sign in sign up
<<
Home , Andrew White (Jesuit), Blues Alley, Bohemian Caverns, Felix Grant, John Hicks (pianist), McCoy Tyner

Willard Jenkins: What was your next step after high school?

Rusty Hassan: After high school, I got accepted to in Washington, DC. I came down to Washington in the Fall of 1963, took my albums with me. At first, I didn't even have a record player in the room. Gradually, I started checking out the scene in Washington. I didn't go there at first, but I saw an ad for an unusually sounding name for a group, the JFK Quintet at the . Ultimately, I would discover that club. In 1965, I went with my roommate from ... Actually, my sophomore year at Georgetown, I was living with some students from George Washington University in Virginia, and my roommate Toby Mason and I, went to go see at the Bohemian Caverns. There was a big truck outside. We went in and they were recording, and Ramsey did this R&B tune called "The In Crowd". That got released that following summer ...

Willard Jenkins: So you were there for that.

Rusty Hassan: I'm clapping on a record on The In-Crowd.

Rusty Hassan: But what really, really sticks with me from the Bohemian Caverns, when I went by myself to see and it was a quartet with McCoy Tyner, , and .

Willard Jenkins: What year are we talking?

Rusty Hassan: '65.

Willard Jenkins: Okay.

Rusty Hassan: The performance was so intense, I was really just gosh ... And when Coltrane finished, he was walking by and he had that expression that's like on the cover of ...

Willard Jenkins: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rusty Hassan: ... and I kept, well I can't say that, that sounds like bullshit. I don't wanna say that. I let him walk by me. I couldn't say anything, I was tongue-tied. Later on, as I got to know McCoy Tyner and I told him that story, he laughed. He said, "John was really friendly. He would have talked to you all night just about music. Don't talk about sports."

Willard Jenkins: So the year you got to DC was '65?

Rusty Hassan: '63.

Willard Jenkins: '63. Rusty Hassan: I was here, and gradually ... My freshman year I didn't get out to hear too much music. My sophomore year, I did. [crosstalk 00:02:58] Caverns.

Willard Jenkins: When you got there, how would you describe the jazz scene in DC when you arrived to attend GU?

Rusty Hassan: George Washington, Georgetown.

Willard Jenkins: Georgetown, yeah GU.

Rusty Hassan: GU. Yeah.

Rusty Hassan: It was exciting in many ways. Go to the Caverns and see John Coltrane. There was actually a bar that I went to. It was 18 drinking age for beer at that time in DC, and there was a bar that had a jazz jukebox. It had Coltrane on the jukebox, it had Modern Jazz Quartet, it had the Crusaders. It had a crusty bartender who owned the bar, named Joe Cohen. That was sort of the hang out for ...

Willard Jenkins: What the name of that place?

Rusty Hassan: It was called Step Down.

Willard Jenkins: And where was it located?

Rusty Hassan: It was on Avenue, 2000 Block 20 something ... Pennsylvania Avenue.

Willard Jenkins: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rusty Hassan: It was only later in the '70s when they started presenting live music, and I'm trying to remember. I think maybe it was Lawrence Wheatley who persuaded him to allow him to do some jazz workshops there, and they started dealing with some local artists. Somehow, this woman came down from New York, and I don't know how she weedled her way into it, but she came in with Joe. Her name was Ann Mabuchi. He said, "We should start bringing down people from New York."

Rusty Hassan: So in the '70s, she would be booking Lee Konitz. Geeze, who else? Any major act that wasn't playing at , would be playing at The One Step Down.

Willard Jenkins: So, now One Step Down at that point ...

Rusty Hassan: This is a decade later. This is like in the '70s now.

Willard Jenkins: When you first started going there [crosstalk 00:05:08]

Rusty Hassan: When I first started going there, was because of the music on the jukebox. Willard Jenkins: Did it have the same configuration as the place that eventually presented live music?

Rusty Hassan: Absolutely. All it did was move some tables around. It was not even a stage that they had. It was space next to the bar.

Willard Jenkins: What else was happening on the DC jazz scene at that time?

Rusty Hassan: On the DC jazz scene, you had , you had Blues Alley opened up I think in '65. You had a place called Shadows on M Street. The Modern Jazz Quartet played there, and you could hear them there. You know, you had all these clubs playing jazz.

Rusty Hassan: Interestingly enough, Blues Alley when it started, had a separate room for the bar. So it was an even smaller club, and they had a house rhythm section accompanying the artist coming through there. Bass player by the name of Billy Taylor who was the son of the bass player named Billy Taylor, played with , was a bassist there. They would have acts like Marian McPartland would play there. In fact, I did an interview with her when she was playing at Blues Alley.

Rusty Hassan: Then in the late '70s, John Dimitriou came in, who owns Jazz Alley in Seattle. He came as a manager for a guy named John Munyon who bought the club. They opened up the bar area, pushed the bar back up against the area, and made it a whole wider space. Started booking , , the Heath Brothers, and stuff like that.

Willard Jenkins: This is Blues Alley we're talking about?

Rusty Hassan: This is Blues Alley, yeah.

Rusty Hassan: This is around the same time in the '70s that Ann Mabuchi's bringing people down from New York, or booking national acts there at the One Step Down. In the '70s, when I moved into this neighborhood, there was a guy who lived over on Hamlin Street, named Bill Harris, guitarist, who did a solo album, who started off playing rhythm and blues earlier on. He would have a party every Labor Day, and bring in guitarists like Kenny Burrell, play in his backyard. His dream was to have a club, so he found a spot at 18th and Rhode Island Avenue NE, and he opened it up and called it Pig Foot. The irony of Pig Foot, it's named after the Bessie Smith song "Give Me a Pig Foot and a Bottle of Beer". By that point, Bill Harris who had been an alcoholic, had stopped drinking and was a vegetarian, so he didn't eat the food that he served in the club.

Rusty Hassan: Further down the street were two other clubs that were black owned. Mr. Wise and Moore's Love and Peace.

Willard Jenkins: Were these places in competition with each other, did you think? Rusty Hassan: Yeah, of course, but it was a friendly competition. It was like you go from one spot to the other [inaudible 00:08:31] see artists.

Rusty Hassan: I wanna backtrack a little bit to get the chronology back to the '60s, when I'm ...

Willard Jenkins: Just getting there.

Rusty Hassan: ... just getting to DC, and discovering these places, like the Bohemian Caverns in the '60s. Going to the One Step Down for the jukebox. Then hanging out with Carolyn to go to the Howard Theater to hear the R&B acts and soul acts, and Motown acts. I was looking at the music as a connection.

Rusty Hassan: I'm into jazz, and at Georgetown right off campus, there were two restaurant bars. One was the very toney 1789. The 1789 had the downstairs beer garden called the Tombs, and the upstairs restaurant was very classy. Right next to it was a lunch counter bar type place called T Hands. It was owned by Lebanese immigrants. Affordable food and beer. One day, I'm drinking some beer and hanging out with some friends, we're talking and having a grand old time. A guy walks in and he's ordering something from the counter, and he's holding albums. You know how we jazz fans are, in the hip and the now, what do you got?

Rusty Hassan: I asked about the albums, we were talking and he had some pretty good stuff under his arms and stuff. We started talking some more. He said, "Well, I just play these on my jazz show on the campus station, but I gotta give up the show to take a class. Why don't you do it? You know enough about this stuff." I said, "Well, I never did radio." He said, "Well yeah, come by next week. I'll show you what to do." It was very serendipitous. That's how I started doing jazz radio as a student at Georgetown on the FM station that the University had at that time.

Willard Jenkins: At the time, were you acquainted at all with many DC jazz musicians?

Rusty Hassan: I was starting to meet them, but not quite yet. But then when I got the radio show going ...

Willard Jenkins: Well, let's backtrack a second.

Rusty Hassan: Okay, yeah.

