The Jazz Guy Celebrates His 300th Show

"Hey hey, hi hi It’s Bill Wood the Jazz Guy". That’s the signature line Bill has used to begin every one of his 300 jazz shows broadcast over the past 13 years on Voice Of Vashon.
The Jazz Guy has been the most consistent program on Voice of Vashon since the station was founded by Bill and others in 1999. The 300th show is the first installment of a three part series called "The Love Project" that includes "Love the Noun", "Love the Verb" and "Love the Adjective"
Each Jazz Guy show has a special theme and none have ever been about love until now. Bill says "We’ve done shows about everything else including jazz about weather and parts of speech, old styles of jazz like Dixieland, jazz musicians named Miles, foreign jazz greats, and even a show about death-related jazz tunes."
When asked how he managed to avoid the topic of love until now, Bill says "One of my goals with this show has been to always have an element of the unexpected and surprise in the show, whether it’s in the music itself or in the talk around it. Many people asked when I was going to do a show about love so I decided not to because everybody expected it. There are more songs about love than anything else. The word "love" appears in the titles in my collection more often than any other word, 430 times to be exact, so love is an obvious choice. The reason I’m doing the shows about love now is, because I had this treasure trove of music about love, I decided I would wait until I ran out of other ideas and now that’s happened. "
Talking about love as a jazz show topic, Bill says "Love is a triple threat word because it can be used as a noun, a verb and an adjective. There’s only one other word I know of in the English language that can be used in those three ways and that word is ‘Hate’. I likely won’t do a show about hate, although I did do one on Love and Hate."
Bill Wood has a vast knowledge of and passion for jazz. "I first fell in love with jazz in 1947" he says. "I was in boarding school and heard the song "Original Dixieland One Step". My love of jazz continues to this day and all of the music that I play on The Jazz Guy shows comes from my private collection."
Bill has a background in writing ranging from screenplays and television scripts in Hollywood to public service announcements for Voice of Vashon. He is the creator of the hilarious unofficial Vashon anthem "Keep Vashon Weird", wrote comedy skits for the popular Church of Great Rain shows, and has even written a novel titled ‘Billy Boy’ that will be produced as a play on Vashon this fall.
You can listen to "The Love Project Part 1: Love the Noun", including an interview with Bill Wood by Susan McCabe, at VoiceOfVashon.org on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at 11AM. Bill’s shows are also archived on his website www.TheJazzGuy.com.