Mixed Signals
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Cushing studied radio broadcasting at Columbia College for three years and did a blues show at the Triton College station, WRRG, in the late 70s, until he was hired as an operating engineer by WBEZ in 1979. He conceived Blues Before Sunrise shortly thereafter, and by June 1980 WBEZ agreed to air it. He freely admits to modeling the show after Dick Buckley’s Jazz Forum. “Buckley’s my broadcast idol,” Cushing says. “He’s personable, he talks in a casual manner, he’s very knowledgeable about the music, and he shares that knowledge and plays the music.”
Cushing’s focus, like Buckley’s, is on the music’s heritage–you won’t hear the latest Buddy Guy cuts on his show. But he covers the prerock blues spectrum with unmatched depth and breadth. He delivers the expected doses of Delta blues and postwar Chicago blues, but vocal harmonizers like the Mills Brothers and Delta Rhythm Boys and the jump bands of Lucky Millinder and Tiny Bradshaw get equal time. In fact, Cushing is such a strict historian that he’s occasionally been criticized for playing songs now deemed politically incorrect. His knowledge and understanding of how the music progressed year to year, however, is unimpeachable.