Willard Jenkins: After this guy you met at the bar ...

Rusty Hassan: Yeah.

Willard Jenkins: Lebanese bar.

Rusty Hassan: Yeah. Willard Jenkins: With the records. What prompted him to say, "Why don't you come over and do some [crosstalk 00:11:24]"

Rusty Hassan: It was our conversation about the music. I don't remember the guy's name. I never saw him again. He went and did his class, but he got me into doing the radio.

Willard Jenkins: So, when he said that, "Why don't you come do radio?" What did you do? What'd you do about that?

Rusty Hassan: I went that following Monday, he showed me what to do, and at that time they had somebody engineering the show and you were behind a booth. You'd give the engineer the records. I had records to bring, but then there was a library. They had jazz albums as a part of the station's library.

Willard Jenkins: So this guy actually trained you?

Rusty Hassan: Yeah. Well, he did one show with me and said, "You're on your own." There was that initial nervousness when you think about people out there listening and stuff like that.

Willard Jenkins: Right.

Willard Jenkins: How did you become a permanent part of the station, because you and I both know from our more recent experiences, it's not like you can walk in off the street and do a radio program.

Rusty Hassan: Well, I took over the spot that he had. He said, "This is my successor here. He's doing my show."

Willard Jenkins: So that's how he introduced you to the station management?

Rusty Hassan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they said, "Fine."

Willard Jenkins: Did you have to be a student?

Rusty Hassan: At that time, yes, but there's a transformation that occurs with GTB, which is why it went off the air, and I'll get to that. But at that time, it was a student run station and it was off the air in the summer time.

Rusty Hassan: I had graduated from Georgetown and I had no vision of doing radio anymore in 1967, but when John Coltrane died, there was no WGTB on the airwaves. I didn't even have a working record player at that time, so I went over to a friend's house to listen to all my Coltrane stuff. At that time, WGTB had a jazz show every afternoon from like, what was it, about 4:30 to 6:30, called Emphasis on Jazz. Willard Jenkins: This is how you started?

Rusty Hassan: Yeah. So I did mine on Monday, somebody else was doing the other days. So I started my Junior year, and I went back to it when school started my Senior year.

Willard Jenkins: What was the duration of the program?

Rusty Hassan: Two hours.

Willard Jenkins: Okay.

Rusty Hassan: Yeah. When I graduated in '67, waiting, oh God ... 1967 is an incredible time. Vietnam War was at its height. I had been living off-campus, so there was a mixed group of people. So students, people who've involved with SNCC, older African Americans who lived in the neighborhood. These were my circle of friends in '66, '67.

Rusty Hassan: The summer right after graduation, a friend of mine, John Reddy had been involved in SNCC. A white guy working in Southwest Georgia in the Summer of '66. He had met Mrs. Fanny Lou Hamer. He said, "Look, me and another friend of ours, Ed Seizer, we'll be in Louisville. Can you drive down? We got clothing and other articles." We had one of the friends in the circle of friends was this guy named Willy Kretcher. He's in his 50's at that time. Real street person, you know. He and I were gonna drive down to Louisville, and then John's father had been a writer for the Reader's Digest. He ghost-wrote Jack Paar's books and stuff like that. So the other person going to Louisville with me and Willy, was Randy Paar, Jack Paar's daughter.

Rusty Hassan: We drove from DC to Mississippi, going through stopping in Chattanooga to hang out with Willy's [inaudible 00:15:52]. We were drinking. We had a stash of liquor. We stopped and got some more along the way, and Willy liked to press the needle, so it was the scariest ride I've ever had.

Rusty Hassan: But in Louisville, Mrs. Hamer 1967, was still registering people to vote. Conversation in her living room were things like, "Well, you know I know why Stokley saying what he's saying in terms about Black Power and the revolution, but that's not gonna happen here. What we have to do is register people to vote, and vote these other people out. We gotta do this for the long haul. It's not gonna be any quick transformation." Stuff like that. Gave me a perspective. It was one of the most telling moments of my life to meet someone like Mrs. Fanny Lou Hamer.

Rusty Hassan: We rode back after a couple weeks knocking on doors and stuff like that. Registering and doing some things. Back in DC that summer ...

Willard Jenkins: Summer of '67. Rusty Hassan: '67, when John Coltrane dies and I'm not on the radio. Wondering if I'm gonna get drafted, because I was 1A. By the end of that summer, a friend of mine, one of the SNCC folks, said, "Well, you know National Student Association's got this program called Campus Community Organizers. Talk to them." So I did. I became involved in the Vista Program that would involve students in community programs. Still tied to Georgetown University. So when the semester started in the Fall, and I was in this Vista program, which was kind of screwed up because I wasn't getting money yet, but I stumbled back into doing my radio show. I'm a graduate, GTB's back on the air, well here I am. They said, "Okay. Keep doing your show."

Willard Jenkins: So you kept doing it.

Rusty Hassan: So I kept doing the show as a Vista Volunteer.

Rusty Hassan: One of the things that happened that Fall of '67, was one of my former roommates, this English guy, came down for a big march on the Pentagon. He said, "Good God, Rusty. What's that lump on your neck?" "What lump?" So I didn't even have a doctor. I found a doctor at a placed called Yater Clinic and he looked at the lump on my neck, and he sent me to Georgetown University Hospital to do a biopsy, and it turns out I had First Stage of what they called then Hodgkin's Disease. Now it's called Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Fortunately for me, I was a Vista Volunteer, even though my stipend wasn't coming yet, I was covered. I had health insurance, and they did massive radiation for a month. No chemo, and here I am 50 years later.

Willard Jenkins: Yeah.

Rusty Hassan: Still on the planet.

Rusty Hassan: One of the community organizations that I hooked up with as a Vista Volunteer was called the New Thing Art and Architecture Center. Its Director was a guy named Topper Carew. He later did a TV show and a Hollywood movie called DC Cab. I interviewed him on my GTB radio show, and he said, "Well this is neat." He had different stations, and by 1969, WAMU came over the airtime. During that time, I'm a Vista Volunteer doing radio. I interviewed Noah Howard, who I met up in New York. I started getting into the more avant-garde music of that area.

Willard Jenkins: Were you programming that on GTB?

Rusty Hassan: Yeah, oh absolutely.

Willard Jenkins: Talk about a typical program that you'd do on GTB.

Rusty Hassan: A typical show on GTB would be playing albums that I was really into at the time. John Coltrane's Live at Birdland with Afro Blue. Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson, with stuff that he was doing. Then I discovered an album called "As If It Were The Seasons" by Joseph Jarman. So I'm getting into the AACM Recordings, also. Playing those on the air. Older stuff, Lester Young, , I'd do a variety of those.

Willard Jenkins: Did you have any particular influences on your programming style?

Rusty Hassan: I don't think so, quite honestly. Trying to think about it. Symphony Sid and that type were more personality driven. I came here and I was listening to on the radio here, but I was sort of counter. Felix would talk after every tune. I would segue stuff. I'd play way out stuff that he would never touch, because I'm able to do this. No program directors telling me not to do it.

Willard Jenkins: There was no program directors at GTB?

Rusty Hassan: Well there was, but he didn't tell me what to do. Then when WAMU came up with the airtime in '69, but was called the New Thing Root Music Show. Let me I guess backtrack, because simultaneous to doing the radio, being a Vista Volunteer, at the New Thing, I met Sandy Barrett. Sandy was teaching African dance. She was part of Melvin Deal's African Heritage dances and drummers, so she was part of the New Thing. She didn't care for Topper all that much, Topper was [inaudible 00:21:54] employment dealings with him. But we started living together, and what was kind of a touchy situation was that all her SNCC friends were in a Black Nationalist phase. So that strained her relationship in a way, but then after a while, everything worked through.

Rusty Hassan: One of her close friends at that time was Gaston Neal. So we had kind of a rocky introduction, and then we became very close friends after a while, but it was a testing period for all of us. So '68 was ...

