AtPontchartrain
01-18-2008, 01:47 PM
http://media.2theadvocate.com/images/0118+tim+fun+gourrier+copy.jpg
It may be a cold, gray Sunday morning in Richmond, Va., but there’s warm music and a welcoming voice on the radio. New Orleans native Michael J. Gourrier, a volunteer disc jockey at WRIR-FM, the city’s three-year-old community radio station, is spinning real jazz.
“WRIR, radio for the rest of us,” he announces from the station’s homey studio on Broad Street. “It’s time for another edition of Bebop and Beyond with Mr. Jazz. I’m your host, Mike Gourrier, inviting you to stay tuned for America’s contemporary classical music, the idiom we know as jazz.”
A bear of a man with myriad interests, Gourrier doesn’t look his 67 years. Nor does he show the tremendous loss he experienced in August, 2005.
Gourrier and his wife of 28 years, Eloise, are among the hundreds of thousands of New Orleanians driven from their homes by Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing flood that covered 80 percent of their city.
Prior to Katrina, Gourrier was a DJ at New Orleans community station WWOZ-FM for 24 years. He’s greatly missed there, said WWOZ program director Dwayne Breashears.
“Michael knows more about jazz than most people will ever know,” Breashears said. “That’s why they call him Mr. Jazz.”
A life-long jazz fan, Gourrier has attended every New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival since the event’s 1970 start. Even after Katrina, he continues to be a presenter at the festival’s AT&T/WWOZ Jazz Tent.
Katrina-related floodwaters ruined most of the 12,000 CDs, 8,000 LPs, 500 books, photos and memorabilia Gourrier kept in a specially built room in his 9th Ward home.
“After being soaked in 6 1/2 feet of water, the mold and mildew got the rest of the stuff,” he said..... (more)
http://www.2theadvocate.com/entertainment/fun/13871417.html
It may be a cold, gray Sunday morning in Richmond, Va., but there’s warm music and a welcoming voice on the radio. New Orleans native Michael J. Gourrier, a volunteer disc jockey at WRIR-FM, the city’s three-year-old community radio station, is spinning real jazz.
“WRIR, radio for the rest of us,” he announces from the station’s homey studio on Broad Street. “It’s time for another edition of Bebop and Beyond with Mr. Jazz. I’m your host, Mike Gourrier, inviting you to stay tuned for America’s contemporary classical music, the idiom we know as jazz.”
A bear of a man with myriad interests, Gourrier doesn’t look his 67 years. Nor does he show the tremendous loss he experienced in August, 2005.
Gourrier and his wife of 28 years, Eloise, are among the hundreds of thousands of New Orleanians driven from their homes by Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing flood that covered 80 percent of their city.
Prior to Katrina, Gourrier was a DJ at New Orleans community station WWOZ-FM for 24 years. He’s greatly missed there, said WWOZ program director Dwayne Breashears.
“Michael knows more about jazz than most people will ever know,” Breashears said. “That’s why they call him Mr. Jazz.”
A life-long jazz fan, Gourrier has attended every New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival since the event’s 1970 start. Even after Katrina, he continues to be a presenter at the festival’s AT&T/WWOZ Jazz Tent.
Katrina-related floodwaters ruined most of the 12,000 CDs, 8,000 LPs, 500 books, photos and memorabilia Gourrier kept in a specially built room in his 9th Ward home.
“After being soaked in 6 1/2 feet of water, the mold and mildew got the rest of the stuff,” he said..... (more)
http://www.2theadvocate.com/entertainment/fun/13871417.html