Rob Bamberger
Host, Hot Jazz Saturday Night
Rob Bamberger is creator, producer, and host of WAMU 88.5's vintage jazz show, Hot Jazz Saturday Night, which began airing in 1980.
Rob's interest in vintage jazz and swing began in 1963 at an elementary school book fair in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where he picked over the remainders on the record table after the crowd had dispersed. There, he found a two-record set from RCA Victor of broadcast performances by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. That fateful acquisition, which cost Bamberger a dime, launched a consuming and scholarly interest in American music of the '20s, '30s, and '40s. It also became the cornerstone of a record collection which overwhelms his basement, his laundry room, and threatens to creep up the stairs of the Arlington home he shares with his wife, Chris.
Rob came to the station as a volunteer in 1978, when he presented the first of several features on jazz performers during WAMU 88.5's morning news show, Morning Line. Weekdays, he is a senior policy analyst on Capitol Hill, but WAMU 88.5 has become an important part of his life, for, as he puts it, "there are virtually no places left on radio where someone like me is given three hours weekly to program music free of focus-group driven playlists, and to present it as I hope works best for listeners and artists who might otherwise be totally forgotten."
Weekly, Rob posts program notes alerting listeners where they can acquire most of the music featured on Hot Jazz Saturday Night: "It's important to me for people to know that they can have this same music on their own shelves at home."
Rob is especially proud to be one of WAMU 88.5's weekend music hosts: "Dick Spottswood, Eddie Stubbs, Ed Walker, and everyone else -- we're all collectors and historians who are interested in the society and culture in which this music and entertainment developed and flourished."
Like some of his colleagues, Rob has written the notes for more than two dozen CDs on a wide range of themes and performers, including the Boswell Sisters, World War II love songs, Duke Ellington, Ina Ray Hutton, and the Ozzie Nelson Orchestra. He's given talks on an equally varied selection of topics before audiences at the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Cosmos, Maryland and University Clubs. Subjects have included the history of repertory jazz, jazz in Paris between the wars, and the meeting of jazz and third stream in the music of Hoagy Carmichael and Bix Beiderbecke.
The program is also heard internationally on NPR WORLDWIDE, the American Forces Network, and in Japan on the USEN-440 cable. Hot Jazz Saturday Night is the only local show produced at an NPR affiliate to be included in the NPW WORLDWIDE schedule.
For additional information on picking up the program outside the United States, contact Jeff Rosenberg at NPR WORLDWIDE.