Willard Jenkins: So that's when you met Sandy, was in '68?

Rusty Hassan: I met Sandy, which we're both kind of vague on it. We were hanging out with the guy from the New Thing, Topper Carew, his then girlfriend, we all went out. Another guy friend of mine, Will Majors from New York, was an African- American who was really into music, and for a while there, Will and I'd be going back and forth between New York to catch acts up there and down here. We all went out to see The Graduate, and then Sandy and I just went together after that.

Willard Jenkins: Was she a student at Howard at the time?

Rusty Hassan: She had graduated. She hadn't gotten her degree yet, so her graduation was delayed. She would have been class of '67, but she and the other students who were suspended or kicked out for radical activities.

Willard Jenkins: What did you study at Georgetown? Rusty Hassan: I was an English major.

Willard Jenkins: You were an English major.

Rusty Hassan: Yeah, yeah.

Willard Jenkins: Okay.

Rusty Hassan: Yeah. It makes me very literate and able to talk well on the radio, I guess, but it worked well.

Rusty Hassan: I graduated from Georgetown, met Sandy with Vista Volunteer. '68, we have the assassination of Martin Luther King, and the insurrection here in DC, we're living through that. Sandy gets involved with the founding of the Drum and Spear Bookstore with her friends who are involved with SNCC, and I'm on the edge of that. I'm kind of the white outsider, but then finally gradually being pulled in.

Rusty Hassan: Then we got married in August of '69, and we went to Europe. Went first to and stayed with my English roommate and his then wife. We bought an old van, we went and drove down to Dover, took a fairy to Dunkirk, and visited Amsterdam. Then we got to . I had an address for Ambrose Jackson. This is at a time, cell phones, people in Paris run a waiting list for telephones. You didn't have a phone. Carolyn said, "No, he doesn't have a phone, but here's his address." Five floor walk-up. We walk up, knocked on the door and nobody was home. We're sitting there atop the steps, and we hear somebody coming up, and it's Ambrose.

Rusty Hassan: We just hit it off. He just said, "Well, the Art Ensemble's playing at the Museum of Modern Art. Come on up, I'll take you there." Whatever. He introduced us to all the musicians. It was like an entre in many ways. While there, I borrowed a tape recorder from a reporter from TIME Magazine. I don't remember how we met him, and I interviewed Anthony Braxton, ...

Willard Jenkins: Which brings me to the next point. On your GTB radio station, you mentioned interviewing Noah Howard.

Rusty Hassan: Yeah.

Willard Jenkins: Did you interview other musicians? Did you do frequent interviews?

Rusty Hassan: Yeah. Not frequently, but one of the other first interviews I had was Byron Morris, and he had performed at the New Thing. In fact, I interviewed Byron before I interviewed Noah.

Willard Jenkins: Okay. Rusty Hassan: We started the New Thing Root Music Show, and she and I went to Europe. While we were in Europe, Art Ensemble, Anthony Braxton, there was the Actuelle Jazz Festival that mixed rock with avant-garde jazz, Grachan Moncur, was there. But also, while we were there, on a double bill presented by George Wein, was and Cecil Taylor. Miles was at Dave Holland on bass, I think was still with him, and Cecil ... Man, it was you know ... At a time when Miles was putting down Cecil, but they were on tour together. So I got to see this.

Rusty Hassan: Back at this jazz festival in a circus tent in , I met a guy, an American who was writing for Jazz Journal and doing advertising copy in . His name was Fred Bouchard. Fred gave me his address in London, and when Sandy and I ... We were there with hardly any money, this old Bedford van, December driving back from Paris back to London, and my friend Andy, his dad was Guy Rollins. Andy was in the process of buying a house or whatever. When I tried to make a collect call to find Andy, his father refused to accept the call, and when we got to London running out of gas, I got ahold of Fred. He answered the phone and he said, "Well, take a cab if you don't have no money, and we'll cover it" and Fred put us up.

Rusty Hassan: While I was staying with Fred, we saw Duke Ellington, his orchestra at the big concert hall over there, and when he took us to Ron Scott's, I saw with [inaudible 00:28:04] on a double bill. So, musically, with all the other stuff that was going on in our lives at that time, musically, it was incredible.

Rusty Hassan: Get back to the states in 1970, looking to get a job.

Willard Jenkins: Yeah, I was gonna ask. What were you doing professionally at the time?

Rusty Hassan: Well, Vista Volunteer carried me into '69.

Willard Jenkins: What exactly were you doing for Vista Volunteer?

Rusty Hassan: Involving students in community activities. Not doing a hell of a lot, to be honest. Doing the radio, doing some things with the New Thing. It's a Georgetown University Community Action Program.

Rusty Hassan: Then we came back to the states, stayed with Sandy's parents for a little bit. That was not too comfortable. We found an apartment, 18th and Columbia Road. One of the things I did ... There's a really fascinating character that told stories. His name was Melvin Trailer. An older black guy, he was a World War II veteran, and he was a house painter. Sandy was teaching at what was called the Columbia Road School, it was a preschool that she was gonna teach Kindergarten. She said, "Well, the space needs to be painted", and I put in a bid. I didn't know painting that well, but Trailer did. He's a guy in his 60's. Rusty Hassan: Trailer had stories, man. He talked about playing bass tuba with [inaudible 00:29:41] band before they switched over to string bass, and how he was practicing law in Harlem during the Depression, but took the rap for what he called a downtown Jewish lawyer. When he got out, he moved to Virginia, got drafted in World War II, was hustling booze out of the Island of the South Pacific and came out with a lot of money and almost died from all the scotch he drank, which is why he never drank scotch anymore. He and I did the painting job. He was real professional, but he didn't wanna do it anymore, but he had all these stories while we were doing the work.

Rusty Hassan: Other than that, I'd be at his apartment on Florida Avenue hearing his stories. He would listen to me on the radio, he'd say, "Well, it was a pretty good show, but I didn't like that thing of John Coltrane in Seattle, Washington." He wasn't into the way out stuff. I took the Federal Employee entrance exam, and I got a job with the Redevelopment Land Agency, the Urban Renewal Agency for the city. It was a federal agency transferred in DC government. I worked as a family relocation counselor in the '70s. Became active in the union at the job, became the local president and by 1978, when an opening came on the staff I applied for it and got a job with the Union.

Willard Jenkins: Okay.

Rusty Hassan: All that time in the '70s I'm doing radio on Sunday afternoon, doing the New Thing Root Music Show at a time when things were really happening in many ways.

Willard Jenkins: This is still GTB?

Rusty Hassan: No. This is WAMU.

Willard Jenkins: Well, let's go back to GTB for a moment.

Rusty Hassan: Okay.

Willard Jenkins: Talk about some of your more memorable experiences programming at WGTB.

Rusty Hassan: I don't have the memorable moments that I do for WAMU.

Rusty Hassan: I'm doing the show, I'm interviewing Noah Howard, interviewing Topper Carew, playing the music. It's when I get onto WAMU in the early '70s, and I have friends who are doing things elsewhere. This guy named Yale Lewis and a guy named Ron Sutton -

Willard Jenkins: What kind of station was GTB, otherwise? [crosstalk 00:32:06]

Rusty Hassan: WGTB was in the '60s, a mix of jazz, classical music, some talk stuff. [crosstalk 00:32:16] Pretty rigid. Willard Jenkins: How many other jazz shows were there?

Rusty Hassan: Five days a week. No, seven days ... No, because there was Sunday, every day 4:30 to 6:30.

Willard Jenkins: 4:30 to 6:30.

Rusty Hassan: Emphasis on Jazz.

Willard Jenkins: Okay.

