Chicago is a jazz city, but where are the jazz radio stations?

Ever since musicians like Louis Armstrong, King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton were playing at nightclubs along the Black Belt on the city’s South Side in the 1920s, Chicago has been known as a jazz city.

It’s home to the Chicago Jazz Festival, an internationally recognized event with roots dating back to 1974. The Jazz Showcase, a historic jazz club founded in 1947, is also known for being the spot for legendary performances.

Although hearing and seeing live jazz may be ingrained in the city’s culture, it’s a bit harder to find it on the radio today. This fact led Curious City listener Aim Ren Beland to ask:

Given the city of Chicago’s rich jazz history, why are there no all-jazz radio stations broadcasting from the city proper?

Today, WDCB, a radio station at the College of DuPage in west suburban Glen Ellyn, is the only known all-jazz station in the region. But, as Beland explained, the signal is not always strong enough to listen throughout the Chicago area. There are also still well-loved shows, such as those at the University of Chicago’s WHPK that Beland enjoys, but catching those depends on the time of the day.

So why doesn’t Chicago, a city where you can catch a jazz performance almost any night of the week, have a radio station where you can hear the same? The answer is the radio industry has changed, and Chicago has not been an exception to this evolution.

‘Born in New Orleans and raised in Chicago’

Chicago’s history of jazz — and radio — goes back to the start of the genre. Although jazz originates in the South — specifically, New Orleans — it didn’t stay there.

“We like to say jazz music was born in New Orleans and raised in Chicago,” said Heather Ireland Robinson, executive director of the Jazz Institute of Chicago.

She added the music genre first spread in brothels and bars in New Orleans before moving with Black folks who relocated to Chicago during the Great Migration.

“The red light district in New Orleans closed in the mid-20s, and there was a lot of innovation and whatnot happening in those houses,” she said. “[So when they closed], musicians looking for opportunity literally got on boats and trains and traveled up north to find new opportunities.”

The artists and musicians who came to Chicago then invited others, including some of the most well-known names in jazz.

“Of course, the biggest of that was King Oliver and him inviting Louis Armstrong to come in 1923,” Robinson said. “We had Jelly Roll Morton and others that really landed and played between 35th and 47th streets in the Black Belt at legendary venues to create the music.”

Patrons could catch a great show at venues such as the Savoy, the Palm Tavern, Club DeLisa, Pershing, the Sutherland Lounge and The Rum Boogie. The bustling of the Black Belt area, which would soon become the Bronzeville neighborhood, was about economic opportunity. But as Robinson explained, this entertainment scene also influenced the growth of the area as Black migrants continued to move there.

“It was also about creativity and art and Black excellence,” Robinson said. “So you had the innovation with the music, but you had this audience that was ready to dress up and hear some fabulous music.”

Radio goes from exploration to business

Enter radio. During the 1920s, Chicago had something else New Orleans lacked: It was a major city for live radio broadcasts. These jumping nightclubs, with this new popular music, were the perfect setting for stations to broadcast jazz performances

“WBBM and our beloved WGN — historic radio at the time — often did live remotes from these ballrooms, which gave this jazz scene more of a national exposure,” Robinson said. “I feel like that’s kind of the roots of some of that great Chicago radio that became WBEZ, now WDCB, WBEE for those that remember and, of course, WHPK.”

But soon, in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, major radio broadcast stations started to consolidate, moving many away from Chicago, mostly to New York.

Peter T. Alter, chief historian at the Chicago History Museum, said radio changed from this more experimental frontier into an official business.

“It can be centralized, it can be capitalized, it can be commercialized,” he said.

But this centralization didn’t mean the end of jazz radio altogether in Chicago. Radio continued to follow the change in jazz styles.

“Anytime you watch a movie that is set in the U.S. during World War II, you’re going to hear some of the greats, like Benny Goodman, who was also a Chicagoan, and learned to play the clarinet on the West side,” Alter said. “But that was not the kind of jazz that stayed popular for a lot of audiences … in the ‘50s and ‘60s.”

After World War II, popular Black DJs led the new trend for jazz radio in Chicago, having shows on stations such as WGN, WMAQ, WVON and more.

“If anyone knows one DJ in Black radio in the 20th century, it’s got to be Daddy-O Daylie,” he said. “He would play more sort of free jazz and bebop, which was meant purposefully to be in contrast to the swing jazz that was associated with the 1940s.”

Jazz shows remained on many stations throughout Chicago for decades — including WBEZ — but when Chicago lost its last all-jazz station remains a bit unclear. Alter said the city did have one as recently as 2009: WNUA 95.5 FM. But some musicians and enthusiasts might not consider their smooth jazz as “true” jazz.

So even though Chicago jazz looks different now, it’s still worth bragging on.

“Jazz isn’t necessarily what it once was, and we don’t have quite … maybe a Daddy-O Daylie of today,” Alter said. “But still, the jazz scene is very much thriving and active.”

Arionne Nettles is a journalism professor, culture reporter, and audio aficionado. She is the author of “We Are the Culture: Black Chicago’s Influence on Everything and Journalism for Dummies.” Follow her @arionnenettles.