Jay grew up in the Los Angeles area and always had a fascination with radio. As a young kid, he would stay up late, falling asleep with one of those Japanese transistor radios plugged into his ear. Later, he would try to tune into any number of top-of-the dial, high-powered stations after midnight from his home in LA. When the weather conditions were “just right, I could pick up stations from Shreveport, Nashville, or Oklahoma City. I’d often listen to Wolfman Jack late at night on XERF and XERB blasting out of Rosarita, Mexico just south of the border.” Later in his teens, he became captivated by the 60s music scene in LA. Being there at that time, “the music was everywhere and infectious, and I gothooked on groups there like The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and The Doors.”

Jay attended college at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), graduating in June of 1972. In the summer of 1978, he moved to Austin to get his master’s at the School of Social Work at the University of Texas-Austin. Having been accepted by several colleges, a huge factor in influencing his decision to move was Austin’s music scene. Shortly after his arrival, he and a buddy were cruising down Lamar Boulevard when they saw an old gas station with the words, “Janis sang here” spray painted along its side . . . Threadgill’s. The next night they went searching for the original site of Antone’s, got lost, but ended up at The Split Rail “drinking 50 cent beers listening to this rocking blues band play all night.” Jay remembered thinking, ”man, they don’t have places like this in California.”

Not long after acquiring his graduate degree in 1980, Jay started working periodically as a substitute at local NPR affiliate, KUT, then at 90.5 on the FM dial. In August of 1982, KAZI, 88.7 FM went on the air and Jay hosted the station’s first jazz program the day after its launch. He would continue to host his Jazz, Etc.program until March 1984 when he left to travel internationally for the better part of eight months. Shortly after returning to Austin in February 1985, Jay started hosting a Friday overnight jazz program from midnight to 5 a.m. on KUT, also called Jazz, Etc. He was a full-time social worker then, so after the end of the work week, he’d come home, pull some records, take a nap, and then head to KUT. “You could definitely experiment with a graveyard shift like that; plus there’s this long, rich history of overnight jazz shows. Down through the decades, there were these legendary deejays who did shows all night long, so in my small way, I was contributing to that tradition. It was not uncommon for musicians and friends to drop by during the wee hours to partake in earthly delights. One morning at 4:15, Stevie Ray Vaughan and his entourage came through the lobby after cutting a ‘Don’t Mess with Texas’ promo upstairs in the old Austin City Limits studios.”

That stint at KUT would last for ten years until the program moved to Wednesday nights for another seven years. From 1992 to 2007, Jay also hosted a Sunday morning jazz program on  KGSR, 107.1 FM, now defunct (sadly). He was the host of KUTX mid-day from 2005-2020 and since the beginning of 2013, he’s been the host of Sunday Morning Jazz on KUTX, 98.9 FM.

Some of Jay’s reflections on the pandemic and its effects on local artists include the loss of so many beloved venues shutting down. However, from his perspective, “The bigger problem is Austin’s affordability issues. This city became a musical mecca because the cost of living was so low. Back in the 70s and 80s, there was this hotbed of young, unknown musicians who came here on a whim and a dream to live cheap while they got their acts together. If artists and musicians can’t survive in Austin, the quality of the music is going to go down.”

Regarding his current Sunday morning show, Jay states that “Jazz is a reflection of what’s happening in our society. It’s very spiritual and shines a light on what’s going on in our world at any given moment. And I think Sunday morning is a goodtime to reflect on the rest of the week: to sip your cup of coffee, read your newspaper, and kick back and hear something that’s soulful, that stirs something within you. That’s always been a part of jazz’s legacy. During the Civil Rights Movement, jazz really captured those moments, the struggle. The struggle’s still going on, so the music keeps playing.”

On reflecting back on his 40 years in radio, Jay admits that it’s hard to pick a single event, but one that he concedes was serendipitous was the time when “I interviewed Jesse Colin Young back in 2004 in our old Studio 1A. Way back in the day, he had been in the Youngbloods, a band that had a big hit with ‘Get Together’ – ‘Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now.’ So, Mr. Young ends his live Studio 1A session with this song and while he’s singing it, I flash back to a huge anti-Vietnam Wardemonstration in San Francisco in 1969 where I’m one of a half million people in Golden Gate Park and the Youngbloods are singing this popular song of peace and love. Here I am  - 35 years later- in Studio 1A with Jesse Colin Young sitting 10 feet away and he’s singing this same song to me. Chills ran down my spine. Who’d of ever thunk?”