Rusty Hassan: In the '70s, after I leave the station, it becomes really radicalized. During the '70s, Royal Stokes is doing a show there, that's two shows. I thought I heard Buddy Baldwin say doing traditional jazz, and [inaudible 00:32:48] doing Be Bop and beyond. There's sort of radical programming on GTB in the '70s. They have a show called "Friends". It's the '70s and they have a gay show on a Catholic station. They have PSA's supporting the Georgetown Free Clinic. This drives the Jesuits up the wall. By the late '70s, they give away the license to the University of the District of Columbia.

Willard Jenkins: Oh, okay. So then -

Rusty Hassan: So, in the '70s, GTB's doing some jazz with Royal, and I don't know exactly when he started. WHUR comes on the air around 1972; Yale Lewis is one of their first announcers and I visited him with my infant toddler daughter, Aisha, in a trailer. Then my other friend Ron Sutton starts a show there, and we used to trade often Charlie Parker specials on each other's shows. We were very wide open, in terms of not competition, but sharing. HUR's playing Jazz, and stuff happens.

Rusty Hassan: Out of a basement or back room in a record store, Savings Discount Records, I received and started a paper called "Radio ". To visit him a lot with my girls, taking them out and buy records and whatever. One time, he calls me up, he says, "This African American woman who [inaudible 00:34:32] Association is putting on Count Basie, and the ticket sales are going up. Can you interview the ladies?" "Sure." I'm interviewing a middle-aged black woman, but talking about the concert. They say ...

Willard Jenkins: This is still GTB?

Rusty Hassan: No, this is all AMU. This is 1970.

Willard Jenkins: So how did you get to AMU?

Rusty Hassan: Topper Carew. New Thing Root Music Show.

Willard Jenkins: Alright. Rusty Hassan: Putting a show on the air for him -

Willard Jenkins: And what year was that?

Rusty Hassan: In '69. '69. It's like July of '69. Sandy and I get married in August, and in September we're gone. I come back, there's a guy named Ralph Higgs doing the show, Brother Ralph. He was teaching karate at the New Thing. He also smoked a lot of herb and had other issues, but Ralph started another show, like a midnight show. He said, "Why don't you do the afternoon show, because I'm gonna do the midnight show" and the station management had no problem with it, because it was an organization doing the air time.

Willard Jenkins: What kind of station was AMU at that time?

Rusty Hassan: AMU at that time was very eclectic. They had, a few years after I was doing the New Thing Root Music Show, there was a Black collective show on Saturday afternoons, same time slot, called "Spirits Known and Unknown". They had, oh God, I'm gonna be blanking on people's names, but one guy eventually became a judge. The other guy whose name should come like that, but at my age he's [inaudible 00:36:20]. The other guy went out to do sound in Hollywood, and has gotten Academy Awards for the sound for Dances with Wolves and the film about the Black soldiers in the Civil War. So they were doing this ... They had a show, they had a variety of music. Bluegrass was really big on the station at that time.

Willard Jenkins: Were you free to do whatever you wanted to do within that jazz context?

Rusty Hassan: Absolutely. I could play free jazz and Ascension back to back.

Willard Jenkins: So there was no -

Rusty Hassan: So, on WAMU in the '70s, I had about four hours of airtime on a Sunday afternoon, play whatever I want, and things happened. It was really great stuff, personally. When I had these ladies on the show, they said, "Well, do you wanna come to the dinner dance?" I said, "Sure, it's my birthday." So, Sandy and I go to this at the Shore Hotel, Count Basie and his orchestra playing. So many empty seats, it's the night before Thanksgiving, I guess the timing wasn't all that good. But for my birthday, Sandy gave me two very expensive cigars. I smoked back then, these were really pricey.

Rusty Hassan: So at that concert, during the intermission, I'm out in the lobby talking to Holly West who was then the critic for the Washington Post. We're out there talking and stuff like that. Sandy comes out, "You're missing it, you're missing it." Count Basie's orchestra played Happy Birthday for me. Well, at the after party, I had my cigar. You could be obnoxious back then, 45 years ago. When we were leaving, Basie's sitting by himself in the lobby, they were about the take the bus up to Boston. They had another show, a Thanksgiving Day show or whatever. We go up and talk to Basie.

Rusty Hassan: Now, I noticed he had a cigar in his hand, and I said, "Mr. Basie, you wouldn't happen to have a light, would you? My cigar went out." He pulls out this big Ronson, lights my cigar, looks at his, and said, "Well, this damn thing's useless. It's broken." So I reach in my pocket, I said, "Here, have one of mine" and gave him the other cigar that I had gotten for my birthday. His eyes lit up and he said, "Boy, do you have great taste." My best birthday, giving away a cigar to Count Basie.

Willard Jenkins: So what were you doing professionally at the time that you were affiliated with AMU?

Rusty Hassan: I am working for the Redevelopment Land Agency as a relocation counselor, while I'm doing the show on Sundays.

Willard Jenkins: Relocation counselor; what did that involve?

Rusty Hassan: It involved people being displaced either by overcrowded conditions from the code enforcement section, or by urban renewal of the 14th Street Corridor. That whole area right now that's been gentrified and big malls with the Target. That was all desolate area in the 1970's.

Rusty Hassan: So I'm doing that during the day to make a living, and raising two girls, and doing the radio on Sunday. Interviewing people like , Art Blakey, all these folks Sunday afternoon.

Willard Jenkins: What time of day were you on?

Rusty Hassan: In the afternoon from like noon to four.

Willard Jenkins: Three hours, okay.

Rusty Hassan: Three to four hours. I had four hours. One time, it was five when they were shifting. I had a whole afternoon, really stretching it, and had everybody come through. It was great. I mean Dexter Gordon coming in when the Homecoming album was just coming out.

Willard Jenkins: Where were they playing at the time?

Rusty Hassan: Blues Alley, primarily.

Willard Jenkins: Was there as much of a jazz concert scene back then?

Rusty Hassan: The Kennedy Center was presenting jazz, but it was very sporadic. It wasn't until Billy Taylor and really solidified that program there. Sometimes concerts at the or the Crampton. I saw Freddy Hubbard and playing at Crampton Auditorium in '71. That was just an incredible concert, sponsored by Left Bank Jazz Society.

Willard Jenkins: So now, AMU was a student station?

Rusty Hassan: No. It was a station run by the University ...

Willard Jenkins: Right.

Rusty Hassan: ... and actually, very little student involvement.

Willard Jenkins: Okay.

Rusty Hassan: The [inaudible 00:40:58] Lee, and Russell Williams were Black students involved, and they did workshops. They had people coming through to do training and stuff like that, so that was one of the student components on that. Otherwise, they'd have the Diane Rehm show, predecessors to that. While I was there, Rod Bamberger came on the air with his Hot Jazz Saturday Night.

Willard Jenkins: Did societal elements influence your programming at WAMU?

Rusty Hassan: Yeah, yeah. [crosstalk 00:41:39] Playing music that expressed the civil rights and Black power struggles and things along those lines. Playing the music of Archie Shepp would be a part of it. Then having the opportunity to meet my heroes.

Rusty Hassan: Things were wide open. I already mentioned, HUR's playing jazz during this time. There are meetings to set up WPFW. I participated in those. After PFW goes on the air, I participate in events, but I didn't wanna leave the airtime on WAMU. I felt that more stations playing this music is better for the music. Why would I give up WAMU to go to -

Willard Jenkins: Then you have four hours [crosstalk 00:42:35]

Rusty Hassan: ... afternoon. AMU expanded the jazz program around 1980, '81, to do an overnight jazz show.

Willard Jenkins: Did you do that?

Rusty Hassan: They offered it to me, and I was already working. I shifted to work for the Union, and the pay was so awful, it was a no-brainer. I said, "I'll do Sundays. I'm fine with Sundays. I got a career, I got a job paying the bills and stuff like that."

Willard Jenkins: Were you paid at AMU?

