Phil Schaap (1951-2021)

 When I lived in New Jersey, especially after Mr. Brilliant died, there were two evening radio shows I listened to frequently. One of them was Rich Conaty's Big Broadcast on WFUV on Sunday evenings, and the other was Phil Schaap's Traditions in Swing on Saturdays on WKCR, the Columbia University station. Conaty's show was about ALL popular music from the 1920s and 30s, while Schaap was all about jazz. And on Saturday nights, he'd go into the roots of the music that characterized the Big Band era. It used to make Mr. Brilliant crazy when I'd listen to either one of them, because he had that particular disease that so many in my generation had of hating the music our parents listened to, and his father was one of those WWII vets who thought Glenn Miller was the ne plus ultra of musicians for all time.  (Fun anecdote:  Years later, when Mr. B. would talk about the Grateful Dead in similar terms, I would occasionally remind him of this.)

I've loved 1920s jazz for a long time. I could go into my whole thing about how I believe that the feeling of "coming home" that I have when I listen to the Hot Fives, the Hot Sevens, Bix Beiderbecke, and others, is a past-life memory, but I'll spare you all that. Suffice it to say that everything I know about early jazz and swing, I learned from listening to Phil Schaap on Saturday evenings. I learned about Bix and Tram (Frankie Trumbauer) and everything about Louis Armstrong's early music, and people I wouldn't have heard otherwise, like Ben Webster and Sidney Bechet and Stuff Smith and Bunny Berrigan. The man was a walking, living encyclopedia of jazz music and jazz musicians and had more anecdotes about them than could be stored in a million books or tapes.

Rich Conaty died in 2016.  Phil Schaap died yesterday after a four-year battle with cancer.

When it comes to the complete, comprehensive history of jazz, it was all stored in Phil Schaap's brain. His death is the 20th century music equivalent of the Library of Alexandria burning to the ground.