
Jazz Unlimited ended on December 29, 2019 with host Dennis Owsley's retirement. The weekly radio show covered the continuum of jazz from Louis Armstrong to Lester Bowie. Each show was scripted and based on a theme to provide the broadest coverage of the music.
Host Dennis Owsley has been a jazz album collector, aficionado, and historian since 1958 and has seen most of the major artists in jazz in live performance. April 2018 marks his 35th anniversary presenting jazz on St. Louis Public Radio. He celebrated his 25th anniversary with a mayoral proclamation of a Dennis Owsley Day on January 24, 2008. He received the Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award from St. Louis Public Radio in 2010 and was named a Jazz Hero of St. Louis by the Jazz Journalists Association. Jazz Unlimited won the Riverfront Times' Best of St. Louis Award in the "Best Jazz Show" category six times.
Nearly all the music heard on Jazz Unlimited is from Owsley's personal collection. He has an international reputation as a photographer of jazz musicians as well. >> See his photographs.
Owsley wrote an award-winning book, City of Gabriels—The Jazz History of St. Louis 1895-1973.
He produced a radio documentary in 1986 that led to that book. That documentary was produced again and expanded in 2013, the second-longest music documentary in radio history. >> Listen to all of the interviews.
Listen to the most recent two episodes of Jazz Unlimited:
View playlists from past episodes of Jazz Unlimited:
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Jazz Unlimited for, June 2, 2019, will present “Music from Some Well-Known Jazz Concerts.” Throughout its history, beginning with the Benny Goodman 1938…
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Jazz Unlimited for May 26, 2019, will present “The Keys and Strings Hour Plus New Music.” Since today is Miles Davis’s birthday, we will playpresent some…
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Jazz Unlimited for May 19, 2019 will present “The Career of Stan Getz.” Known as “The Sound,” tenor saxophonist Stan Getz was a popular figure in jazz…
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Jazz Unlimited for May 5, 2019, presents “The Career of Roy Haynes.” Known as “Snap Crackle” for his snare drum playing, drummer Roy Haynes’ 70 plus year…
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Jazz Unlimited for Sunday, April 28, 2019, will present “The Keys and Strings Hour Plus New Music.” The “Keys and Strings Hour,” or jazz without horns,…
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Jazz Unlimited for April 21, 2019, will present “The Compositions of Ornette Coleman.” When Ornette Coleman began recording in 1958, his style, called…
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Jazz Unlimited for April 14, 2019 will present “How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall?” The answer is that you practice-a lot. Starting in 1938 with the famous…
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Jazz Unlimited for April 7, 2019 will be “Long Form Duke Ellington Compositions.” Duke Ellington was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century,…
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Jazz Unlimited for Sunday, March 31, 2019, will present “The Keys and Strings Hour plus New Music..” The Keys and Strings Hour will present artists born…