Rusty Hassan: Yeah. Ultimately, I was given a quarterly stipend. Willard Jenkins: Okay. What was that like, if you don't mind my asking?

Rusty Hassan: A couple hundred bucks a couple months [crosstalk 00:43:18]

Willard Jenkins: A quarter.

Rusty Hassan: A quarter. It was beyond volunteer, it was some money.

Willard Jenkins: Where'd that money come from?

Rusty Hassan: The University.

Willard Jenkins: Okay.

Rusty Hassan: Yeah. In fact, I wanna get into another aspect of my jazz life, because long after I left Georgetown, they offered a course I could have gotten one A. At Georgetown I took a music appreciation course with the music critic Paul Hume and I didn't get a very good grade in the course. What happened was that he had a gazillion students and he decided to make it real hard. He was really pissed, and I deserved the D+ that I got, but years later when I'm on a music panel with Billy Taylor for National Public Radio on a classical side, there's Paul Hume. I told him how I took Music Appreciation at Georgetown when I was there, but I didn't tell him what kind of grade I got. He said, "Oh, yeah, well you know Paul Anthony also took that course." Blah blah. Very quick conversation.

Rusty Hassan: Somebody started teaching Jazz History at Georgetown, and I said, "Well, I'm gonna go check this out." The guy was a bassist with the National Symphony. His name was Dick Webster. I had just got a bass, and so he gave me a lesson. I checked out the class, so we developed kind of a friendship. At some point he said, "Look, Rusty, I'm in a bind. The symphony's going on tour. Can you do the class for me?" He said, "By the way, if you like it, the Continued Education Program is looking for someone to do a class at night. My day job's at night and I can't do it. We'll do a proposal." So I did his class, and I did the proposal, and I started teaching at Georgetown School for Continuing Education, a non-credit class. A couple of months, eight weeks maybe, to do Jazz History.

Willard Jenkins: Who was taking this course?

Rusty Hassan: People getting the catalog in the mail. Adults. Adults wanted to take something. They're even taking Shakespeare class, you can this, you can take Jazz Appreciation ...

Willard Jenkins: So it was like Continuing Education then, right?

Rusty Hassan: It was Continuing Education. Georgetown School for Summer and Continuing Education. So I started teaching these - Willard Jenkins: No credit?

Rusty Hassan: No credit. Non-credit, no term papers, no tests. It was fun.

Rusty Hassan: I'm doing this, somebody from GW calls me and says, "Well, can you do the Jazz History class? We need somebody to take it over." I said, "No, I'm working during the day." Let that go by me. Somebody from American University calls me up. It's the early to mid '80s. "Can you do the class?" I said, "Well, I'm working during the day. If you can switch it at night." They said, "Yeah, what night?" "Mondays." So they scheduled it Mondays at 5:30.

Rusty Hassan: In the '80s and '90s, I taught at AU on Monday nights, did Georgetown another night, somebody asked me at the Smithsonian. I did a couple of courses at the Smithsonian over the years. Did one course where it involved musicians. I had talk about improvisation, I had Peter Betts talking about his career, I had Paul Hawkins talking about Latin Jazz. I had all these musicians come in, that I was the coordinator. That was fun. From the early to mid '80s to the early 2000's, I was at AU every Monday for Fall and Spring semester.

Willard Jenkins: How long were you affiliated with WAMU?

Rusty Hassan: I was with WAMU until 1987.

Willard Jenkins: What brought on your departure?

Rusty Hassan: Change in the format. New management at the station.

Willard Jenkins: Were they no longer doing jazz, or what?

Rusty Hassan: The only jazz they kept was Rod Bamberger's Hot Jazz Saturday Night. The change in the format. By that time, WDCU was well-established, and Edith Smith contacted me -

Willard Jenkins: Back to AMU for just a second. What was the local jazz scene like in DC when you were at AMU? And were you a part of that scene?

Rusty Hassan: Oh, absolutely.

Rusty Hassan: You got the clubs I mentioned, One Step Down bringing in musicians. God, Ann would bring in Benny Carter. People of that stature, it's just amazing. Blues Alley, the Heath Brothers, Rahsaan Roland Kirk at Blues Alley. There's just an incredible thing going on with the clubs. More of the area artists playing in the Northeast clubs, Wise and Moore's Love and Peace. I'm interviewing people, I'm emceeing.

Rusty Hassan: One of the neatest times in the early '80s, was when George Wein took over the Kennedy Center as part of whatever his festival was called. Cool Jazz or something like that, maybe it was that sort of thing. Took over the whole Kennedy Center, and I was the emcee in the Opera House. I got to -

Willard Jenkins: What year was this?

Rusty Hassan: '80, '81, I'm not sure. I have to check that out, but /Mel Lewis Band, Art Blakey, Freddy Hubbard. At night, the last act was Lionel Hampton. He didn't wanna stop, we were told.

Willard Jenkins: Couldn't get him off stage, right?

Rusty Hassan: I know. He was like, "Hey. I'm the one so [inaudible 00:49:11]"

Willard Jenkins: My first emcee gig was one of Wein's festivals that he was on.

Rusty Hassan: Yeah.

Willard Jenkins: They're pushing out there, "Get him off stage!" [crosstalk 00:49:22]

Rusty Hassan: Same thing. That was my job. So yes.

Rusty Hassan: It was really a great time in terms of ... Making connections with the musicians. We would do crab feasts over at the house, and I'd have come over and he's playing at the One Step Down. The Heath Brothers, when they were playing at Blues Alley. Jaki Byard. All these folks, I really developed a great friendship with, [crosstalk 00:49:54]

Willard Jenkins: How long after you left AMU did you become affiliated with WDCU, and how did that affiliation come about?

Rusty Hassan: It came about right away.

Willard Jenkins: Because you said that basically what caused your divorce from AMU was the change in format.

Rusty Hassan: Absolutely. They were changing the format ...

Willard Jenkins: Right.

Rusty Hassan: ... and DCU was on the air then about six, seven years. Edith Smith called me up, said, "Why don't you come over? You can have Sunday afternoons. We just got [inaudible 00:50:28] to do Saturdays."

Willard Jenkins: Sunday afternoon, what time?

Rusty Hassan: It was about one to ... It was three or four hours. I'm getting a little vague on it, but I had a couple hours from like one to four. Willard Jenkins: What year was this that you flipped?

Rusty Hassan: '87.

Willard Jenkins: '87, then when you started at DCU.

Rusty Hassan: DCU, right right. It was -

Willard Jenkins: What kind of station was DCU at the time?

Rusty Hassan: All jazz. They did a talk show, and they did rhythm and blues and gospel.

Willard Jenkins: So they were known as Jazz 90 at that time?

Rusty Hassan: Jazz 90. It was really, they had consistently the same announcer every day during the week, you had [inaudible 00:51:11] in the morning -

Willard Jenkins: [inaudible 00:51:12] and Candy.

Rusty Hassan: Candy, Gwen Redding, all these folks. Bill McClure doing the evening shows. Whitmore John. It was very, very focused on the music.

Willard Jenkins: Here again, another University affiliated radio station. Though, in the case of GTB and AMU, you characterized that the University kind of had a benign kind of relationship with those stations?

Rusty Hassan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Willard Jenkins: Was it similar at DCU?

Rusty Hassan: Absolutely, absolutely. The station was contained, they had all of the programmers doing the music.

Willard Jenkins: Was it a training facility at all, for students?

Rusty Hassan: They did some things like that. They tried to pull it in, but trying to develop an interest in stuff like that, they did some workshops and things like that.

Willard Jenkins: But it was more along -

Rusty Hassan: It was more along the lines of being a professional -

Willard Jenkins: A professional radio station.

Rusty Hassan: A professionally run radio station.

Willard Jenkins: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rusty Hassan: They paid me. I was a DS1 Audio Visual Aide on the roles. Whichever was lowest. It was a stipend, more or less.

