PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Bob Perkins, a pillar in the Philadelphia jazz community, has died. He was 91.
Perkins was a fixture on the airwaves for 60 years — first in Detroit, then Philly. And while he started as a newsman, his true calling was jazz.
He began by moonlighting at WHYY in the late 1970s, taking on a theme song and calling his program “BP with GM” – “Bob Perkins with good music.”
In 1997, he took a full-time gig at WRTI and hosted evening jazz.
General Manager Bill Johnson says Perkins brought the same level of dedicated excellence to presenting music as musicians did to make it.
“What Bob brought to it was this sort of deep understanding of what it meant, not just as entertainment, but what its cultural value was, what its history was, and he didn't have to preach to you in order to convey that,” Johnson said.
Perkins retired from the evening program in 2022 and started “Stay Tuned," a narrative podcast about music, culture and history.
“He wanted to continue connecting with people and generating a love of this music in the same way that he had come to love it as a lifelong passion,” Johnson said.
In a 2022 KYW interview with Perkins, he said he considered himself lucky to have made a career in jazz.
“I’m so-called an alleged jazz authority but I’m just a guy who loves jazz music,” he said.