Tom Reney in the studio at WFCR, the public radio station in Amherst where he has hosted "Jazz a la Mode" for the past 16 years. JERREY ROBERTS photo

Or maybe the seeds were planted by the power of gospel music. Watching Mahalia Jackson on "The Ed Sullivan Show" as a youngster, says Reney, left him "moved beyond comprehension."

But the seeds had definitely taken root by the time he went to Worcester Auditorium for Duke Ellington Day in 1966. A year earlier Reney's mother had encouraged him to watch one of Ellington's famed sacred concerts - jazz music meets church music - on television. "She may have played an unwitting role in turning me into a jazz disciple," Reney says. When he saw the man in the flesh it was very close to a religious experience for him, he recalls.

At a mere 13 years of age, Tom Reney, an altar boy who was drawn to the grandeur and ritual of the Roman Catholic Latin Mass, found himself drawn to something every bit as compelling. He had found his calling: jazz.

He's devoted the rest of his life since then to "proselytizing," as he puts it - spreading the good news about the music he loves. Back when he was a teen-age jazz fan, he says, "I wanted everyone to dig it." And he still does.

'Jazz a la Mode'

For the past 16 years Reney has been the host - the only host ever, in fact - of

His resonant, unhurried voice has just the degree of mellowness that you'd expect of a public-radio jazz-show host. John Montanari, WFCR's music director, says Reney's style bears no relation to the "outsized, jumping up and down" approach of some radio personalities. Instead, Montanari says, "He burns with a cool blue flame."

On a recent morning, with Count Basie playing in the background, Reney is in storytelling mode in the Northampton apartment where he's lived, solo, since the mid-1980s. He settles his 6-foot-2-inch frame into a reclining chair, then smiles, closes his eyes, and tilts his head back, enjoying the memory of those early days when he first discovered jazz. He has sandy hair that's thinning a bit, and prominent eyebrows which set off his blue-gray eyes, visor-like. When he talks about music he is intense, causing his forehead to crease into furrows of concentration.

"I remember being really taken by soul music," Reney says. "There was something in that sound that I enjoyed." Soul music led him to gospel, and to the blues. And those, in turn, led him to jazz.

It was a taste that couldn't have been predicted, given his background. The oldest child in a traditional family - a father, a mother, five kids - he found himself captivated by music that was - well, not the music that most youngsters being raised in middle-class Irish Catholic households in Worcester knew much about.

He'd pay regular visits to Arnold's record store in Worcester and "wait with bated breath in hopes that a new blues record or jazz record would show up," he recalls. Sometimes he'd make his way to Route 9 to hitch a ride east to record stores like Skippy White's in Roxbury - "Talk about Mecca" - where he'd load up on all the soul and R&B singles he could afford. Over in Harvard Square he'd pick up copies of "Jazz Journal" and "Blues Unlimited" and devour them. He began hanging out with blues and jazz musicians.

Worcester had a healthy music scene at the time, and the teen-age Reney found plenty of places to quench his thirst for jazz - places where, he says, the police would look the other way at the underage kids coming in the door. He'd take in Sunday-afternoon jam sessions at the Kitty Kat Lounge and arrive back home just in time for Sunday-night dinner with his slightly scandalized parents. One of his sisters recalls how Reney's music was his "ruling passion" even back then - and she has little doubt that it took him to some questionable places. "I'm sure he was a handful," she says.

His musical taste was outside of the mainstream, for sure - his peers were listening to Mick Jagger and Cream and The Who, for the most part - but Reney says he never felt like an oddball. Just the opposite, in fact. He and the buddies who shared his taste in music were "a very, very select minority - and proud of it."

Family-owned business

Reney attended Burncoat Senior High School in Worcester, and spent his senior year in an off-campus learning program called Dynamy. "The typical high school curriculum," he says, "was not stimulating me." His parents had envisioned an Ivy League education for him, then law school, perhaps. He didn't see things that way.

After finishing the Dynamy program Reney spent a couple of years working for Reney Brothers Inc., a civil-engineering and land-surveying firm owned by his father and his uncle. He knows his folks hoped he'd go into the business permanently, and he was tempted, describing the time as a "battleground within. For myself.

"The work that I was involved in, land surveying, had its ...." He pauses. Reney seldom seems at a loss for words. Now he is. "What am I trying to say? That avenue had a certain security written all over it."

But he wasn't necessarily looking for security. He had his dream, he says, and it centered around jazz: "That I would be involved in transmitting its riches and beauties." He just didn't know how to do that. He knew he wasn't a musician; so-so attempts to play the clarinet, the saxophone and the piano had shown him that. "Where do you go?" he remembers wondering. "How do you get inside this fairly small jazz industry?"