Willard Jenkins: Edith was the general manager.

Rusty Hassan: She was the general manager, right.

Willard Jenkins: Who was the program director at the time?

Rusty Hassan: Oh, God. At one point, Wally Rollins came in.

Willard Jenkins: Did the program director at DCU exert any influence over what you ultimately programmed?

Rusty Hassan: No. No. Wally came in and tried to make things sound professional, and make advice in terms of choices. If you had a choice of a recording by an artist that was really clear sounding rather than that [inaudible 00:53:12] that had all the static and stuff like that, where to go with it.

Willard Jenkins: So now you're doing Sunday Afternoons.

Rusty Hassan: Yeah.

Willard Jenkins: That's where you started.

Rusty Hassan: Yeah.

Willard Jenkins: What time of day was it?

Rusty Hassan: One to four.

Willard Jenkins: One to four.

Rusty Hassan: Yeah.

Willard Jenkins: How would you set those three hours up, in terms of your production?

Rusty Hassan: I would focus on who's coming into town, birth dates, cover the artists that way to trigger some of the older artists, I would take in ... Well, initially it was ... By the time I was with DCU, it was switching from LP's to CD's. Take a bag of CD's and have an idea of where I was gonna program it, and then program while I'm doing it. In terms of what fits [crosstalk 00:54:07]

Willard Jenkins: There was a certain element of improvisation in the way you were putting it together.

Rusty Hassan: Absolutely, mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely. Willard Jenkins: You didn't necessarily go in with a sheet -

Rusty Hassan: No.

Willard Jenkins: ... with a list of what was -

Rusty Hassan: In fact, it was really interesting to me, because here I had listened to Felix Grant all those years, and now Felix and I are on the same station. Not a whole lot of interaction, but I did sit in with him on occasion, see how he had everything scripted, stopwatch, really very precise in terms of what he was gonna say and stuff like that. I continued to do what I was doing when I was at 90.1 on the dial in the '60s.

Willard Jenkins: So your thing -

Rusty Hassan: Back in the same spot on the dial.

Willard Jenkins: Would you characterize what you did as being kind of the exact opposite of what he was doing?

Rusty Hassan: Yeah, in many ways. In terms of looking for more of a freeform FM type of ... Late '60s, early '70s, there's a shift that goes on musically, where music is now formatted in a fashion with these so-called "underground FM stations".

Willard Jenkins: Right.

Rusty Hassan: Using college stations. As a jazz programmer, I was able to not worry about the length of a cut, and learn how to segue music so that one piece would flow to another. Even within that context, still be informative about the music.

Willard Jenkins: Did you do a lot of interviews?

Rusty Hassan: Absolutely.

Rusty Hassan: On WAMU, one of the best interviews I had was Art Blakey. First time he came and he spent the whole afternoon with me, and it had to be about 1977. Art came in, he flipped the question. I said, "Well, you know ... " I'm trying to say what a thrill it was to have him, he says, "Well, what you're doing is so important to this music." Art's saying this to me? I had the material there to do like a musical autobiography of Art Blakey. What was really great was that after ... He was playing at a, it wasn't a jazz club, it was a restaurant right on Connecticut Avenue that would feature a variety of music acts, but not jazz, per se. It was really weird in terms of who they booked, because they had Anthony Braxton play there once. I think the place was called "Child Herald", maybe you know about that. Rusty Hassan: Art Blakey's playing there, and after the Sunday night set was over with ... I saw him Saturday, we had him come on the show and back to see him Sunday. He's breaking down a drum set. "Hey, Rusty, where can I get something to eat?" I said, "Art, this is DC. There's nothing, but my house is on your way out of town." For me, the shocker was here's Art Blakey, putting drums in his Station Wagon. For me, it's, "Where's the limo? What's this?" He had Dave Schnitter and , and I forget, it was a Japanese bassist whose name I can't remember. I said, "My house is on your way. We'll fix you up." When I made the offer I didn't realize we had to go back to the Iwo Jima Motel and smoke something. When I'm driving up Rhode Island Avenue with Art, John, and Bassist driving behind me, I start thinking, ". Buhaina. I got one of the first musicians to become a Muslim."

Rusty Hassan: Sandy fixed a ham for Sunday dinner. What else have we got? We came in the house, and I found out that Art wasn't that observant. [crosstalk 00:58:02] This is great. John wanted to stay in the car, so I fixed him a sandwich and brought him a beer, and we were friends after that. John and I became very close after that.

Willard Jenkins: John?

Rusty Hassan: John Hicks.

Willard Jenkins: John Hicks.

Rusty Hassan: Yeah, I miss him.

Rusty Hassan: Art adopted me. He'd come to town and wanna hang, and I'll never forget one time he said, "Well, where are we gonna get some Japanese?" I took him to a Japanese restaurant, worried about whether it made his criteria, and it did.

Willard Jenkins: What were you doing professionally at the time?

Rusty Hassan: I was working for the Union. A staff person with the American Federation of Government Employees. I was doing arbitrations, I was doing contract negotiations, playing group therapist to dysfunctional executive boards, investigating ... In essence, doing a lawyer's job without the law degree. In the '80s, I got a Master's Degree, a Master's Science in Labor Studies from the University of the District of Columbia. So in addition to doing classes two or three days a week, I'm taking classes.

Willard Jenkins: So, what got you into this labor work?

Rusty Hassan: It was a political philosophy. When I'm doing the social work, the person said, "We have a Union here." Okay. You join the Union. Then I became active in the Local at the Redevelopment Land Agency, as home rules come into play here in DC. So I'm involved in lobbying the DC City Council in terms of transitioning from the Federal System to a DC System, and then when the staff opening came up, I said, "Let me do this."

Rusty Hassan: It was always a matter of looking at something I could do with my progressive politics, and be comfortable with the living that I'm making, and yet doing something that's going to pay the bills for my household, with the kids that we were raising. My daughters went to DC Public Schools. They went to John Burroughs down the street here, Taft down the street, and then School Without Walls. In the '80s, Aisha went to the University of before she dropped, but Kenja got into Princeton. That was financial ... What we did was put one of the paychecks aside. It's a pricey thing even with the financial aide she was getting and stuff like that, but it was a concentration on making sure our kids were well educated. We're doing the same for our grandkids right now.

Willard Jenkins: Now, speaking of DCU, you mentioned this with GTB and with AMU, but with the progression of time, what was the DC jazz scene like when you started at DCU?

Rusty Hassan: At DCU in '87, it was a rich scene. The One Step Down is thriving in many ways, in terms of the acts they're bringing there. Blues Alley would bring in an act for a week, from Tuesday through Sunday. The Kennedy Center has Billy Taylor setting up the programming there, so that the major artists are coming through there. It was really a rich scene.

Rusty Hassan: One of the people I became really close to was my father-in-law's best friend. His name is John Malachi. John, as you know, was a pianist in Billy Eckstine's Orchestra. They had a , Charlie Parker, Art Blakey. John, I first heard at a junior high school that Sandy's mom was teaching at in '68. He and I really hit it off. He would play at parties at the Barretts' house, Sandy's parents' house. After everybody left, my father-in-law and John would be working on stuff on the piano, and I was like the fly on the wall. Then John, he'd tell me stories that you couldn't repeat on the airwaves. After that, when I started teaching, John would come particularly to the Continued Ed classes, he'd come and talk about the era. What it was like to travel with the band, and what Parker was like.

Rusty Hassan: One of the last interviews I did at WAMU was John contacting me to say, "Look, I'm doing a concert at Ellington's school. Can I come by and talk about it?" So he came on my show on Sunday afternoon, and he talked about the band touring Florida and how Bird asked him to stay behind. Charlie Parker was working on Changes on Cherokee, and the two of them jammed on this for hours afterwards. As John was leaving the studio, I said, "Boy, I gotta get more of this stuff on tape. I gotta sit down with you, man." He was already setting up an interview with Bill McClure on DCU, and then Bill called me at work two days later and said, "My interview's off. John passed away yesterday."

