It’s time for the happy music. Glen Woodcock

Glen Woodcock has been hosting The Big Band Show on JAZZFM.91 for 45 years. Forty. Five. Years. His knowledge, appreciation and continual curiosity of this genre is boundless. In our seventh post in association with JAZZFM.91, we chatted to Glen about his journey to this point. There were a few stops along the way - his storytelling is THAT GOOD. Enjoy!

Who are you?

I’m a Canadian.  Older.  I have been a journalist all of my adult life and a broadcaster for about three-quarters of that.

I started off, post high school, at the Ryerson Institute’s Radio and Television Arts program.  It was common course, first year, with the journalism department.  So, you got a little taste of everything. 

Towards the end of the year, the head of the department (in one of his lecture labs) grabbed me by the elbow and said “I want you to switch to journalism from RTA.  Take a look at your marks.  All of your really good marks are in journalism.”  So, I switched.

When I got through the three year course at Ryerson, I got a job with the newspaper I had learned to read on, in Toronto – the old Toronto Telegram.  I had the very job that I wanted.  Seven or eight of us from the graduating class got jobs at the Telegram that spring.

I started in the sports department and did a number of other things – I was the entertainment editor when I was 25 years old.  I had about 20 people working for me (they were all older!).  I guess I did okay as the entertainment editor.  Then I was made associate editor of a new magazine we had started.  And then the paper folded.

When I was at Ryerson, I had worked for most of my years there, part time for a Toronto radio station.  They called me and said “What are you going to do, now that you don’t have a job?”.  I said “Look for one!”  They invited me in and said, ”We’ve always liked you, we’ve always kept our eye on you.  We’d like you to do a couple of audition tapes.  If we like what we hear, we’d like to hire you as our news director.”

I came out of that radio station, just off Yonge Street.  I just felt so good.  I had a job!  I wasn’t going to be unemployed!  I hailed a cab, got in and the cab driver said “Hey man - what happened to you?  I see you walking down the street, and you’re walking on air!”  I told him I worked at the Telegram and it looked like my future was going to be secure.  He drove me back to the newspaper and refused to take any money.

We had talked about this for a long time – just amongst ourselves at the Telegram.  Our managing editor was instrumental in getting the financing together to start a new tabloid paper in place of the Telegram.  He offered me a job.  So now, I’m torn.  Radio versus newspaper.  An opportunity to start a new daily newspaper from scratch, in 1971.  I guess I had ink in my veins – I went with the offer from the Sun and worked there for most of the rest of my career.

In 1976, not-for-profit radio station CJRT-FM, which at one time had been the Ryerson station I trained on, offered me the big band show and I’ve been doing it ever since, for 46 years.

Why Big Band?

Well, it’s a long story.  It’s 1958.  I’m 15 years old.  My sister, who is three years older, is going skiing with the young people from her church.  They invited me to come along.  On the way home, the guy who was driving the car, asked me what kind of music I liked.  It’s 1958.  I’m 15 years old.  I like rock ‘n’ roll.

He had the radio on and it was a Glenn Miller tune – I think it was ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’.  He asked if I liked Glenn Miller.  Of course, everybody’s heard of Glenn Miller.  So I said, yes.  He asked if I’d ever really listened to the music.  I had to admit that I hadn’t.  It was just kind of background music.  So, he said, “Listen right now.  With all your ears.” 

I was hooked.  From that moment on.  I didn’t have a record player at home.  I got a part time job and saved my money until I could buy one.  The first album I bought was ‘Glenn Miller in Hollywood’.  I would save up and buy big band albums and read about it and learn about it.

So, when I heard from CJRT, asking if I could do this, I had a pretty good record collection of my own to draw from.  I didn’t just need the station’s albums. I learned so much from my listeners in those first couple of years.  There were bands that I’d never heard of, songs that I’d never heard of.  It really opened my ears.

I was, I guess, 31 when I started doing the show.  I started hosting station events – big band dances and things like that and people would ask me, “How does a kid like you know so much about this music?”  I followed my Uncle Harry’s advice: ‘always have a hobby where you can make money’.  I took that advice to heart.

What is the age range of your audience?

Younger than it used to be.  46 years ago, most of my listeners had grown up with this music – they’d grown up with Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller.  My audience has gotten younger and the music that I play has changed – because of them.  I play an awful lot of modern big bands that I didn’t play, back at the beginning.

The CD revolutionized everything.  Bands that couldn’t afford to make a record, now could.

The audience has changed.  I now have the third generation of listener.  “I listen to this and I’m hearing what my grandfather would tune in to, every weekend. And now my kids are listening, too!”  I think that’s just so wonderful. 

I had one woman write in during a fundraising campaign – “I listen with my small children and they bug me all Sunday afternoon, saying ‘when is it time for the happy music?’”  For the most part, it is happy music.  For the most part, swing is happy.

As a broadcaster, especially through this pandemic, did you experience any responsibility towards your audience?  Did your audience response change to what you were putting out and, in turn, did you have a different ‘job’?

No.  At one time, I had politicized some comments on my show, which I stopped doing.  Nobody wanted that.  And that was a result of my being the associate editor at the Toronto Sun – in my last years there we always put answers on our letters to the editor.  I was just used to adding my two cents to something, even when it wasn’t called for.

I stopped doing that.  I didn’t think anybody wanted to hear about the pandemic or to have me put my two cents worth in about something that was already in the news.  So, it became much more focused on the music.