Jazz pianist

The land-surveying business slacked off as the weather turned cold each year, and the winter he was 20 Reney headed for Cape Cod. There he came across a jazz pianist named Dave McKenna, performing in the lounge at a West Dennis restaurant, The Columns. McKenna would play typical lounge fare - some Porter, some Gershwin - and mix it up a bit with jazzier tunes. His playing opened Reney's eyes.

McKenna was a mainstream, hard-swing jazz pianist, Reney recalls, "who just by virtue of living on Cape Cod and playing 'saloon piano' belied my image of the jazz life. It was not the glamorous, mythical jazz life that I had seen through Duke Ellington or Charles Mingus, the images of great black jazzmen." Instead, it was playing "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To" if that's what someone in the lounge wanted to hear.

"My orientation to music was 'black is best,' " Reney says. "Here was a Rhode Island-born Irishman ... yet his playing was so compelling.

"His was not a name I was seeing in jazz-history books or record bins. And he was as great a jazz pianist as I had encountered. He rolled those basses and strolled up and down the keyboard."

McKenna, says Reney, made him see "jazz as music as well as jazz as myth. It was his gig - as he would call it, his corned beef."

It was his father, though, who ultimately - and perhaps unwittingly - gave Reney the nudge he needed to decide that his future did not lie with Reney Brothers Inc.

"You know, one of the things I appreciated in my father was his own devotion to his work," Reney says. "He loved it. He was passionate about it. He was grateful for it. And he imparted that to me in a strong way.

"And that," Reney goes on, "emboldened me to stay true to a course I had begun to follow in my mid-teens."

So at age 22 Tom Reney left Reney Brothers to attend the University of Massachusetts, lured in part by the big names in jazz - Max Roach, Archie Shepp - the school was attracting at the time. "That put the university on the map for me. All of a sudden, it was 'Go west, young man.' " He studied liberal arts, and took classes in jazz history.

Still, what he'd actually do with his passion for jazz remained unclear. After a couple of years at UMass he took a break and got his start in radio at WCUW, a community-licensed station in Worcester with what he describes as a cutting-edge reputation. He did some public relations work for the station, and planned its jazz programming. Then someone suggested he put together a tape for his own jazz show.

"It was like I was a natural for it," Reney recalls. For starters, he says, "People were impressed I did not betray a Worcester accent the minute I opened my mouth." But there was more to it than that. He knew his music, and discovered that he seemed to have a gift for putting together a set of jazz music - going from one to another in a sensible, comprehensive fashion, he says. He ended up hosting a jazz show that ran five mornings a week.

Returns to UMass

In 1981 Reney decided to return to UMass to finish his degree (while commuting to Worcester on weekends to host an R&B show at WCUW). This time he designed his own curriculum at the university, one that let him study a subject that had long fascinated him - the broader context of jazz, the way it related to American history and culture. His sponsor was jazz saxophonist and pianist Archie Shepp.

During a semester in New York interning as Shepp's manager/agent/producer, Reney recalls, "I got my feet wet in the music business in a way I hadn't before." He negotiated a record contract for Shepp, set up a tour for him. He made some contacts. And he made a discovery.

"You know, it had some glamour to it," he says of the New York music business. But it turned out that the glamour wasn't enough of a draw. "I saw music I loved treated as product in a way that was very distasteful to me. There's a lot of hustlers, a lot of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately aspects."

After finishing up at UMass, Reney was back to wondering what to do. He had a few "irons in the fire," he says - his connection with Shepp, his contacts in Worcester radio. But it was an article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette in 1983 announcing the hiring of Joan Rubel as the new director of Amherst's public radio station, WFCR, that set him on the course he's still following.

The article mentioned that Rubel was considering making some programming changes at the station.

Reney sent off a letter, a tape and a resume. Soon he was meeting with FCR staffer John Montanari to talk about a jazz show. "I'm your man," Reney told Montanari.

Compact studio

The WFCR studio where Reney does his show is compact, and crammed with equipment - CD players, tape decks, a turntable, computers, speakers suspended from the ceiling on chains, monitors with flashing red and green lights and needles that jerk back and forth. There is a small stack of CDs on the counter, held together by rubber bands, and boxed sets by Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk on the floor, propped against cabinets. Reney's black fedora rests on a chair, along with a leather bag which holds an apple and a bottle of Poland Springs water to get him through his 6 p.m. to midnight shift.

"Jazz a la Mode" begins at 8, but Reney is at the control board beforehand for "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross. On this particular January evening, Gross happens to be interviewing jazz critic Gary Giddins about his new book on Bing Crosby. "Ready for a Bing Crosby revival?" Reney asks a visitor.

When Gross signs off, it's Reney's turn. He pushes buttons on the CD player, and the show is underway.