Willard Jenkins: Wow. So you missed the opportunity. Huge missed opportunity. Rusty Hassan: Yeah. I miss him. What was it, '87 now? 30 years later.

Willard Jenkins: At the time you programmed at DCU, which as you said was known as Jazz 90, what were your thoughts about the fact that given WPFW's Jazz programming, at that time DC was unusual as an American city offering such a breath of jazz radio programming. As an active member of the DC jazz community and a WDCU programmer, what was your sense of jazz radio in DC at that time?

Rusty Hassan: I thought it was great, the fact that we still had two stations presenting the music. WAMU not doing it anymore except for that traditional jazz show with Ron Bamberger. That the competition was revitalizing the scene in terms of keeping it vibrant, and it was a friendly competition. I'll never forget co- emceeing, for whatever reason it was set up this way, but I'm co-emceeing for , with Jamal Mohammad out at Ft. Dupont. That kind of thing. Developing a friendship along the way, and making sure that the programming is top-notch, because somebody's on opposite you, may be doing something even better.

Willard Jenkins: So there was no sense of competition?

Rusty Hassan: Well, yeah, it was competitive in a friendly way. Let me tell you. I met Jerry Washington when he was living down the hall from Ron Sutton. I met his Japanese wife. Then Ron was on HUR, he was actually sports. What happened at HUR was when they shifted to the quiet storm format with Melvin Lindsey, they pushed Ron off the air and made him sports director. Gave him a substantial pay increase, but took the jazz off the evening to change it to the soft R&B that they were gonna do with the quiet storm. So then Ron starts doing stuff on PFW, and upsetting the folks at HUR a little bit, but then he brings his buddy from down the hall. Doing, "Come on, sit in with me. Sit in with me. Now you do it."

Rusty Hassan: So, Jerry Washington starts focusing on Blues, and creates a persona known as the Bamma. Starts talking about his girlfriend, Denise. At a fundraiser at the Panorama Room in Southeast DC, he introduces me to a very attractive black woman named Denise. I said, "Well, when did he split up with his wife?" Well, he never did. In fact, it was really hard when she passed away. Then when PFW actually didn't do any counter-programming initially, they had Dorothy Healey on Sunday afternoons, and people mistake the station, they'd call me up and say, "Well, how could that lady be saying that kind of stuff? That's un- American." I said, "You got the wrong station." It counter-programmed with Jerry Washington. Put on the other side of the Bama. The other side, he's doing jazz on Sundays.

Rusty Hassan: He would say, "I know…where I'm playing, put the song on." If ever I had a scratchy record, I said, "Well, this is from the Jerry Washington collection of classic jazz." Rusty Hassan: Nat Turner. I met Nap Turner at a club on 14th and Rhode Island Avenue NW when the hookers were going in and out of this club. What happened was John Malachi had been playing there and had asked for more money for the group, and the guy said no. He then booked a woman named Julie [inaudible 01:07:54] Turner, a pianist who just married Carl, who'd just come out of [inaudible 01:08:02], and Nat was playing bass. So I knew him as jazz bass player, and I watched him develop on PFW to this personality.

Willard Jenkins: How did you make that shift from DCU to PFW?

Rusty Hassan: Well, when DCU went off the air, I had so many friends who were on the airwaves at PFW -

Willard Jenkins: What year was this now?

Rusty Hassan: '97.

Willard Jenkins: Alright.

Rusty Hassan: '97. They kept -

Willard Jenkins: So you were at DCU 10 years?

Rusty Hassan: I was at DCU 10 years ...

Willard Jenkins: Yeah.

Rusty Hassan: ... and all my friends who had been listening to me, like Larry Applebaum, all these folks who were on PFW saying, "Well, you should try to ... We'll find a spot for you." Then there became like the sub. The Sunday sub. Or the Rolling with Bowling. Sitting in for Rick Bowling, or whoever.

Willard Jenkins: This is '97 we're talking about.

Rusty Hassan: '97, absolutely. [crosstalk 01:09:10]

Rusty Hassan: Then there was the infamous blow-up between Brother Ah and the then General Manager, where ...

Willard Jenkins: Lou Hankins.

Rusty Hassan: ... Lou Hankins called me up and said, "Can you do Tuesday night?" I said, "Yeah, okay." I didn't know exactly what had happened, but then I ran into Jamal Mohammad out at the VA Hospital, which is one of my locals, and he explained. He had witnessed what happened between them. So I said, "Well, geeze, I gotta do it. Gotta take over Tuesdays." I was really ... I've been friends with Brother Ah for years, but I'm not gonna not do this show. Rusty Hassan: Some time later, Benny Pal was playing out at Twins, so a week after I started doing Tuesday nights. I said, "Well, let me go see my friend Benny." I walk in there, who's sitting at the bar? It was his old friend, Robert sitting at the bar there.

Willard Jenkins: Brother Ah.

Rusty Hassan: So I walk up to Brother Ah, I say, "How come I'm doing Tuesday nights?" He said, "Well, you know Lou Hankins has a failure to communicate." I said, "Okay." He had no hard feelings for me, of course, but he said one way we'll work it out, and eventually he got back on the airwaves of course.

Willard Jenkins: So when you started at PFW, was your programming any different than what you were doing at DCU and at AMU and at GTB?

Rusty Hassan: Absolutely not. I'm blessed, here I am after 50 years still doing what I started doing as a student at Georgetown. Never had a programmer, program director telling me, "No, you can't play this." What I have done is edit a bit. I became more inclined to pick and choose from the cutting edge and avant-garde artists, pieces that would be more accessible to a broader audience. I'm sure it'll turn them off, but I'm going to pick and choose things that will keep a listener engaged rather than turn them off.

Willard Jenkins: So, would you say that through your evolution through these four stations, that becoming more attuned to what the listener might be interested in, was part of your growth?

Rusty Hassan: Absolutely. But [crosstalk 01:11:59]

Willard Jenkins: But how did you get that way? [crosstalk 01:12:01]

Rusty Hassan: ... reaction of, "Well, Rusty, I liked everything you played but that recording from Seattle, Washington." My friend Melvin Trailer grew up in the music, maybe a little bit more conservative case because he was older. Then from my own listening tastes, in terms of being very eclectic with it, not afraid to play traditional jazz as well as the avant-garde. To pick and choose what your listener will appreciate. Also, because all these years we've been on listener-supported radio.

Rusty Hassan: It's also my teaching, the classroom, that also ... Playing stuff for the students to get their reaction to it. This is why I can't do online teaching. I wanna have a face-to-face interaction with the students. One of the things that really made it for me, back in 2010, I was recruited to teach an undergraduate Jazz History course at Georgetown, after participating in a forum that Maurice Jackson had put on in conjunction with a concert with Charlie Haden and they asked me to teach the undergraduate class. So I'm already teaching at the University of Maryland University College. Tuesday nights, I'm teaching at UMUC at 7:00, Georgetown it's four to 5:30 Tuesdays and Thursdays, stealing time from my full-time job to do two classes.

Rusty Hassan: During that year, this a year at the undergraduate class I had -

Willard Jenkins: What year was this again?

Rusty Hassan: 2010.

Willard Jenkins: Oh, okay.

Rusty Hassan: Had Braxton Cook in my undergraduate class. He was at Georgetown at that time. Really bright students at Georgetown, really into the music, very interactive with me. University of Maryland University College is working adults. African-Americans in their 50's, people in the service and stuff like that. One time I'm covering Cool Jazz, playing Birth of the Cool with Miles Davis and with Lee Konitz, and covering that era, Brad Lindy has Lee Konitz at Blues Alley with a big band. Lee Konitz is being the featured soloist. I make the students give me performance reports, but I don't give them specific performances to go to. They have carte blanche. By the end of the semester, give me two.

