Services offered: COVID-19 Disinfecting • Junk Removal House Clean-Outs • Shed Removal • Hot Tub Removal
No. 20 Vol. 9
My Life Publications • 973-809-4784
September 2024
800-939-JUNK
Livingston Resident Hosts New Standards Show on West Coast
T
By Steve Sears he moment Livingston resident, Chuck Granata, kicks off his new weekly “Sinatra Standard Time” radio show on KSDS-FM Jazz 88.3 in San Diego, you know this is going to be a treat. Granata’s voice is smooth and friendly, inviting you to his side by his turntable or CD player, inviting you to listen in and embrace what my dad used to call “the good stuff.” And it certainly is. “What people my age consider ‘radio’ has changed considerably in the last 30 years,” Granata said. “There are very few jazz stations in the New York market anymore, and the landmark traditional pop station, WNEW/WQEW, went off the air decades ago. There is no outlet for the Sinatra-style pop-jazz of the 1940s through 70s, except in subscription radio such as Sirius-XM.” Granata wanted to present a show that you could not hear anywhere else: one that was polished yet fun, as well as interesting and informative without being academic. And he also wanted to purposefully avoid doing an entire program dedicated to “Ol’ Blue Eyes.” Granata said, “While he (Sinatra) set many of the standards for this music, his was not the only voice. There are many, many vocalists who are as unique and distinct as he was. I also wanted to interweave real
jazz instrumentals with the jazz-tinged vocal standards, i.e. play John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins alongside Ella (Fitzgerald) and Frank and Louis (Armstrong). The jazz format of KSDS - and their listeners’ love for Sinatra and the standards - made this approach sensible.” Granata, 61, is no stranger to radio. He had produced Nancy Sinatra’s Sirius-XM radio show for 15 years and realized he needed a break from the weekly pressure of creating a new three-hour show. However, his love of radio never subsided, and he felt he still had something to offer. Then last December, he was contacted by Ken Poston, who runs the Los Angeles Jazz Society and is the program director at KSDS-FM in San Diego. Granata said, “He asked me to do a series of specials for their multi-week ‘12 Days of Sinatra’ marathon for Frank’s birthday. I had appeared at a few of the L. A. Jazz Society conferences, and Ken was familiar with my books and my work in the record and radio industry. A few months ago, he asked me to join KSDS’s extraordinary roster of jazz experts and do a weekly show (plus periodic specials). I love KSDS, because the on-air hosts are passionate, deeply knowledgeable, and most articulate. Turns out it was perfect for what I have wanted to do: have my own show on a legitimate terrestrial radio
Chuck Granata at the microphone (credit: KEG Productions)
station for a very long time!” Granata is wrapping up work with several books on music and pop culture and slowly fine-tuning a fiction book - a psychological thriller - that draws on both his police (he is a retired Livingston police officer) and entertainment backgrounds He is also readying certain portions of his extensive recorded sound collection, research interviews and files, and musicmarginalia collection for donation to the Great American Songbook Foundation,
which is headed by his close friend, singer and pianist Michael Feinstein. Granata said, “We share a deep belief in music preservation and archiving, and I’m slowly archiving the many thousands of records and other items I’ve amassed over the last forty years so that it can serve to inform and enlighten music students and historians long after I’m gone.” “Sinatra Standard Time” can be heard online every Sunday evening from 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. on www.jazz88.org.