Leigh Kamman, former host of 'Jazz Image' on MPR, dies at 92

By Will Ashenmacher
washenmacher@pioneerpress.com
POSTED:   10/18/2014 12:01:00 AM CDT
Leigh Kamman, the former host of the long-running Minnesota Public Radio show "The Jazz Image," died Friday night. He was 92.

Over the course of his six-decade career in broadcasting, the Minnesota native became one of jazz music's most trusted and appreciated historians and commentators.

Kamman was introduced to jazz when he was 11 and working at a resort on Lake Minnewaska in west-central Minnesota, he told the Pioneer Press in 2007.

The owners of the resort were record collectors and would play jazz standards in the evenings.

Kamman then covered jazz for the St. Paul Central High School newspaper and held his first radio show, "Studio Party Wham," not long after graduating.

He went on to work as a broadcaster in Denver, Duluth and New York before returning to the Twin Cities.

Over the course of his career, he interviewed jazz greats, such as Billie Holliday, Duke Ellington and Count Basie.

His show "The Jazz Image" debuted in 1973.


"I mean, it came through on every broadcast that he loved it," said Will Shapira of Roseville, who became friends with Kamman when they worked at the same radio station in 1960. "Not only that, but he made you like him, too. Even people who never met him told me they felt like they knew him."
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