Chuck Niles was a living, breathing jazz historian and an all around ambassador of the music. When he passed away in 2004 at the age of 76 he had been broadcasting jazz on the radio in Los Angeles continually since 1957. He remains the only jazz D.J. to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

My dad listened to Chuck Niles’ radio show in the car on his long commute home from work. This was when drive time L.A. radio was a big deal. People actually listened to music, and jazz music mind you, via radio in great numbers. Sounds crazy, I know, but this goes back many years. Remember this is when all you had was a radio in a car. If you were doing drive time broadcasting to the greater Los Angeles area you were reaching more people for a longer amount of time than anywhere else on the planet. That is what I call a captive audience.

The soothing mellow baritone of Niles was just what the frustrated L.A. commuter needed as that person sat in the traffic that awaited all Southern Californians at the end of their workday. He spun records which seemed to go perfectly with his delivery, which was as cool as the music he loved.   

The station then went to another format and Niles, sometimes known as the Hippest Cat in Hollywood, Be Bop Charlie and the self applied Carlitos Niles, when he was spinning Latin jazz, went straight to the only game on town in 1990; a public jazz station that broadcast out of nearby Long Beach. He immediately took over the coveted afternoon drive time slot and stayed right there until his death fourteen years later. Niles died with his boots on and did what he loved right until the very end.

Chuck, along with the late great Sam Fields, both from that commercial jazz station KKGO, landed on their feet at KLON 88.1 before it changed its call letters to KJZZ. This is also before a shift in ownership and format at that station. That is a fascinating story in and of itself.

If you like tales about scandal, greed, corruption, clashes of titanic egos, dynasties, personal vendettas, grudges and miserable people screwing the pooch, not to mention each other, then that story is for you. It could be an HBO series called “Mega-Hurts” or something like that. That is another story which, for the most part, is already well documented and a matter of public record.  

Back to Be Bop Charlie...I was fortunate enough to run into Chuck back in the day at the jazz clubs in and around L.A., as he frequented these joints, often after one of his broadcasts. If you listened to his program you knew his affection for this music was not just an act for radio...like some people I would love to mention. So there I am, hanging out listening to jazz music with a guy I grew up listening to broadcast that music on the radio. It would be like having Vin Scully over to the house to watch a baseball game on T.V.

The first time I met Chuck, I told him that my affection for this music was in part through his broadcasts which was a shared experience with my dad when I was still a little kid. Now many years later, and one week after seeing a performance at the Hollywood Bowl which included a reunion of the classic Jimmy Smith Quartet, I was at another jazz show. It was tiny little place in Orange, California, of all places. That night they had a reasonably large ensemble crammed into a tiny coffee house in a strip mall. The performances that evening were a tribute to the jazz great, piano player and composer Horace Silver.

In the audience was Chuck Niles. Sitting next to him was the great hard bop grand pop himself, Horace Silver. That’s right, the man who founded The Jazz Messengers, along with Art Blakey was sitting in a tiny café in my hometown, just a few miles from where I grew up. The man who wrote songs which were recorded by Ray Charles and his orchestra was sitting a few feet from where I was standing. The number of songs that he composed and recorded under his own name and under his band’s name, The Jazz Messengers, is staggering. Many have become standards. Songs like Doodlin’, Cape Verdean Blues, Sister Sadie, Senor Blues, Opus de Funk, Home Cookin’ and others have long been part of the jazz lexicon. This was a true musical giant.

On the break Chuck stepped outside for a smoke. I went out to say hello and was hoping for one of those colorful “off the air” stories he could summon up at a moment’s notice. I complimented him on his skills behind the mic in front of 17,000 people at the Bowl a week earlier and on his sartorial splendor, as he was in black tie, while serving as the master of ceremonies for that event.

He told me that he picked up Jimmy Smith and drove him to the gig. He walked up to Smith’s front door and rang the bell. He went on to tell me that Smith answered the door buck naked and looked at Niles already decked out in his tuxedo and said, “I’m not sure Chuck, but one of us might be over dressed.”  Horace Silver just stepped outside to stretch his legs and Chuck took the opportunity to introduce the two of us. I thought to myself, ‘It doesn’t get any better than this.’

I was wrong. Silver went back inside as the band was reassembling. Niles snuffed out his cigarette and started to head in as well. He then turned around and asked me all these years after we first met. “Hey Dave, is your dad still around?” I told him that he had passed away many years ago. Chuck said, “Yeah, but I’ll bet he’s still listening to jazz.”

He walked by the bandstand and said something to the players, they talked for a moment amongst one another, shuffled their sheet music and opened the second set with the Horace Silver classic Song for My Father. Upon hearing the very familiar opening riff that on record was played by Silver and doubled on bass by Teddy Smith, the water works opened up. I looked over at Chuck. He was smiling in my direction and just winked.

Happy Fathers Day...

- David Mac