rss
mobile
Feeds
Smith built a devoted following among traditional jazz and swing fans with his Boston radio show, "Jazz Decades." It's been a Sunday evening staple for 52 years, staying on the air even after he and Marilyn moved to Sun City Hilton Head in 1997.
He would record the weekly show in a studio built in his home here. It fit right in with the walls filled with music memorabilia covering the 20th century, and tens of thousands of albums -- blues, ragtime, classical and lots of the jazz of the 1920s and '30s.
The show will go on. WGBH, Boston's NPR station, streams it 24/7 online (www.wgbh.org), and WGBH general manager John Voci told me it will remain on the radio for some time. They'll pull from 1,900 episodes Smith laced with irreplaceable anecdotes and his "encyclopedic knowledge" of the music. Some 50 fans have responded to a tribute to Smith at the WGBH Web site.
Smith's radio work and his Paramount Jazz Band were hobbies kindled as a 7-year-old tenor in a church choir. He spent 47 years in the advertising business. As the eldest sibling in a single-parent home during the Depression, he learned early the value of hard work and the will to survive.
When I spoke to Smith just three weeks ago, it was about his service to his country on Iwo Jima. He went in with the Army radar team supporting the 5th Marine Division. We printed his recollections in the paper Feb. 15 to mark the 65th anniversary of the deadly invasion during World War II.
Smith's experiences are recorded in a book by Arnold Rosen of Sun City: "Before It's Too Late: Our Aging Veterans Tell Their Stories."
Smith told me in his New England accent that he was going into the hospital for a few days, then we'd sit down and talk about his passion for music. He said his health was great until he hit 87.
The next thing I knew, his obituary was in the paper.
He told me when we talked about Iwo Jima that he didn't want to come across as unpatriotic because he was always patriotic. But he said it taught him to hate war.
He said 67 million people died in World War II, 42 million of them civilians. That bothered him. And he said very few people saw the grotesque horror of it firsthand.
"I saw enough to learn, and firmly believe all of these past 64 years, that war is a scourge, the shame and the ultimate flaw of mankind," Smith told Rosen for his book.
"World War II did not need any other justification (for the U.S.) than Pearl Harbor, but war should never be anything but the completely definitive and ultimate final resort."
That's a voice that should not be stilled.
