  It should be here any day.  Isn’t it amazing what you can find on the internet?