Zona and Sageza Interviews and Commentaries
KJAZ-FM 92.7, Alameda, CA
This a collection of many segments recorded at random from KJAZ during its final few weeks on air. The Summer of 1994 was a sad time when it became apparent that KJAZ was going to be sold and its classic jazz sound lost from the FM dial. I never worked at KJAZ, but it was the standard bearer of great locally produced jazz radio. Although my broadcast experience was in non-commercial radio, I always liked the fact that KJAZ was commercially supported, and until its imminent demise had no fund drives. It was able to stand on its own as jazz radio. KJAZ defined hip, cool, and class all at once.
The following segments are sorted by the order in which they were recorded.
June 21, 1994
Midday Jazz - with Jerry Dean. (1:30:02 running time)
Jazz in the Afternoon - with John Rogers. (1:20:12 running time)
Dinner Jazz - with Bob Parlocha. (1:35:14 running time)
June 22, 1994
Jazz in the Morning - with Les Williams. (1:26:30 running time)
June 25, 1994
Jazz in the Morning - with Jai Smith. (22:12 running time)
Jazz on a Saturday - with John Rogers. (1:02:17 running time)
Jazz in the Afternoon - with Steve Rottman. (1:30:04 running time)
June 26, 1994
The Great American Songwriters - with John Rogers. (1:00:05 running time)
The Heart of Jazz - with Bob Hoolihan and Herb Wong. (1:57:28 running time)
July 31, 1994
Dinner Jazz - with Bob Parlocha. (1:24:30 running time)
See's Sunday Night - with Bud Spangler. (1:20:12 running time)
The Heart of KJAZ - final program with all KJAZ announcers. (3:01:59 running time)
KTVU and KGO-TV
These two Bay Area TV stations' news programs covered the last day of KJAZ on air. Here are their two reports:
July 31, 1994
The Spirit of KJAZ
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After the demise of KJAZ and the short lived KJAZ cable, Jerry Dean continued to record programs for other stations. In the 1990s, Jerry, Stan Dunn, and Tim Hodges created The Spirit, an internet stream consisting of hundreds of hours of classic Jerry Dean and other KJAZ programming. Although KJAZ and now sadly Jerry are no longer with us, the epitome of hip, cool, and class continues on this stream. Thanks Stan for keeping the memory alive.
The radio content is in .mp3 format (mono or stereo) typically with encoding at either 128kpbs or 192 kbps.
The Video content is available either in .mp4 or .wmv depending upon the original source.
KJAZ operated with around 1700 watts of transmission power. Even with a rooftop directional yagi antenna, reception was difficult outside of the immediate San Francisco and Oakland city limits. The clear recordings are in mono, however, those with a bit of background hiss are in stereo and frankly a truer representation of how KJAZ sounded to most listeners.
Despite its low power output, KJAZ had one of the cleanest and highest fidelity sounds of any Bay Area FM outlet. When listening to the station in the city on a good stereo system, its clarity of imaging and aural achievement was breathtaking. Considering that this was largely coming from early stereo LPs that were at times decades old, the operations standards of this little station far exceeded that of lowest-common-denominator highly-compressed audio evident in much of today's broadcast media.
