BLUE NOTE Cennamo, a fixture on WBUR for many years, was outspoken and outrageous — and knew his jazz.
Tony Cennamo is synonymous with jazz radio in Boston. A fixture on WBUR from the early '70s to his last late-night show in 1997, Cennamo — who died on June 8 — was lively, outspoken, even outrageous. But his depth of knowledge was irreproachable. Besides playing music and otherwise reporting the headlines of the day ("hassling the discs and data," as he liked to say), he conducted hundreds of live on-air interviews. In his between-song commentaries, he extolled his heroes and dispatched those he felt didn't measure up.
Away from the mic, he was even more outspoken. Asked about the latest jazz-rock hero, he might sniff, "Shorty Rogers was doing that in the '50s." The latest tome of jazz history was "Swiss cheese — full of holes." If an avant-leaning listener (okay, me) were to call him up ecstatic about something he was playing on the air, Cennamo might purr, "I knew you'd like it — it's out of tune."
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