Longtime CKCU host championed jazz scene
Ron Sweetman, an organizer and champion of Ottawa’s jazz scene since the mid-1970s and a CKCU radio show host for almost 40 years, has died.
Or as his online memorial says, he “peacefully checked into the jazz club in the sky on October 24, 2018.”
Sweetman, 86, founded the weekly CKCU jazz show In A Mellow Tone, named after a Duke Ellington song, in May 1976. He hosted his program until his retirement from radio in September 2015. The show continues, hosted by a rotation of jazz zealots.
Born in England in 1932, Sweetman moved to Montreal by the early 1970s and then to Ottawa in 1975. By day, Sweetman was at first a chartered accountant and then an international management consultant who eventually worked in more than 20 countries during his 35-year career.
But he was also a lifelong jazz fan, who had tried his hand at learning the clarinet, trumpet and five other instruments before settling on being a listener and then a disc jockey.
‘’The only instrument I ever acquired any level of skill on was the humble washboard,’’ Sweetman said with typical humour in a 1988 interview. ‘’Any idiot can play that. I don’t think I ever threatened musical history.’’
Arriving in Ottawa, Sweetman found a jazz scene here that was meagre — “There was one traditional jazz band that played once a week in a pub in the Market,” he told this newspaper in 1996 — and set about trying to improve it.
“Ottawa’s jazz scene would not be the same without Ron,” James Hale, a friend and fellow Ottawa jazz advocate and journalist, said on Facebook last week. “From the day he arrived in Ottawa he made this a better, more musical place.”
Sweetman was a co-founder of Jazz Ottawa, a society of music enthusiasts and aspiring musicians that gathered weekly at such venues as San Antonio Rose on Rideau Street from the late 1970s into the early 1990s. The community that arose out of Jazz Ottawa and other Sweetman initiatives gave rise to the Ottawa Jazz Festival, which was founded in 1980. Sweetman went on to organize and promote highprofile concerts and jazz conferences in Ottawa for the following three decades.
He was a music-lover of wide tastes, an aficionado of traditional swing and the avant-garde alike. He wrote for the Canadian jazz magazine Coda, and was a member of the Down Beat International Critics Poll.
Sweetman said in his 1996 interview that the diversity of his tastes contributed to his radio show’s longevity. “I think that’s why people listen in, because they never know what they’re going to hear.”
Sweetman said that when his show hit the 10-year mark, he considered quitting. “But then I thought about life without it and decided I couldn’t face that,” he said. “It’s a hell of a lot of work — probably 10 hours’ worth for every show. But I’m encouraged by the number of young people who are into jazz,” Sweetman said.
Sweetman is survived by his wife of 56 years, Jennifer Dickson, his son Bill and daughter-in-law Yvonne, who welcome donations in Sweetman’s name to the Dementia Society of Ottawa and Renfrew County. There will not be a visitation or funeral service for Sweetman, but a music-filled party celebrating his life is to be held at a future date.
Ottawa’s jazz scene would not be the same without Ron. From the day he arrived … he made this a better, more musical place.