The Jazz KNOB and the Lighthouse Cafe

 103.1 KNOB, which may have been the first all-jazz radio station in the world. I am always wary of broad claims of being "first," but Stein bought KNOB in 1957. Most other all-jazz stations claim much more narrow firsts. 88.3 WBGO claims to be the first Jazz Station to "webcast day and night" in 1997. In 1966, WLIB-FM claimed alternately to be the first jazz station in all of America programmed by African Americans and/or New York's only all-jazz radio station. It was almost certainly both, at least in 1966. Even WHAT-AM's all-jazz format only goes back to 1958, though their overnight jazz programming goes back to at least 1956... courtesy of Sid Mark's program.
Alex "Sleepy" Stein was a jazz DJ and owner of the infamous

If you are thinking of other Los Angeles area stations, KBCA only flipped to jazz in 1960, then dropped it in 1966. If you were thinking of the Alameda-based 92.7 KJAZ, it was founded in 1959. Despite their claims, it was not the first commercial jazz station. [More here] And what about KLON? It was founded in 1950 which is before most of these other claimants, but they didn't change to an all-jazz format until 1981! The station changed its call sign to KKJZ in July 2002. A 1958 article in Broadcasting magazine (below) firms up the KNOB claim. It appears that KNOB was all jazz but WHAT may have them on total operating hours:

"Southern California's KNOB began operation with a jazz format on 25 August 1957 in Long Beach, though the station only gradually increased its hours of operation to twenty-four hours as the station increased power and moved from 97.9 to 103.1 MHz a year later."

Stein for his part, didn't start in jazz. Stein was born in Georgia, then lived in Miami and Havana, Cuba. He even graduated from the University of Havana with a degree in languages. He moved to New York for a job at CBS. He later moved to Chicago for an announcing job on WIND. There he got his nickname "Sleepy" for a slot he inherited from Russ "Wide-Awake" Widoe. Later Alex was station manager and program manager at KARV in Phoenix. He moved from there to Long Beach, CA for a gig at KFOX-AM. It was at KFOX that Alex started doing remote broadcasts from the Lighthouse, a legendary jazz club in Hermosa Beach. More here. His show was called Mahogony Hall. Stein brought Niles, Jim Gosa and other early jazz DJs to KNOB. Ray Torian hired him as Program Director, then Stein bought half of the business and it flipped to all-jazz. Torian wasn't a jazz fan but he gave it a go.

But it was Howard Rumsey who brought jazz to the Lighthouse. Rumsey convinced John Levine, the owner The Lighthouse Café, to host a series of Sunday jazz jam sessions. Levine purchased the bar in 1949, Levine was skeptical but on May 29th, 1949 he gave it a whirl. It was hugely successful. Those live jam session broadcasts from the Lighthouse built Stein's reputation in the L.A. jazz scene. Jazz was popular but live jazz was a rare bird on the radio.

At the Lighthouse, the house band was Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars. Rumsey was a local. He was born in Brawley, CA near the Salton sea. He first began playing bass with Vido Musso and Johnnie Davis, then became part of Stan Kenton's first band. He played with Charlie Barnet and Barney Bigard then returned to Los Angeles and founded the Lighthouse All-Stars. Contemporary records recorded Rumsey's All-Stars with it's various line ups multiple times between 1952 and 1960. Their regular Sunday gig became Stein's bread and butter at KFOX. More here.

In the end, the Lighthouse All-Stars outlasted jazz on KNOB. In 1966 The Jazz Beat column of Billboard remarked that the "...Sleepy Stein and Ray Torian interests, who became involved in internal fighting, and hindered the stations growth." In 1966 Stein sold his interest in KNOB and became a stockbroker. The station flipped to an “adult request” music format. KCBA bacame the top jazz station in Los Angeles by default. Live jazz continued at the Lighthouse Cafe until John Levine's death in the early 1970s. That brought an end to Rumsey’s time at The Lighthouse. Howard Rumsey himself continued to write and record for decades. He died on July 15th, 2015. He was 97. He lived long enough to see the formation of Woofy Productions. Between 2003 and 2007 they released nine different jazz LPs in their "Sunday Afternoons at The Lighthouse Cafe" series.  More here.

