QC native back to host WVIK jazz show

When Tom Tallman came back to WVIK in Rock Island last weekend to host “Jazz After Hours” for the first time, he literally was coming home.

The 61-year-old Davenport native and trumpeter graduated from Davenport Central, and first got involved with WVIK (originally on the second floor of the old Augustana College biology building), during his freshman year at the private liberal-arts school, in spring 1982.

His father was a longtime jazz drummer in the area.

“It was great just growing up in the Quad Cities at that time, and getting to know all the great musicians who were around in the great clubs,” Tallman said Wednesday in an interview with Our Quad Cities News.

“A friend of mine was doing the Saturday night shift and was able to play jazz records,” he recalled of WVIK (the Quad Cities NPR station, which started in 1980), noting that shift was 6 p.m. to midnight. “And Grant told me that he was about to graduate, and he said, ‘You should do this shift because you know the music.”

He worked with station founder (and for decades the voice of WVIK, including “Jazz After Hours”) Don Wooten, who recommended jazz artists to feature – such as Count Basie, Modern Jazz Quartet and Anita O’Day.

“He mixed it up with vocal, instrumental kinds of thing and I think it was his way of ensuring a little bit of quality control to make sure that I didn’t just go in there and play my favorite artist that week,” Tallman said. He went on to host Saturday night shows on WVIK (including hourlong nationally syndicated programs) for three years, before graduating in 1985 with a bachelor of music education degree.

He called Wooten (who’s now in his 90s) a strong supporter and mentor.

“He’s a friend and he’s still a friend,” Tallman said. “Any time I was in town visiting my mom in Davenport, he would ask me to come in and tape a segment that he could play on Saturday morning, that we talk about music.”

Tallman earned master’s and doctor of musical arts degrees in trumpet performance from the University of Texas at Austin.

He retired in 2019 from College of DuPage (Glen Ellyn, Ill.), where he taught courses in music theory, ear training, and American music history; he built and led the school’s jazz performance program for 29 years, putting jazz legends and students on the same stage and making a major contribution to family and children’s jazz programming with a series of interactive and occasionally unruly Kidjazz! performances designed to blur the line between audience and performers while introducing the music of jazz legends.

Since 1998, Tallman’s commissioned compositions and arrangements for jazz ensemble and concert band have been performed by many middle school, high school, community and professional ensembles in the Chicago metropolitan area.

In 2018, his arrangements of the music of Reginald Robinson and James Reese Europe were performed with the Robinson at the piano as part of the 25th Symphony Center Presents jazz series in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall.

He’s worked as a clinician and judged a variety of competitions in Florida, Texas, Missouri, Iowa and Illinois, and is a two-time ILMEA director at the district level.

At College of DuPage, he hosted a radio show for a few years called “Guess Who,” where he and a co-host would quiz each other on identifying artists of recordings.

“We spent time trying to find recordings of well-known players sounding like other well-known players,” Tallman said. “So it was a little bit niche. It was probably a small but passionate audience.”

About a year ago, after visiting his mom (who was a regular WVIK donor and passed away this past May), he e-mailed WVIK music director Mindy Heusel, razzing her about how hard she works. She suggested that Tallman contribute to the station, and he sent them an hour of what would become his “Jazz After Hours.”

“It’s been a long time in coming about and they’ve been very professional and methodical and transparent,” Tallman said of the station. “Jared and Mindy are wonderful people.”

A natural choice

“We auditioned several possible replacements and just really loved Tom’s show,” WVIK general manager/CEO Jared Johnson said. “This audition, plus his roots in the Quad Cities’ jazz community and history with WVIK made him the perfect person to take on this show. WVIK Classical is very excited to have Tom joining Mindy, Marc, Charlie, and Ben in our growing list of local music hosts.”

The station has used recordings of Don Wooten’s pre-produced Saturday night shows (“Swing Shift” from 9-10 p.m., and “Jazz After Hours” 10 p.m.-midnight) for years, Johnson said.

Wooten’s last contract to produce new programs for WVIK ended on June 30, 2023. “Of course, his shows are terrific and we had quite a few available, but we knew sooner or later his dedicated listeners would tire of hearing the same programs time and again,” Johnson said.

“At this point, we are still running Don Wooten’s Swing Shift in re-run from 9-10 in rerun, so those who want to hear his voice still can, but I anticipate that before this year is out we’ll have a new host for that program as well,” he added.

“Swing Shift” has focused on jazz standards from the swing era. And then starting at 10 p.m., “Jazz After Hours” reflects jazz favorites with a broader brush, Johnson said.

“It’s great. I listened to his stuff and then playing what I played, I thought, man, this stuff complemented each other,” Tallman said Wednesday. “It really seemed like a nice flow. We have all the same heroes — Don and I, a lot of the same musical heroes.”

Tallman lives in the Chicago suburb of Western Springs, plays weekly at a church in Oak Park, and has a steady Wednesday night big band gig.

While he occasionally will record a couple “Jazz After Hours” programs on the same Saturday, to build up a stockpile, Tallman said he enjoys doing it live at the station.

“It’s too much fun giving the weather. I’ll be honest — I mean, it’s cool sitting there and saying ‘It’s 22 minutes after 10, and 33 degrees now on the campus of Augustana College, Rock Island.”

WVIK launched its all-music station (WVIK Classical) May 1, 2023 at 98.3 FM, and the longtime home at 90.3 FM is all-talk WVIK News. For more information, visit the station website HERE.

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