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


Blog Archives

July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
April 2005
May 2005
January 2006
September 2006
February 2007
May 2007
July 2007
January 2008
April 2008
May 2008
August 2008

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?