Dick Spottswood
Host, The Dick Spottswood Show
Scholar, writer and editor Dick Spottswood hosted WAMU 88.5's first bluegrass show, a half-hour experimental program launched in July 1967 and broadcast for seven years.
He remembers that "in those days, when we were still known as National Educational Radio, I prepared each show as a little classroom lecture, designed to bring academic dignity to a variety of country music. Gary Henderson ran the board and only went on the air when I left the show in 1972. You can't do the job any better than Gary does, and that's when bluegrass on WAMU really began to take off."
Dick returned to WAMU 88.5 as a substitute host in 1983, and launched The Dick Spottswood Show (aka the Obsolete Music Hour) in 1985.
A Washington native, Dick was one of the founders of Bluegrass Unlimited magazine in 1966, and today is Contributing Editor. He has written for that publication and many others over the years. He edited and annotated numerous recordings, including the 15-record set Folk Music in America for the Library of Congress, and served as a consultant to Time-Life Records. Dick compiled the seven-volume Ethnic Music on Records: A Discography of Ethnic Recordings Produced in the United States, 1893 to 1942. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, this was the first major discography produced in America that systematically examined the vast body of recordings made by immigrants to our country. The set was published in 1990 by the University of Illinois Press, who is preparing an online edition of the work.
With Doug Meade, Dick also completed the combined bibliography/discography Country Music Sources (John Edwards Memorial Forum/University of North Carolina Press, 2002), following the death of original author Gus Meade in 1991.
Dick edits and produces compact discs for several companies in the United States and England. Most recent is Raw Fiddle (Rounder CD 1160), an anthology of early fiddlers from America and abroad. Dick's lifelong interest in Obsolete Music is evident to all who hear his program. "Since I have yet to develop a potent radio personality, I'm fortunate to have some great music to provide the entertainment.
The Dick Spottswood Show will always focus on the era between the World Wars, when you could still enjoy music that was relatively unindustrialized, and when records still capture music fresh from homes, churches, dance halls, school auditoriums and village squares."
