Rob Bamberger, the longtime host of WAMU radio’s “Hot Jazz Saturday Night,” recently aired his 2,022nd program. He says doing a three-hour radio show live “is like driving stick shift” — potentially perilous but joyful. Photo courtesy of WAMU

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Even on the coldest nights of winter, for many WAMU listeners, the evening grows hot as Rob Bamberger ramps up the rhythm on his three-hour weekly radio show, “Hot Jazz Saturday Night.”

Bamberger inspires listeners to dance around the kitchen or tap to the beat on pots or toasters. Some fans go from waltzing to Louie Armstrong’s “Up a Lazy River” to toe-tapping to the “bottomy sound” of Jelly Roll Morton’s “Black Bottom Stomp.”

Bamberger has hosted “Hot Jazz Saturday Night” on WAMU for 42 years, and 90 percent of his shows were live broadcasts. By the end of April 2022, Bamberger had hosted 2,022 shows.

Last year, the program had an average of 27,400 listeners per week in the D.C. area, not counting out-of-town listeners or those who listen online later, according to Nielsen data.

Evolution of a radio show

In the 1970s, when Bamberger’s show first aired, WAMU named many shows, like “The Diane Rehm Show,” for their host.

But Bamberger did not want a show named after him. “Who the hell is he?” he joked.

He settled on “Hot Jazz Saturday Night” because in the 1920s and ’30s jazz was often called “hot music.” To rev things up, the 1930s entertainer Al Jolson would bark to his orchestra leader, “Get hot!”

Every week, Bamberger plays mostly vintage jazz, swing and big band recordings from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

When introducing a piece, he rattles off the composer, arranger, performers, label, year recorded and genre of music. He details the instruments involved, from xylophones to washboards, banjos to kazoos.

“I’m not a bona fide musicologist,” he admitted. But Bamberger is a living encyclopedia of jazz esoterica, reeling off arcane tidbits about the tunes he’s about to share every Saturday.

“My allusions may seem a little obscure,” he admitted one night — after all, who else can identify the 1939 clarinetist in the Duke Ellington orchestra or 1932 tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins?

Bamberger stirs up listeners with tunes like “Get Rhythm in Your Feet and Music in Your Soul,” “Oink,” and “I’ve Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good.”

Some devotees want to jump around to Nat King Cole’s “Mutiny in the Nursery” (because Mother Goose is on the loose). Fans empathize when Bessie Smith “pours out her woes” in “Yellow Dog Blues,” and may be intrigued to learn that Doris Day’s “Ten Cents a Dance” is a “come-on song.”

Former policy wonk

Bamberger has two degrees in history from the University of California at Los Angeles.

From 1975 to 2010, he worked on energy policy for the Congressional Research Service, advising members of Congress on topics such as the strategic petroleum reserve (once again in the news).

After retiring from the heat of Capitol Hill, he got a master’s degree in social work because of his strong interest in elder care.

Now, twice a month, he co-facilitates support groups for adult children whose parents have cognitive decline at Iona Senior Services, a Washington nonprofit that provides support services to older adults.

But the weekly radio show is probably his chief passion.

Bamberger loves the medium of radio because it is “companionable,” he told the Beacon. When he starts the show, he feels like he’s going into people’s homes.

Radio has been especially important during the pandemic and other stressors of the last few years, he said. “When something [troubling] is happening, it’s even more important for people to sense that someone is with them. It’s important to be in the moment.”

Stoking the creative juices

For each live show, he’s both the host and the engineer.

“Doing it live is like driving stick shift,” he explained, “because you are more engaged in the operation.” The coordination required can be “perilous,” but he swears by the spontaneity of live radio; it’s “the joy of the medium.”

To plan a show, Bamberger goes to the basement of his Arlington home, sits and thinks and “pulls out something” from his two-room personal collection of records and CDs, he said.

One hour of the show usually requires four to five hours of preparation. For most shows, Bamberger settles on a theme — either a band or a performer — and then a sequence of songs.

He particularly likes to feature “people lost in the shadows,” he said.

Bamberger generally prefers not to repeat songs, but sees some records as important parts of American history. “Every so often, I need to return to a record and feature it again. There are always people for whom the music is new, but others are delighted to hear the song for the tenth time.”

Even though Bamberger is usually alone in the studio, putting on the show is not a lonely experience, he said, because he knows fans are listening.

He considers himself not a disc jockey, but a companion sharing his love of jazz. “I really do feel a connection,” he said.

Ohio roots

Bamberger’s interest in jazz was sparked at age 11, when he discovered the music of big band leader Tommy Dorsey at a school book fair in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

He bought two RCA Victor records, a 1950s set, for 10 cents each, lured by an enticing cover image of a trombone and top hat on a red-velvet drape.

When he heard the second cut on side one, the “Hawaiian War Chant,” featuring trumpeter Ziggy Elman and drummer Buddy Rich, “It really nailed me,” he recalled.

Being a big band music junkie was far from “cool” for a 1960s teenager. Still, Bamberger spent most of his newspaper route money on big band and swing records. He took piano lessons at one time but has never played in a jazz band himself.

His two bookcases of records mushroomed to two basement rooms of vinyl. His wife, Chris, tolerates them, he said, “as long as they don’t start coming up the stairs.”

Even Bamberger is amazed at Hot Jazz’s decades of survival, and how the radio show still keeps him busy after all these years.

“If I showed up at a program director’s office today with the idea for a program — playing 75- to 100-year-old records for three hours, and in between I’ll talk some — I’d probably get thrown out on my head,” he said.

Fans aren’t about to toss him. They are always ready to be warmed up to hot jazz with their loyal companion every Saturday night.

To hear “Hot Jazz Saturday Night,” tune into 88.5, National Public Radio’s WAMU/American University, every Saturday, 7 to 10 p.m. Each program streams for one week after it airs at wamu.org/show/hot-jazz-saturday-night/. To send feedback, email HotJazz@wamu.org.