Iconic jazz DJ Phil Schaap dies at 70ExBulletin

Phil Schaap attends the Nesuhi Ertegun at Jazz at Lincoln Center Jazz Hall of Fame induction ceremony on June 4, 2013 in New York City.

Brad Barket / Getty Images

.

toggle legend

Brad Barket / Getty Images

Phil Schaap attends the Nesuhi Ertegun at Jazz at Lincoln Center Jazz Hall of Fame induction ceremony on June 4, 2013 in New York City.

Brad Barket / Getty Images

The voice of Phil schaap was as distinctive as Miles Davis’ trumpet, Thelonious Monk’s piano, or the sumptuous saxophone harmonies of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, but he did not make his mark as a musician. Instead, Schaap was one of America’s foremost jazz scholars and the genre’s greatest evangelist. He has been a radio host, record producer, concert programmer, educator, reissue producer, archivist and researcher, and has held many other positions beyond these. His voice was the sound of a passionate and authoritative belief in the power of jazz, and in 2021 the National Endowment for the Arts named Schaap a Jazz master himself.

Schaap died on September 7, after a long battle with cancer. His death was confirmed by Greg Scholl, executive director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, which is home to many of Schaap’s activities as a curator, programmer, educator, and historian.

“It was a real inspiration,” said Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of the institution. “Phil was unwavering in his belief that the history of true jazz swing exemplifies a positive, inclusive and successful metaphor for how we Americans could and do better.”

Schaap was born on April 6, 1951 and grew up in Queens, the neighborhood of New York City that was home to many important musicians. His father, Walter Schaap, was one of the first jazz historians; his mother, Marjorie Wood Schaap, was a classically trained pianist and librarian and an avid fan of Louis Armstrong. His parents’ connections gave Phil access to many of the greatest musicians of the time: he had as a babysitter Papa Jo Jones, the drummer of the Count Basie Orchestra and a fundamental figure on his instrument.

Schaap told me in 2002 that another key mentor was trumpeter Buck Clayton, who impressed him with his knowledge and charm. He immersed himself in jazz history as much as possible and also devised clever ways to meet his idols. In 1966, during the metro strike, Schaap hitchhiked to school with Basie and impressed the legendary conductor with his in-depth knowledge of his band.

While attending Columbia University, Schaap worked at the University Radio Station, WKCR-FM, helping him develop an unrivaled international reputation for jazz scholarship, underscored by marathon festivals dedicated to the deities of jazz. New Yorker film critic Richard Brody heard about the 1973 Charlie Parker festival and became addicted to it. “He not only expressed his love for jazz, he implanted it in others”, he tweeted. In 1973, Brody continued, “I was fifteen, just starting jazz, and he Parkerized me for life.”

Through his activities at the radio station and as music director of West End Caf, a venue near campus, Schaap gained a reputation as a traditionalist, but he also embraced innovators. Writer Adam shatz remembers doing a show that preceded Schaap’s “Bird Flight”, a 70-minute daily focus on Parker’s music. Shatz was ending her show with an Ornette Coleman runway that would span Schaap’s time, and offered to delete it. But Schaap, according to Shatz, was adamant: “At ‘KCR, we never interrupt Ornette.

“Phil was old school; jazz to him was a church,” Shatz said. “He didn’t just love jazz, he believed in it. And he was one of its greatest messengers.”

Hank shteamer, senior music editor at Rolling stone, also worked at the station as a student and was impressed by the scientific seriousness that Schaap brought to the music, as if jazz was part of the school’s famous core curriculum. Shteamer remembers Schapp saying that “studying bebop without Kenny Clarke is like studying Western literature without Shakespeare.”

In addition to his extensive portfolio at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Schaap has taught at Julliard, Columbia and Princeton. He was convinced of the importance of getting young people interested in jazz. For him, he felt it was paying up front. Trombonist, teacher and jazz historian Vincent gardner met Schaap at Lincoln Center in 2001 and felt an immediate kinship with a passion for jazz detail; both loved the alternate take of a Dizzy Gillespie track. “Phil’s eyes widened,” Gardner recalls. “Over the next twenty years he enriched my love and dedication to jazz like no one else could have.”

Schaap graduated from Columbia in 1973, but has remained a fixture at the WKCR, hosting weekday shows on Parker and other weekly shows and mentoring dozens, if not hundreds, of jazz professionals. One of them, Matthew Rivera, directs the Hot New York Club, hosts a show on WKCR, teaches jazz history, collects 78rpm records and is the chief archivist of Phil’s collection. “The passion that Phil often conveyed resembled a verbal tribute to Paul Gonsalves’ legendary 27 refrains on ‘Diminuendo and Crescendo in blue’ at Newport ’56“said Rivera.

The love of Schaap also affected veteran musicians. Saxophonist and colleague NEA Jazz Master Charles Lloyd stumbled upon Schaap’s broadcasts in the early 90s and was blown away by Schaap’s thoroughness and insight. “Phil was an educator in the purest and highest sense of the word,” Lloyd said. “He loved all of humanity and made an invaluable contribution. The archives of his shows alone are an invaluable treasure, which I hope will continue to be rotated daily for the benefit of the universe.”