Listen to my story on The WBGO Journal about an LA Jazz musician named Brad Kay. He’s a respected pianist who specializes in early jazz. Kay is 73 and lives in the Venice Beach section of Los Angeles. He love early jazz. Kay plays regularly at a Santa Monica coffee house. For more than 20 years, he's collaborated with the jazz torch singer Suzy Williams. In 2015, Kay performed at a TEDx gathering in Venice Beach, singing an original composition that ended with his declaration that his invitation to talk at TedX was “a big mistake.”
Kay is not just a performer, he considers himself an archivist and a preservationist. He has an archive of about 20,000 78 r.p.m. records. He studied the technology of 78’s and himself with getting pretty good sound out of them by doing meticulous transfers.
Brad Kay is also an entrepreneur. His record label, Superbotone sells mostly historical recordings on CD. He had been hoping to add a rare comedy performance from the 1940s to the catalog, but fearing possible litigation never released it. In a subsequent report, I'll tell you about how Kay came to possess a pristine audio recording of the 1948 nightclub act of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
Listen on WBGO’s web site:
https://www.wbgo.org/show/wbgo-journal/2025-08-16/l-a-jazz-musician-brad-kay-is-also-an-archivist-and-preservationist
Listen to the 30-minute Martin and Lewis comedy set from 1948: