Herbie baby.

I am overdue for a big, fan-girl Kvell about Chicago DJ Herb Kent, who is without any hyperbole at all the best DJ in the world.

I feel sad and embarrassed that early on as I was learning to write for newspapers and not for myself I both interviewed Herb Kent and went to his big birthday bash at the Hyatt and didn't manage to pull together a story out of either event. The problem, of course, was that there was way too much to write about and in the end I felt ill-qualified to even let him speak for himself! Way too much there. He's been in radio since the 1940s, surfed and directed flows of every kind of music, was an original VON DJ at the epicenter of the civil rights movement, knows everything there is to know about stepping, hosted a punk-out show in the early 80s...but all that makes him sound like an embalmed Beloved Entertainment Personality, which is the exact opposite of how I've experienced him. He is a workin DJ, not a guy who's been humored into his twilight years. Nothing twilight about him.

I moved to Chicago in 1988, the year that he started at v103, so that's mostly how I've experienced him. He has kept me company on the weekends for a LONG TIME. I have listened to him trash-talk during the battle of the bands on Sunday for a LONG TIME. And when I moved downtown and could no longer get any station on my radio, I finally was able to listen to him on my computer (like now), because the dude is totally au courant technologically. At the same time that he's all about the dusties, paradoxically. Yes.

The other thing that 20 years of Herb Kent has provided me is a decent education in soul and R&B. I already liked and knew something about it, to what degree I dunno, but there is a very particular repertoire of music I'm familiar with from 20 solid years of dusties Chicago radio that I'm happy to know about, a collection of music with particular local meaning. Oh...this sounds wonky. It's not a wonky experience. But I like that I can recognize a classic steppin cut, even if I suck at stepping.

I just love Herb. I love his professionalism, his even-flow-ing qualities, his constant cowboy hat, his openness to new things. He has a unique radio personality: not brash, not huge, not smug. It's...smooth. Real. Oh ick, that word is kinda meaningless. He's a bit hard to explain.

I hope there's nothing elegiac about this...I just felt like paying my dues today, a little bit. It occured to me the other day that he's the person to whom I directly owe the joy of the weird aching quality I get in my heart and my body when I hear "Yearning for Your Love" and a million other songs I love. I even kinda like knowing about the songs I hate. I hope he's out there spinning for a very long time. And forgives me for not pullin together the story, which he probably did 'cause he's such a pro, even if I'm not always. Just a fan-girl.