Seattle Jazz Hero
Washington
Jazz heroes find myriad ways to foster community, but nothing beats straight-up dollars and cents.
Last year, Seattle jazz fan and now 2025 Seattle JJA Jazz Hero Robert Radford raised $106,000 for Seattle jazz. The funds went to the Garfield High School Jazz Foundation ($15,258), the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra ($26,700), the independent school Seattle JazzED ($34,330) and an ongoing project to erect a statue of retired Garfield High School band director Clarence Acox,.
A third of the donations came from a fundraiser at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley celebrating Acox, who led the renowned Garfield band for more than three decades and was named a Jazz Journalists Association “A Team” award winner of 2009. Radford raised the rest through various other public campaigns, all sponsored by Seattle’s downtown Afrocentric Onyx Fine Arts Collective, the gallery where he serves as treasurer.
“I’m walking in tall grass,” said Radford, when he looked online the list of past JJA “A” Team members and Jazz Heroes, which also includes retired Roosevelt High School Band director Scott Brown as a 2009 honoree. “I’m very honored.”
Radford has worn many hats over his long life of 95 years. Born in Mississippi, he roomed with the late trombonist Jimmy Cleveland before graduating from Tennessee State University; fought in the Korean War; worked as a chemist for private industry, as a minority recruiter for the federal government and as the principal of three Seattle public schools. Through all of this, jazz has been the soundtrack, sometimes in surprising ways.
One night in 1965, after hearing John Coltrane’s challenging new band at Seattle’s Penthouse, Radford told the saxophonist his music “sounded like a bunch of hyenas and elephants.”
“Well, tell me, Robert,” Coltrane responded. “Is it possible you came with your mind made up?”
“I learned a lesson that night,” said Radford. “Don’t go with your mind made up, because you are shutting out possibilities.”
May your ears stay open, Jazz Hero Robert Radford!
— Paul de Barros