Rusty Hassan: So I go to see Konitz, and here's the Georgetown students coming up, "Oh, great show. I'm glad to see you here." This African-American woman comes up to me, she's from the other class. She's like 50, she works post-service, I think she was into neo-soul stuff, whatever. She comes up to me, she says, "Wow, this is great. Do you think Mr. Konitz will sign the picture of him in our textbook?" I said, "Sure, why not?" Now, I met Lee at the One Step. I re-introduced myself up in the little dressing room. I said, "Would you do me a favor and sign the photo?" He looks at it, "Boy," he says, "This is an old picture." I got to see Lee a couple of times since then, and thank him again.

Rusty Hassan: That really made it for me. That here's this 50 year old African-American woman coming out to hear this 83-year-old white guy playing the alto sax. I got to her. She became more open with her musical tastes. That's what I try to do with the classroom and with the radio; develop an audience for this music that I love.

Willard Jenkins: Well, up to this point, and I guess throughout your tenure at all four stations, had you worked with any particularly memorable or influential radio program directors or general managers, who were influential on you in terms of what you did on the air?

Rusty Hassan: Hm. That's a great question Willard. The most interaction that I had was with Wally Pearson, when he came over to DCU.

Willard Jenkins: Wally Rollins, you mean?

Rusty Hassan: Wally Rollins, I'm sorry, yeah. There's another Wally I had ... My Union job. Willard Jenkins: What made that working relationship so successful?

Rusty Hassan: Wally, he'd sit down and talk to you in terms of what to do. Earlier at WAMU, there was a guy who sat down with me a while, wanted to tweak what I was doing. Establish the show earlier on, rather than playing a long cut, things that I'd neglected, regressed back to and stuff like that. But Wally's point about, "Well, you may wanna play that rare find and say, 'Look what I found' but the sound quality's so that you're just gonna turn people off. Find the alternative. Find the same artist doing something that won't turn any of the audience off, in terms of bad radio."

Rusty Hassan: The thing that I find, the thing now is a lot of people just say the main artist. To me, it's important that jazz as a soloist art form, that you tell the folks who's playing bass. For a quintet or sextet, that's not gonna take too much time to run down the whole personnel. You don't need to name everybody in Ellington's band, of course, but you wanna be informed about the musicians who are participating in the performance.

Willard Jenkins: Well, that leads me to a question about what is your overall radio programming philosophy?

Rusty Hassan: Boy. I wanna just share the music of artists who have been my heroes over the decades that I've been doing this. This is an art form that has been marginalized in terms of record sales and audience participation, but it's an important art form. People should be accessible to it, and open their ears up to it to hear it, so I do the programming on the radio and I do the classroom work to make sure that there are people who understand that this is an important American art form rooted within the African-American community, that has a lasting value and is entertaining, as well.

Willard Jenkins: That leads to the question about your teaching and your radio. How have you combined your radio programming with your teaching?

Rusty Hassan: That's great. For years now, I've had a listening portion to the mid-term or final exam. I play all of the recordings that are gonna be on that exam, on the radio. Students have an opportunity to hear it on the airwaves, and other folks can take it like it's a blindfold test in a way. Of course, your artist identified at the end of the set. I've been doing this since the '80s. I started teaching at American University, I said, "Well, I'm on the air, I want people to identify the artist on these recordings. If I do it a week or so ahead of time, they'll have an opportunity to listen to these recordings so that they know them.

Willard Jenkins: So it's optional?

Rusty Hassan: Well, optional in terms of they can listen or they can listen to it elsewhere, but -

Willard Jenkins: But if they listen ... Rusty Hassan: Yeah.

Willard Jenkins: ... they'll know who it is.

Rusty Hassan: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Willard Jenkins: So if your students listen, those that choose to listen have a leg up?

Rusty Hassan: Yeah. Sure.

Willard Jenkins: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rusty Hassan: Absolutely.

Willard Jenkins: When you've taught jazz courses, how has the course work interacted with the overall jazz scene in DC?

Rusty Hassan: Because they have to do performance reports, they have to go out and hear artists and come back and do a review ...

Willard Jenkins: Right.

Rusty Hassan: ... so they've been introduced to the jazz scene in Washington. Because they have to identify who's performing and what they played, and what they thought of it, usually they have to go up and talk to the artist a bit to find out some things. Most of them do.

Willard Jenkins: What would you say is your overall philosophy in teaching jazz courses?

Rusty Hassan: I teach it from a historical, cultural perspective, emphasizing the history of the artists and the roots of this music within the Black community. Rather than being very technical about the elements of the musical performance. A case in point, when I started teaching at Georgetown one semester, this Asian- American woman came up to me. She said, "Well, I don't know whether I should take this course or not, I see you have a lot of musicians in your class." I said, "Well, you're exactly the person I want in the class. I wanna open you up to this music. So, don't be intimidated, we're not gonna kill you with technical terms about the music or anything like that." After she handed in her final exam, she said, "Well, thank you for making this so accessible. I learned a lot and I will continue to listen."

Willard Jenkins: So basically, your philosophy is cultivating more jazz enthusiasts?

Rusty Hassan: Absolutely.

Willard Jenkins: Okay. Willard Jenkins: Now, down through all these years of being so immersed in the music, what has been your family's relationship with the music?

Rusty Hassan: When I first met Sandy, she had some fabulous recordings her collection, including Ascension and Fire Music that were given to her by Marion Brown, when they were both students at Howard. So she had these recordings, she had Eric Dolphy, one of her favorite recordings. That was an immediate, "Wow, you're into the music" type of thing, but as I was raising my family, I took my kids out. I took Aisha and Kenja out to hear performances. Both of them seen Dizzy Gillespie, , either at Blues Alley or the Kennedy Center. One time, there was a whole week of performances that we did with at various facilities, and DCU sponsored him, we were the emcees. At that time, Aisha was working at an athletic shop in Georgetown, she was about 16 at the time. I took her to see Wynton that night. I [inaudible 01:24:15] the store of tote bags and stuff for all the musicians, little mugs and they would help me out with this.

Rusty Hassan: I was supposed to tape something with , we were up in the little dressing room. Aisha and Wynton were on the couch laughing, joking over Jet Magazine. Then this white woman was in the room. She said, "Well, who are you?" Aisha looked and said, "I'm his daughter." Not to me, to Wynton. This woman believed it. She said, "Oh, have you eaten yet?" [inaudible 01:24:49] music, and she kind of kicked me. Wynton played along with her, he said, "Well, I want you back before the set's over." Aisha went over and she said ... What it was, was the woman was hitting on Reggie [Viel 01:25:03], and she came back to Reggie, she said, "You gotta lose her." The woman kept pumping her for information. She would bite into the hamburger, she told me, she said well she'd make up stuff, but Wynton played along with it, and he stayed in touch for a while in terms of how Aisha's doing.

Rusty Hassan: Some years ago, we were both judges for the Silver Spring Jazz Festival. The year that Paul Carr's Jazz Academy Music won. I got to show him the pictures of grandkids and stuff like that. So, my girls went out, part of the music. Took Kenja to see Alexandria, Frank Wess where we had a conversation with this pianist about some science project she was doing in Junior High School. So I've got this material, I'll send it to you, stuff like that. Then when my grandkids came along, well you saw me with Caine, every place. From the time he's a year old and I'm holding him while I'm introducing Randy Weston at the Freedom Jazz Plaza. To seeing Randy a couple of times after that or , or whoever. The same thing with I got a great photograph of my granddaughter Truly with Gerry Allen at the Kennedy Center. I'll always treasure that, now that Gerry's passed on.

Willard Jenkins: They may not be as immersed as you, has that made a difference?

Rusty Hassan: I think so. They listen to the music, and it's not their main music, but all of them have grown up with it.