I strongly recommend reading the paper Jazz and Radio in the United States by Aaron Joseph Johnson. He dives into this topic than even the Peretti text. You can download it [HERE]

Cassady, Kerouac, KROW, KJAZ and Cowan

I was reading the Collected Letters of Neal Cassady and chanced upon a somewhat arcane reference to radio history. There is a single sentence in a letter to Jack Kerouac from June of 1952 "How's Mombo Pat Henry Shows? Great vacation he's having." On it's own I would have read right over the sentence without considering who Pat Henry was. But the book is extensively footnoted. At the bottom of the page is the key information:

"Pat Henry (1926-1999) was a disc jockey who played jazz on radio station KROW, Oakland, in the 1950s, before founding KJAZ, Northern California's first all-jazz radio station in Alameda, with a transmitter on San Francisco's Russian Hill, in 1959."

Pat Henry was the real deal. His obituary in SFGate focused on his status as a living legend here and here. they called 92.7 KJAZ a "world-renowned cultural institution." Back in 1967 Billboard Magazine was already calling KJAZ and Pat Henry, "the major jazz voice of Northern California." They even go as far as to describe a field of a dozen Bay-Area stations playing jazz programming.  The reason all these sources keep specifying "northern" California is that in southern California KNOB signed on as all-jazz, out of Los Angeles in 1957. But dont' think that they were competing. Their signals didn't overlap and when KNOB increased power from 320 watts to 3,500 watts in March of 1958, they threw a big jazz bash and hired Pat Henry as their emcee.

The idea for an all-jazz station, according to Billboard at least, was born in Henry's mind in the 26 years he spent working for AM stations in Bakersfield (stating at the age of 18 in 1944), and San Jose and Oakland. Durring his three year stint at KROW Pat started accumulating the hardware for his own station. But KNOB signed on first. It's hard to say definitively but the fact that another all-jazz station was operating only 300 miles away must have emboldened him. Interestingly, that Cassady letter predates KJAZ by 7 years, and his time on KCSM by 5 years. The Cassady family lived at 29 Russell St. in San Francisco, CA.  So Neal and presumably Kerouac were listening to Pat Henry on 960 KROW-AM out of Oakland.  At the time Pat was about 26 years old... younger than Cassady or Kerouac. His program then ran four nights a week midnight to 6:00 AM, Walter Jamond had two nights a week and the Arthur Murray Dance Studio sponsored all six nights starting in November of 1952.

But jazz didn't stay on top for long. KNOB segued out all it's jazz programming by 1966 effectively surrendering to the cultural groundswell of rock and pop music. While the rest of the jazz programming moved to public radio KJAZ stuck it out. Henry ran the station on the proverbial shoestring budget bartering advertising time for everything down to office supplies. To cut costs in 1962, Henry moved the studios to KJAZ. thankfully the buyer, Ron Cowan was enough of a jazz fan to keep it intact.  Though he did relocate the studios to Bay Farm Island in the early '80s. The stations financial problems mounted until 1981 when Henry was finally forced to

But the station became a money pit. In 1994, KJAZ frequency was sold after Cowan deemed the station unprofitable. Loyal listeners organized a fundraiser to keep KJAZ on the air but it wasn't enough. The station was sold and 92.7 FM and the format changed to Spanish music. From 1999 to 2002, they simulcasted the rock format of KSJO in San Jose as KXJO. In 2002 it became one of the nations few dance-formated stations at KPTI, two years later it became KBTB, an Urban station. In 2004 it went back to dance under the ownership of Flying Bear Media as KNGY. In 2009 it changed yet again and is currently a CHR station with the calls KREV.

 After the sale in 1999, many of KJAZ programmers and announcers crossed the street to KCSM. Pat Henry could be found there as well, but he'd had a Saturday afternoon show there since the mid 1990s.