Jazz stars line up to toast KCSM radio icon
Melanie Berzon championed women players on and off the air
When the jazz world wants to celebrate one of its own, there’s a time-honored ritual that’s best conducted when the person is around to appreciate the show.
Signing off after 26 years of helping run the Bay Area’s jazz station KCSM-FM 91.1, first as program director and then operations manager, Melanie Berzon might be feeling some mixed emotions about her retirement. But it’s a safe bet that no one at Monday’s Freight & Salvage extravaganza celebrating her is going to enjoy the music more.
While her primary role at the San Mateo station has been behind the scenes, Berzon is also a familiar voice on the air as the co-host of “Jazz in the Afternoon.” Her dedication to the art form and the musicians who create it is evident every time she’s behind the mic. The show’s impressive lineup features many of the most important improvisers in the region, while reflecting her embrace of jazz’s kindred currents, particularly R&B, soul and Latin American music.
The tribute includes pianist Tammy Hall’s trio with drummer Ruthie Price and bassist Ruth Davies and legendary jazz and blues vocalist Barbara Dane, still a potent force at 92. The velvet-toned vocalist Melanie DeMore adds another jolt of soul. “When she opens her mouth and she sings one note, you’re in church or crying,” said Berzon as she packed up her KCSM office at the College of San Mateo.
Topping off the crowded program are Jackeline Rago and Donna Viscuso’s VNote Ensemble, which has honed a singular synthesis of jazz and folkloric Venezuelan rhythms, and the hardswinging Montclair Women’s Big Band.
The concert is a fundraiser for KCSM.
“This is not about me,” Berzon said. “It’s about the artists and the station. This is about women and men who need to be heard, all together on one stage. This is the bill of a lifetime.”
Given the prominence of the players involved, one could easily look at the program without realizing that the event focuses on women instrumentalists. These are simply some of the baddest players around, but Berzon deserves a measure of credit for their prominence, as she has spent more than four decades in radio insisting the female musicians get a fair share of the spotlight.
“I can’t think of one person in the whole Bay Area who’s done as much to promote jazz women as Melanie,” said trumpeter and jazz activist Ellen Seeling, who co-leads the Montclair Women’s Big Band with saxophonist-composer Jean Fineberg. “I know she experienced a lot of frustration and fought hard to get more airplay for women.”
Seeling and Fineberg first met Berzon around 1987, when their New York fusion band Deuce played the Boston Globe Jazz Festival, and she brought them in for an interview on WGBH. She had been hired by the powerhouse Boston public station as an engineer, but under the tutelage of veteran jazz broadcaster Eric Jackson, Berzon started putting together her own shows.
At a time when women jazz musicians struggled mightily for any visibility, Berzon put her airtime to good use. “You can tell when Mel is on the air because of her attention to women players,” said KCSM program director Alisa Clancy. “She lost her parents quite young, and she’s very sensitive to people dealing with difficult times and knows how music can bring people solace. I think she programs accordingly.”
Berzon credits her older brother with turning her on to jazz via two epochal 1958 albums, Ahmad Jamal’s live trio session “At the Pershing” (Argo) and Nina Simone’s star-making debut “Little Girl Blue” (Bethlehem). “I was into show music and folk, pop and rock, soul and R&B,” she says. “Nina was a door into jazz. It was all about emotion and feeling and the melody for me.”
In devoting her life to championing music, Berzon is responding in kind, as she feels the music has sustained her through the hardest times. “The radio saved my life when I was alone and depressed, which I was a lot,” she says.
She moved to the Bay Area in 1990, when KPFAFM 94.1 hired her as program director, and in 1993, she took over the same position at KCSM. As confident as she was in management, going on the air gave her a serious case of imposture syndrome.
“I was a wreck doing my first shows,” she says. “I knew R&B and soul and women’s music, but with jazz, I knew I was a fraud. I was working with Dick Conte, Alisa Clancy, Chuy Varela and Clifford Brown Jr. So I took Fred Berry’s History of Jazz class here at the college and read liner notes. I’m still not Alisa or Chuy, but I learned a lot being here. I’m just the luckiest person in the world.”