The only time that I moved away from that was last year – 2020, when my wife was very ill.  I told my audience.  They’ve been with me for so long, we’re like family. The response from them was absolutely overwhelming.  I still get emails today asking how she’s doing. (She’s doing very well!) 

I just thought that that was something that I had to share with them, because I’d shared so many other things.  They responded overwhelmingly.  It was quite moving.  I was very touched.

As far as working remotely, I had been doing the show from home for a couple of years, when the pandemic hit.  We had moved just outside of Ottawa and I was used to doing the show from home because it was too far to drive in.  I was used to doing the show from home, in my little studio, all by myself, with the door shut!

I did miss going into the station to see the people and the only time we could do that was when we were doing fundraising campaigns.  I couldn’t have guest hosts – and I want to.  I used to have band leaders or singers to come in and co-host with me.  We’ll get back to it some day.

Broadcasting from home – broadcasting, full stop – who are you talking to?

On the Sunday show (five hours) – in the first hour, I’m talking to you, because you’re listening in your kitchen, preparing dinner.  Or the whole family is sitting at the kitchen table, listening as they eat that dinner.  I’ve had so many people tell me over the years that that’s how they listen.  That was fixed in my mind.  I was talking to you while you were doing something else, and I had to do things that would grab your attention.

I’ve never played anything that I didn’t like.  So, it’s a great privilege to be able to inflict my taste in music on an unwary public.

Toronto has changed in the 46 years I’ve been doing it.  The population of Toronto has changed.  There are things I have never played and never will.  I’m more sensitive to the listening audience.  The demographic has changed.

The ability to adapt in this particular profession is important – not only in embracing the new, but being to discard what doesn’t work anymore.

You have to change.  I’ve changed.  The music that I play has to change.  I can’t just play the music that was made in the 30s and the 40s.  there are far more Canadian bands that are recording than ever before.  And they’re good.  And they deserve to be heard.  I love finding new bands.  New stuff.  New material.

I’ve never played anything I didn’t like. I go back to what Duke Ellington said – it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.  I met Duke Ellington once.  He was playing at the Royal York Hotel in the Imperial Room for a week.  He invited me and my girlfriend at the time up to his suite, after his last set.  Just a charming man.  He convinced me that I should try the drink that he credited with his longevity: a real Coke, poured into a tall glass with four or five heaping teaspoons of sugar. I pretended to like it…

When I was a 25 year old entertainment editor, Toronto’s best known publicist (who had the Royal York Hotel as an account) would come into my office and try to sell me a story on whatever failed Las Vegas act they were bringing in – I would say I’m not interested. “What the **** do I have to do to get you to cover and act in the Imperial Room?”  I said, “Here’s what you have to do:  you have to bring in Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald…”  He went back to the hotel and they bought the idea. 

That was the policy in the Imperial Room for about ten years.  I never had to pay to go.  I was always given a seat. In the front row.  It was a very successful policy! I got to meet these people.  I had some of my reporters do interviews with Count Basie.  I did Buddy DeFranco, myself (he was leading the Glenn Miller orchestra at the time). 

I’m quite proud of that.  This kid editor – what was I supposed to know about big band?  Well, I’d been listening to it since I was about 15.  I knew what I wanted to hear.  I was never going to go or send one of my reporters to cover these second rate Las Vegas acts at a first rate hotel.  Maybe somebody there had been thinking along the same lines.

I met Ella Fitzgerald.  The acts at the Imperial Room opened on a Monday night.  I couldn’t go to her opening, so I thought, I know what time they rehearse, I’ll just go along to her rehearsal.  So I went along, into the Imperial Room and sat down, inconspicuously. 

When they finished their number, she walked over and said “I’m sorry, but I just don’t let anyone sit in and listen to my rehearsals.”  I told her that I couldn’t come to her opening that night, so she forgave me and let me stay.  I’m probably the only person who Ella allowed to stay at her rehearsal, from the media.

Today’s younger musicians – especially Canadians – they’re playing music that they love, just as I did.  Not necessarily popular with the record buying public, but with the listening public.  They’re so appreciative of what we do at JAZZFM.91.  We put their music on the radio.  For anyone around the world to hear. 

That’s part of our mandate.  We have to keep education our listeners that there is stuff out there, beyond what they know.  If it’s good, I’ll play it.  If I don’t like it, I won’t!

it is part of our mandate at the radio station, to introduce the public to very talented musicians, who they might otherwise never hear.  They were thinking, a little while ago, of changing our slogan “Canada’s jazz station” to something else.  I said – how can you?  That says it all. That’s what we are. Why would you want to change?  And we didn’t.  And I hope we won’t.  Everybody across the country and around the world can hear us.  One way or another.

That’s the modern beauty of radio.  When I was a kid, I was in love with radio.  My mom always told this story:  when I was two years old, she couldn’t find me.  She looked everywhere in the house.  She was standing in the living room wondering where I could be.  She could hear some kind of faint music.  She followed the source and found me on the floor, hidden behind an arm on the chesterfield, with my ear up against the speaker.  Radio has always fascinated me. 

Who are you?

I can’t put it into words, but I’ve always known who I am.  And what I am.  I haven’t always lived up to the person I believe I am.  I’ve tried. I’m a much calmer, much happier, much more peaceful person than when I was young.  I don’t feel any different to when I was 50. (Although, if you could put me in my 50 year old body now, I bet I would know the difference!)

I like who I am now.  All of my regrets are well in the past.  I’d like to think that I’m a good person, and that over the years, I’ve made a lot of people happy.