As the resident jazzionado at Weekly Planet/Creative Loafing, I was called upon to write annual Best of the Bay items about jazz (i.e. Best Jazz Club). One year — I don’t remember which — the scene was in such doldrums that my lone entry about the music was this (or something close to it):
Best Place to Hear Jazz: Bob Seymour’s Living Room
Bob and I still get a chuckle out of that one.
We've followed parallel career paths — me the critic, him the jazz program director/DJ at WUSF-FM (89.7), both of us hopelessly caught up in the music, willing to stop on the side of the road to find out who’s playing bass on this session or that.
So Bob’s retiring — after 35 years on the mic at WUSF.
And no, he does not have a horrible illness.
You got to wonder, right? He’s 66 on Monday, still digs the music, still possesses that mellifluous baritone that’s both authoritative and welcoming. His job is not what we would normally think of as a difficult. More like: dream. So why leave?
“Sometimes backing away is kind of appealing,” he told me on Friday. “I’m not planning on doing a podcast or anything. Just gonna take some time, travel. After this respite, I may be back on the jazz scene.”
In the meantime, Bob plans to stay active with the Tampa Bay Jazz Club.
So it’s not really goodbye. He’s staying in Tampa, and will be around at shows. But man, it will suck not hearing him on “All Night Jazz.”
Here’s a definitive statement about Bob Seymour: He’s the most important figure on the local jazz scene for the last three-and-half decades. I don’t think it’s close.
Normally such a superlative would go to a musician. But Tampa’s jazz landscape has always been beset by fits and starts, sometimes been flat-out on the skids. So while a roll call of fine jazz musicians have lived and worked in Tampa Bay, they’ve mostly been underdogs.
Clubs opened, clubs closed. The performing arts centers used to regularly book major jazz names (and lose money) as kind of a contribution to the culture. Not anymore. In the 1980s, there was a legit jazz club at Tierra Verde Island Resort that booked mid-level jazz acts (Clark Terry, Herb Ellis) for multi-night engagements. It didn’t last long. The Jazz Cellar in the Ybor City tried something similar in the ’90s. That, too, was pretty short-lived.
The Gibraltar has been WUSF. Jazz programming on the station started out as a midnight-to-2 a.m. block (“try doing a fundraiser for that,” Bob says). For many years now it has started at 9 p.m. and run ‘til 5 in the morning. Bob may not want to take all, or even most of, the credit.
But he deserves it.
Tonight (Sat., March 26), Bob Seymour hosts his last weekend evening of Saturday Night Jazz for WUSF 89.7 FM. The program starts at 9 p.m. WUSF also celebrates Seymour’s career with a feature radio piece, airing Mon., March 28, at 8:45 a.m. and 5:45 p.m., and Wed., March 30, at 8:40 a.m. and 5:45 p.m. on WUSF 89.7 FM.
This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2016.