Sunday, October 17, 2004
Phil Harper, 1940-2004: Longtime Seattle radio personality
Fron the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Phil Harper, who brought a distinctive voice and unscripted personality to radio gigs ranging from jazz and country music hosting to advertisements to playing a detective in dramas, died early yesterday. He was 64.
Harper would have been well-known for no other reason than the length and breadth of his career locally. At the time of his death, he was juggling a regular weekday afternoon shift as "Buffalo Phil" on KYCW-AM, a classic country station, being the promotional "voice" of jazz station KPLU-FM and performing the role of Harry Nile in the long-running series of radio dramas. He had also been the morning host of KMPS-FM when it became a country station nearly 30 years ago and had a long career doing radio commercials.
But it wasn't just his voice that was distinctive. It was his personality, a conversational approach that, married with a wealth of knowledge about music, allowed him to recount an anecdote or give a little bit of history about a song, whether it was a sultry Sarah Vaughn jazz ballad or a country hit from the past such as Hank Snow's "I've Been Everywhere."
Read the article
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Phil Harper, who brought a distinctive voice and unscripted personality to radio gigs ranging from jazz and country music hosting to advertisements to playing a detective in dramas, died early yesterday. He was 64.
Harper would have been well-known for no other reason than the length and breadth of his career locally. At the time of his death, he was juggling a regular weekday afternoon shift as "Buffalo Phil" on KYCW-AM, a classic country station, being the promotional "voice" of jazz station KPLU-FM and performing the role of Harry Nile in the long-running series of radio dramas. He had also been the morning host of KMPS-FM when it became a country station nearly 30 years ago and had a long career doing radio commercials.
But it wasn't just his voice that was distinctive. It was his personality, a conversational approach that, married with a wealth of knowledge about music, allowed him to recount an anecdote or give a little bit of history about a song, whether it was a sultry Sarah Vaughn jazz ballad or a country hit from the past such as Hank Snow's "I've Been Everywhere."
Read the article
Seattle Post-Intelligencer