The first hour of this "Jazz a la Mode" is tied in with the evening's episode of Ken Burns' television series on jazz. Reney hasn't been able to watch much of the series, it turns out, but says he's liked the little he's seen. His biggest reservation is the scant attention Burns pays to music of the last four decades. "Jazz is a very dynamic art form," Reney says. "If this series is attracting a lot of newcomers to jazz it may run the risk of being a disservice to contemporary jazz."

Headphones on, Reney speaks into the microphone, his voice smooth and soothing, his patter distinguished by what his fans says is an encyclopedic knowledge of the music. That was Charlie Parker's "Ornithology," by the saxophonist known as Bird, based on the chord changes of a popular song from the 1940s, "How High the Moon." That's a 20-year-old Miles Davis on trumpet.

Off the air, Reney has just finished a riff about exactly what it is that makes "Bird" a favorite of his. "Parker is one of the geniuses of jazz, an artist who really epitomizes the kind of heroic status of the jazz artist as on-the-spot improviser whose creations are constantly refreshed. Rarely is a solo repeated." Reney is making conversation, but it's hard to tell where the conversation ends and the show begins.

Listening to Parker's complete recordings on the Savoy label was a watershed in Reney's jazz education, he says. He was just 16 or 17. "I was hearing two, three, four takes in a row of these tunes. Rather than finding it monotonous, it opened my ear to improvisation - the rare gift that Parker had of creating something new with every take."

Back to the show. That was Thelonius Monk, "Criss Cross," recorded by the artist in 1951. Before that you heard " 'Round Midnight," Monk's most famous composition, and Dizzy Gillespie, "Woody and You," from 1947. It's 8:17. You're tuned to 88.5 FM. Stay tuned for more of Monk and Dizzy ...

"He has an almost inexhaustible knowledge about the music, and the people who make the music," says one of Reney's longtime listeners, Roget Lockard of Southampton. Lockard, a psychotherapist with a private practice in Northampton, has been tuning in to "Jazz a la Mode" since it first went on the air and has never been tempted to touch that dial. "I can't remember feeling as happy with a jazz-show host and the host's taste since the 1960s."

Mort Fega, a jazz disc jockey who made a name for himself in New York in the 1950s and '60s, calls Reney "outrageously informed."

"I listen to radio guys all over the world," says Fega, who now lives in Delray Beach, Fla. He first heard "Jazz a la Mode" when he lived in Connecticut in the 1980s; one thing led to another, and Fega and Reney went on to become friends. The two men couldn't be more different, style-wise - "I'm one of the last of the red-hots," says Fega, who has the exuberance of a born entertainer - but he considers Reney top-notch.

"He does his homework, number one," Fega says. "He and I agree that anyone who assumes the responsibility of influencing other people takes on a kind of moral obligation. You better do your homework and do it thoroughly. Otherwise you're violating the trust."

John Montanari, WFCR's music director and the man who originally interviewed Reney for the station, says the jazz-show host has "impeccably high standards" that are reflected in his choice of material.

"If it's great, Tom will play it. And if he plays it, it's great."

Tom Reney at home with his collection of jazz LP's, CDs and books. KEVIN GUTTING photo

Reney's personal music collection numbers somewhere around 2,000 CDs and 4,000 LPs - 95 percent of them jazz and blues recordings. The shelves in his living room are packed with a good part of that collection, and the rest of the shelf space is filled with hundreds of books on jazz. He reels off musicians' birthdays, the anniversaries of famous concerts, the musical ancestry of songs. Reney seems to draw forth these kinds of details effortlessly, as if from some jazz database cranking away in his brain. But don't believe it, he says.

"People think [I do this] off the top of my head. I'm assisted by these," he says in the FCR studio, waving the liner notes from a CD. "I wouldn't want to do a show without these here at hand." On the other hand, he admits, it's true - he does know the birth dates and the other vital statistics of all these musicians by heart.

In terms of his listeners, he knows what his role is, and what it isn't. "People are interested in a pleasant and consistent announcing presence night after night. People are not home with notebooks in hand waiting for me to pontificate."

But don't sell him short, warns his friend Mort Fega. Reney's comments on his show, says Fega, are "always germane, and heighten the enjoyment. He doesn't bludgeon you with being pedantic.

"If someone listens, they can't help but be left with the idea that he has passion for the music. And that's contagious."

The word is passion

Passion. It's the word that invariably surfaces when people speak of Reney.

His sister Paula LaMarche, who lives in Boston, uses it when she recalls how he couldn't resist playing his records for his brothers and sisters in the family room back in Worcester. He was a teacher even then, she says, tying the music to social issues, cultural issues, race issues. "All of those he brought to us through his love of music," LaMarche says.

He had a willing disciple in her, she adds. When he would play his Robert Johnson records, for instance, she says she knew the music was somehow different. "You knew it was profound and deep and lasting."

