Phil Schaap

Schaap's work saw the recovery of 461 recorded fragments (Benedetti recorded only Parker, some fragments last only 20 seconds) from 18 nights of Parker's 1947 and 1948 nightclub appearances in Los Angeles and New York.

By the 1950s, many leading African American musicians had moved into residential areas like Hollis in Queens, helpful for an emerging jazz enthusiast.

In the first grade, Schaap tried to persuade Carole Eldridge, the daughter of trumpeter Roy Eldridge, to introduce him to her father, but only succeeded via her mother.

Philip van Noorden Schaap (April 8, 1951September 7, 2021) was an American radio host, who specialized in jazz as a broadcaster, historian, archivist, and producer.

Schaap was born in Queens, New York, on April 8, 1951.

He was raised in the Hollis neighborhood, and grew up as a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

An only child, he was raised by jazz-loving parents.

His father was Walter Schaap, an early jazz historian and discographer.

His mother, Marjorie Wood Schaap, worked as a librarian and was a classically trained pianist.

At Radcliffe, she listened to Louis Armstrong records and smoked a corncob pipe.

Schaap's mother was Christian and his father was Jewish.

Schaap was friendly with many jazz musicians from a young age, particularly the members of the original Count Basie Orchestra, knocking on the front door of Buck Clayton, as well as visiting the home of Milt Hinton unannounced.

Backstage with his mother at Randall’s Island Jazz Festival in August 1956, he first met Basie's drummer, Jo Jones, who asked if he knew of Prince Robinson (a tenor player for McKinney's Cotton Pickers several decades earlier).

As a result of Schaap passing this test, Jones offered to become his babysitter.

His father dropped him off at Jones's Manhattan apartment; they played Basie records and watched cartoons together.

In his early teens, Schaap managed to gain a lift into Manhattan from Basie himself during the 1966 subway strike and amazed him with his recall of his orchestra's members and their repertory.

While in college, Schaap worked as a sound engineer for the Grateful Dead on a number of occasions, including during the Columbia University protests of 1968.

He began presenting jazz shows on Columbia University's WKCR in 1970, and hosted Bird Flight and Traditions In Swing on WKCR for 40 years, beginning in 1981.

Schaap received six Grammy Awards over the course of his career.

On February 2, 1970, he began broadcasting jazz on the Columbia University radio station, WKCR-FM.

Schaap graduated from Columbia in 1973.

From 1981, Schaap hosted two shows on WKCR: the morning show Bird Flight, broadcast weekdays from 8:20 to 9:30 AM, was devoted to the music of Charlie Parker.

Traditions In Swing was on Saturday evenings from 6 to 9 PM.

On Bird Flight, Schaap presented authoritative disquisitions (in his "pontifical baritone") regarding Charlie Parker minutiae.

From 1984 to 1991, Schaap was the archivist for the Savoy Jazz label.

He was involved with the re-issue of other recordings on CD by artists including Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington.

For his efforts in engineering, production, and liner notes, Schaap was nominated for eleven Grammy awards and had won seven, including three for producing, three for historical writing, and one for audio engineering.

Schaap was commissioned by Michael Cuscuna of Mosaic Records around 1988 to rescue unissued decaying recording of Charlie Parker made by Dean Benedetti forty years earlier.

The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings of Charlie Parker (a 10 LP or 7 CD box set) was issued by Mosaic in 1990.

Walter, Schaap's own father, at first disbelieved reports his young son (then 6 years old) was approaching major jazz musicians, explaining in 2001 that he rarely had sufficient courage himself.

"There isn’t anyone in the country who knows more about this music than he [does]," Max Roach told The New York Times in 2001.

“He knows more about us than we know about ourselves."

Schaap attended Columbia University as a history major.

By 2001, the radio station's archive contained about 5,000 hours of Schaap's oral history and he was reported to have raised about $2 million over many years to help the station continue its broadcasts.

From around the time he began as a student radio disc jockey, he was running the Jazz program at The West End at 113th street across Broadway from WKCR at 114th St in New York City gaining work for swing era musicians he had known for years who were by then under-employed.

The West End had a side bar called the Jazz Room where musicians hung out.

He booked on a nightly basis such prominent swing-band alumni as The Countsmen (a Basie alumni band, which he managed, featuring alto saxophonist Earle Warren and trombonist Dicky Wells), Russell Procope's Ellingtonia, Franc Williams, George Kelly, Eddie Barefield, Sonny Greer, Benny Waters, Jo Jones, Buddy Tate, Vic Dickenson, Harold Ashby, Big Nick Nicholas, Ronnie Cole, Eddie Durham and "Doc" Cheatham.

He also booked modern jazz artists, such as Lee Konitz and Joe Albany, and blues artists, such as Percy France and Big Joe Turner.

Schaap engineered sound for jazz events, including George Wein's Newport Jazz Festival.

He continued as a radio broadcaster for a half-century, until 2020, when the COVID pandemic intervened.