| rdfs:comment
| - George Spink (born Sept. 19, 1940 in Berwyn, Illinois, a Chicago suburb) is a freelance writer, web site designer and builder, blogger, and former radio program host from Chicago. He has lived in Los Angeles since 1990. From the time he was a boy, Spink has had a strong interest in jazz and big band music, something he attributes to his parents and his mother's two younger sisters who lived with his family when he was a boy in the 1940s and early 1950s.
|
| abstract
| - George Spink (born Sept. 19, 1940 in Berwyn, Illinois, a Chicago suburb) is a freelance writer, web site designer and builder, blogger, and former radio program host from Chicago. He has lived in Los Angeles since 1990. He worked as a writer and editor for various publications and companies until he retired in 2001. While living in Chicago, he freelanced articles about jazz, big band, and folk music for the former Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Magazine, and the Chicago Maroon (the student newspaper at the University of Chicago, where Spink earned an M.B.A. with a specialization in finance from the Graduate School of Business in June 1976. Earlier, in June 1963, he earned a B.A. degree with department honors from Northwestern University. He was awarded the Edwin Shuman Literary Prize from the Department of English for the academic year 1962-1963. The prize came with a full tuition scholarship. Spink was recognized by the Department of English for his writing ability based on three essays he submitted. The essay subjects were Karl Marx, Blaise Pascal, and Suzanne Langer. From the time he was a boy, Spink has had a strong interest in jazz and big band music, something he attributes to his parents and his mother's two younger sisters who lived with his family when he was a boy in the 1940s and early 1950s. "They listened to the radio all day long," Spink recalls. "I heard big band music constantly from the time I was in my swaddling cloths. In 1949, one of my aunts finally married. She took her beautiful RCA Victor radio-phonograph console and several dozen albums of 78 rpm records with her. "My parents bought a portable Webcor record player for me, one of the first three-speed units on the market," Spink says. I used money I earned from cutting grass, washing cars, and shoveling snow to buy my own records. I purchased most of them from Kral's Music Store in neighboring Cicero. It was my favorite store around. "Beginning with my ninth birthday in September 1949, my parents allowed me to take the CB&Q (later Burlington, and now Metra) commuter train from Berwyn to Union Station in downtown Chicago. Sometimes I met my dad for lunch. He worked at 9 South Clinton at Madison as the chief accountant for a small housing and feeding firm. We walked a block west to the Streamliner, a popular restaurant at noon and a jazz club in the evening. "I frequently visited the Hudson-Ross records store at Madison and Wells and their much larger store on Wabash near Van Buren. One day, a black salesman I came to know at the Madison Street store suggested I hop on the "El" on the corner and get off at 63rd and Woodlawn on the South Side. The salesman told me there was a great jazz record store on the corner that carried many more jazz and big band records than Hudson-Ross's downtown stores and Kral's in Cicero. "I followed his suggestion and visited that store often. The black owner and I hit it off. He introduced me to 78's by Jimmie Lunceford, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five, and other black bands. He also had a great selection of 78s by Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, and other white bands." After earning his M.B.A. at the University of Chicago, Spink worked at the University for three years, first as a fund-raiser and then as a writer and media relations representative for the Graduate School of Business. In September 1976, following an article he wrote about the Robert De Niro - Liza Minnelli big band music for the Chicago Daily News, he accepted an invitation from the student-managed radio station WHPK-FM to host his own radio show. Spink called it "The Saturday Swing Shift." It aired from 9 AM to 1 PM on Saturdays. His show became quite popular in Hyde Park and throughout the South Side of Chicago. However, WHPK-FM only had a 10-watt transmitter and a small broadcast radius. Spink's articles about jazz and big band music brought him to the attention of WBEZ-FM, the National Public Radio station in Chicago that then offered considering jazz programming. From July 1978 until September 1981, Spink broadcast "The Saturday Swing Shift" on WBEZ-FM on Saturday afternoons from 1 PM until 5 PM, preceding Garrison Keilor's popular "Prairie Home Companion." In 1979, Chicago Tribune Media Critic Gary Deeb wrote a glowing review of Spink's radio program. His article surprised no one more than Spink, because Deeb had a reputation of being a tough critic who often wrote caustic reviews of Chicago radio and TV personalities. Deeb pointed out that Spink's Saturday afternoon big band show consistently ranked in the top five AM and FM radio shows during every 15-minute interval it was on the air Spink had no idea Deeb even knew about his show. A friend called Spink at his Hyde Park apartment about 6 o'clock in the morning to tell him Deeb's column that day was about his "The Saturday Swing Shift" show.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)