Today, LaMarche says, she likes all kinds of music. Gloria Estefan. The Rolling Stones. U2. Classical. "But I love" - she emphasizes the word love - "jazz. My brother really gave me jazz. That never wears thin."

That, Reney would say, is what he's hoping "Jazz a la Mode" does: Give people the music.

"My listeners are a mix of jazz aficionados, people with a curiosity about jazz, and people who are listeners to public radio. I'm not playing for jazz experts, or fans, even. [My listeners] like jazz rather than love it. I'm very grateful for that. If I thought they were experts I might have to show off. Instead I just have to share my enthusiasm."

He recalls a show last year featuring Louis Armstrong.

After he'd been on the air an hour or so he got a call from a Holyoke woman who said that the music was prompting a rush of memories. She told Reney that as a teen-ager she had worked at an inn in Charlottesville, Va., where black musicians - Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway - used to stay when they performed in the area. "Her fondest memory," Reney recalls, "was that as a laundress at the inn she ironed Louis Armstrong's handkerchiefs."

A little while went by, and Reney got a call from another woman, whose background, he knew, was more privileged than that of the first caller. But she, too, told Reney how much she was enjoying the show, and how it brought back memories of her late father. He had been an Armstrong fan all his life; in his later years, when he was sick, Armstrong's music had been his only remaining pleasure, in fact.

That evening made clear to Reney just how broad jazz's reach is, he says. "The confluence of these various worlds is what delights me more than anything in what I do."

In the studio on a recent night it's the music itself, though, that's delighting Reney. He snaps his fingers in time to the rhythm, bobs his head up and down. Sometimes, he says, he'll find himself out of his chair and on his feet, dancing around the studio with an imaginary partner: "I've been known to grab a broomstick..."

Back to Northampton

When Reney gets off the air at midnight, he gets in his Ford Country Squire and heads back to Northampton. There he might turn on the television to catch the end of "Letterman." He often goes for a late-night walk.

The next morning he's up by 7 or 8. He'll check out The New York Times, where he goes straight for the obituary page to see if any jazz notables have passed on. Regardless of that, he says, he enjoys the writing in the Times' famously detailed obituaries. "If you're interested in people it's the best place to start."

After that it's off to the YMCA. Reney quit smoking some years ago, and keeps a hint of a paunch in check with water aerobics, which have taken the place of a now-canceled yoga class that he says he misses. Later in the morning he might make his way downtown for a serious breakfast - some granola and fruit at the Haymarket Cafe, maybe, or eggs and sausages at Sylvester's - that he jokes makes up for the coffee and cigarettes he subsisted on as a teen-ager.

On most days in the spring and summer, he'll ride his bicycle to the community gardens, where he grows flowers and vegetables. While he likes to cook, he says, "I'm in a hurry to get to work at night. That takes the thrill out of it." What he really likes, he says, is going out to eat at good restaurants. His attitude there can be summed up by his response to a sign he once saw at the State Street Deli: "We aim to please."

"I said that's good, because I aim to be pleased."

On weekends when he's in town he'll attend Mass at St. Mary's Church. "I love to sing in church," he says. "I've actually had people turn and say, 'You have a lovely voice.' An Irish tenor." Many weekends, though, find him heading off with his girlfriend to go bicycle riding on Cape Cod or exploring jazz clubs and art galleries in New York. The 47-year-old Reney doesn't hit as many night spots as he once did, he says with a touch of ruefulness. "Sometimes my energy is suited a little better for the day."

Show changed

Reney has been doing "Jazz a la Mode" since 1984, and he says the show has changed over the years. He's made room for the popular songbook, for one thing, the songs by Porter and Gershwin and Berlin and others that he used to dismiss as too sentimental. "When I got into jazz it was important to be hip and sort of hide away some of those mainstream songs and artists. And today so much [of that] music sounds so good.

"It can be really burdensome to be hip," he says.

These days Reney finds himself regarded as something of an institution among area music fans.

He helps come up with the jazz programming at the University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center, hosts an annual jazz festival in Litchfield, Conn., leads the occasional jazz tour to France or Montreal. From time to time he lectures at the various colleges in the area. He contributes articles on jazz to the Boston Globe and the Valley Advocate.

"Tom's like the guy," says WFCR's John Montanari. "The jazz guy. Who in this area is a more known and more authoritative commentator on jazz than Tom?"

Twice a year, for the past 10 years, he's been spreading the faith by teaching his own course on jazz history. The latest session started last Sunday at the Broadside Bookshop in Northampton.

He gets a mixed group. They range from people who simply listen to his show to professional musicians who want to learn more about "the nuts and bolts of jazz history," he says.

People are intrigued by the history of jazz, he continues, about what it reveals about the ways black culture and white culture come together, and fail to come together.

"Jazz helps us understand who we are as Americans," he says. "Our uniqueness as a people."

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