You say you`re not a football fan and would like to find a radio alternative to the Chicago Bears on Sunday afternoons?
Then get up and dance to the polka, get down with some R & B, jitterbug to big-band tunes. How about ”Jazz Forum,” ”The Storytellers,” ”Sunday Opera” or Marian McPartland? See? There are plenty of options.
Last fall, according to Arbitron, WGN-AM`s overall share on Sundays was 19.6, three times that of its nearest competitor. For men 18 and over, the Bears station grabbed a 25.7 average quarter-hour share. (A share represents a percentage of people who are listening to the radio at a given time.)
Nonfans who enjoy polka music will want to find WCEV-AM (1450) instead. It features ”Lenny Gomulka and the Chicago Push Polka Show” at 12:05; ”Chet Schafer Show” at 1:05; ”The Patrick Henry Polka Show” at 2:05; ”Johnny Hyzny” at 3:05; and ”International Polka Association Show” at 4:05.
Lucyna Migala, program director for WCEV, describes the polka as ”very close in feeling and in audience to country music. Some of the polkas in the Chicago style have lyrics in the ethnic languages, but most are in English.
”There are different polka styles: a style on the East Coast and Pennsylvania; one in the deep part of the Midwest in Minnesota and Nebraska;
Tex-Mex in Texas; and California punk-polka, where they get dressed up punk-style to go to polka parties.”
Migala ”suspects that while the husbands are watching the Bears on TV, the wives are in the kitchen baking those complicated delicacies and listening to polka music.”
”The 1940s Radio Show,” at noon on WJKL-FM (94.3), is hosted by Denny Ferrel and features big band music by the Brian Patti Orchestra, live from Artie G`s Restaurant in Palatine.
”These guys wear the midnight black tuxs and the pompadour hair styles,” said Richard Jakle, president of WJKL. ”They re-create the big-band remote broadcasts that were so popular from the Pump Room and from the Blue Room in the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans.”
Jakle describes their audience as ”35-plus, but we`ve been getting a lot of responses from all over the area from college kids.”
”It really is great fun,” he said. ”Big band is the cha-cha, fox-trot, jitterbug, bebop, the Lindy and black bottom. Big-band music is evergreen. It`s as fresh today as it was when it was first recorded. It`s not old music, it`s music that will never grow old.”
Some jazz, perhaps? Tune to WBEZ-FM (91.5). At noon ”Marian McPartland`s Piano Jazz Show,” originating from New York, invites different keyboard artists for conversation and a little music. Guests for September include Judy Roberts, Chick Corea, Richard Rodney Barnett and Cecil Taylor.
For those who prefer classical music, WFMT-FM (98.7) offers concerts recorded in performance at Orchestra Hall on ”Chicago Symphony Orchestra” at 1 p.m. At 3:30 p.m., listen to short stories drawn from commercial recordings and taped readings on ”The Storytellers.” To complete the program, try
”Sunday Opera” at 4 p.m., where there`s always a complete recorded opera, usually featuring newly released performances but sometimes focusing on operatic recordings of historical interest.
