Bob Porter, record producer, WGBO program host, discographer, author of the book Soul Jazz: Jazz in the Black Community, 1945-1975 and a founding member of the Jazz Journalists Association, died at his home
in Northvale, NJ on April 10 of esophageal cancer complications, according to his wife Linda. Porter was 80.
Known to radio listeners for his shows Portraits in Blue, begun in 1981 as a syndicated blues show, rhythm-and-blues oriented Saturday Morning Function, and Swing Party, heard on Sunday mornings, Porter had joined WBGO when it went on the air in 1979. He was also a contributor to NPR’s syndicated Beale Street Caravan.
By then, he’d produced recordings and written liner notes for the Prestige label for more than ten years, starting with organist Charles Kynard’s Professor Soul, continuing with musicians including Charles Earland, Harold Mabern, Houston Person, Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Idris Muhammad, Etta Jones and many others. As he stipulated in Soul Jazz, Black audiences’ musical preferences suggested an alternative jazz history than the lineage commonly described by mostly white historians. Porter backed up his point with sales numbers and other business-insiders’ details, of which he was a master.
Porter was a reissue producer for Savoy Records (1975–1980) and Atlantic Records (1986–1991), also producing sessions for diverse other labels – eventually responsible for approximately 170 recordings. Besides annotating more than 300 albums and winning Grammy Awards for his liner notes for The Complete Charlie Parker (Savoy, 1980) and as reissue producer for Atlantic Rhythm & Blues (1986), he wrote for DownBeat, JazzTimes, Cashbox magazines, Jazz Journal (UK), was a consultant to NARAS and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a winner of the W.C. Handy Award and inductee into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame.
Bob Porter was often recognized and celebrated for his contributions to the field, honored by Willie Dixon’s Blues Heaven Foundation, the Bergen County New Jersey Chapter of the NAACP, the New Jersey Jazz Society, and in 2007 the JJA’s Willis Conover-Marian McPartland Award for Excellence in Jazz Broadcasting.
