Philly Radio: Jazz DJ Bob Perkins Returns To WRTI After A Stroke

Bob Perkins

For 50 years Bob Perkins has been one of the great voices of Philadelphia radio, starting in 1969 with a nearly 20-year stint as a news and editorial reader for WDAS, known in those days as The Voice of the Black Community.

“My dad was my radio school,” the 86-year-old remembered during an interview with The Inquirer. “He loved radio programming, and since I was the last kid at home, we listened together to all the great voices — John Facenda and Edward R. Murrow — anything that was on the radio, from Jack Benny to the Philadelphia Athletics games. I knew the Athletics’ batting averages like they were my own name.

His older brother had introduced him to the music of Duke Ellington, which sparked a lifelong love of big band and jazz music. He wanted to share his obsession. Not quite content as a newsman, in the late ‘70s he volunteered for a moonlighting job as a weekend music DJ with WHYY, where he coined his on-air moniker: “BP with the GM” — Bob Perkins with the Good Music.

When WHYY dropped its music programming to concentrate on news and information, Perkins moved uptown. Over the last 20-some years, BP with the GM has become an icon of the Philadelphia airwaves, holding down a prime, three-hour early evening time slot Monday through Thursday on WRTI 90.1 FM. The station, run by Temple University, plays classical music during the day and transforms in the evenings into one the country’s premier jazz music broadcasters. He throws in a four-hour show on Sunday mornings for good measure.

One day in late summer last year, his familiar and congenial voice went silent. Perkins had suffered a stroke.

Maureen Malloy, the director of jazz programming at WRTI, says there was “an insane amount” of listener response to Perkins’ unexplained absence. “We weren’t sure at first when he’d be back, so we didn’t say anything.” Finally, in mid-November, a post went up on the WRTI web page. It was typically BP in tone.

“I’ve got high mileage on my odometer,” Perkins wrote. “BP and ‘Father Time’ have been having a continuous battle over the last several years and I’m trying not to let him win the battle! I’m waiting for my doc to give me clearance to return to work so that I can keep putting out that good GM …. I look forward to you lending me your finely tuned ears very soon."

Perkins has made it back on the air this past Thursday, despite some lingering effects of his stroke.

“Music,” said BP about the GM. “That’s our savior, man.”