EAST SYRACUSE – Roger DeVore’s weekly radio show was originally found on WVOA 87.7 FM, just below the old cutoff of 88.1, with a turn to the top of the dial—hence his adoption of Nina Simone’s “Under the Lowest” as his theme song.
With that station’s programs transplanted over to WSIV 106.3 FM in East Syracuse, however, DeVore’s voice can now be heard closer to the opposite end of the broadcast band.
Also at 1540 AM when it airs, his show runs from 1:30 to 3 p.m. on Mondays, shortened a bit from his previous two-hour time slot on Thursday evenings. All throughout, the 83-year-old plays traditional jazz, ragtime, and rhythm and blues with a spiel about what he spun coming every few songs. Sometimes he even details his memories of interactions with such musicians as Ray Charles, pianist Dave McKenna and clarinetist Kenny Davern.
DeVore said he refrains from incorporating contemporary music into his playlists partly because of his disinterest with modern smooth jazz and partly due to his view that record company influence and the practice of payola combined to hurt certain genres starting in the 1960s.
He opts instead to rely on everything from Jelly Roll Morton’s early 1900s piano rolls to uptempo favorites “from the heart” that date back to the mid-20th century, along the way drawing from the likes of Oscar Peterson, Blossom Dearie, Pee Wee Russell and Louis Nelson.
“Good jazz is full of surprises,” DeVore said. “It’s fun, it’s rhythmic and it puts you in a good mood. You feel like dancing to lots of the music that I play.”
With his program transmitted from a double-wide, roadside trailer, the Cazenovia resident said he seeks to get people away from expletive-filled “downer” music in favor of the hot jazz he loves and the positive energy it conveys.
The show debuted in 2006 on the Cazenovia College campus and went untitled for about three months until the alliterative name “Drivetime Downbeat” was devised. After taking over the slot held by a faculty adviser who went on sabbatical, DeVore made the move to the Colgate University airwaves around the turn of the following decade.
There he changed the name to “Roger’s List” at the suggestion of a group of students that tuned in and recorded his episodes in their dormitories.
Eventually he discovered WVOA The Voice, a station that has a Christian format but encompasses a variety of musical programs. Since then, he’s been given the freedom to play what he wishes in a customized order, and appointment listeners from the ages of three to 102 have been part of the fun.
Earlier in life, DeVore was an electronic data processing representative for IBM in Syracuse, an employee at the Young & Rubicam advertising agency on Madison Avenue, a bartender and lifeguard in Cape Cod, and a professional ski patroller at Vermont’s Sugarbush Resort, which once had the longest-stretching gondola in the world.
A couple summers in a row back in the 1950s, he was tasked with digging up leaking gas service lines in Syracuse. His knowledge of the area led him to the various jazz joints of the 15th Ward—The Penguin Club and The 800 Club included—and often enough he would be the only white person in the place.
With the United States Army in the early 1960s, DeVore was a Morse code and voice radio operator, which is how he first got into the realm of broadcasting.
Over the years, he also advised the Jazz-N-Caz concert series and sat on the board for the Jazz Appreciation Society of Syracuse.
To catch “Roger’s List” live on the air every Monday afternoon, visit wsiv1540.com and click the “Listen On-Line” tab.