Nat “King” Cole’s 1956 hit “Night Lights” boomed inside the radio booth and resonated into the hallways of the KLSU studio.
“Woo! There’s only one Nat ‘King’ Cole,” the disc jockey yelled over the music as he snapped his fingers to the drummer’s twos and fours.
Zia Tammami hasn’t been a student since 1980, but he is still a fixture on KLSU 91.1 FM, LSU’s student-operated radio station. His weekly show, “Spontaneous Combustion,” which airs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., has been airing Sunday mornings since May 1, 1977, and features everything from Latin jazz to Frank Sinatra.
“Some people will say, ‘I know rap, and I only have 50 albums,'” Tammami said. “No, you need it all. My show is jazz, blues and beyond.”
He had his first exposure to jazz at 5 years old when he saw famed bebop trumpeter and bandleader Dizzy Gillespie. He moved to Europe as a teenager where he was exposed to British rock groups by listening to pirate radio.
Tammami moved to the United States when he was 17 and decided to pursue a degree in geology at LSU. After a stint in public radio in Lafayette after graduating in 1980, but still commuted to Baton Rouge every Sunday to do his show at the University.
“I never earned a penny except when I was at public radio in Lafayette,” Tammami said
His knowledge of the music he plays has paid off. When famed Latin jazz bandleader and percussionist Poncho Sanchez came to Baton Rouge in 2007 to perform at the Shaw Center downtown, Tammami was invited to introduce him onstage.
“Poncho … played two sets, and the guy who introduced him at first mispronounced his name,” Tammami said, turning down the volume on one of Sanchez’s song only long enough to speak. “So I came out for the second set and said [his name]. He came out and hugged me onstage.”
Tammami insists good DJs must offer information to the listener rather than simply “yack” on the air.
“People forget the radio is an information source because 90 percent of it is owned by one person, and everything is computerized,” he said. “If you’re good, you can get everybody’s attention and hold the pulse of the city.”
There have been a few questions as to why the University’s student radio station features someone who finished college nearly 30 years ago, but there are no plans to take Tammami off the air any time soon, said John Friscia, KLSU’s faculty adviser.
“I’ve had people say [the radio station is] for students, but you’d be shooting yourself in the foot by getting rid of a guy like Zia,” Friscia said. “Nobody’s asking to take his spot, and there’s plenty of space.”
Someone would be crazy to try.
The University received scores of protests when a former adviser pulled Tammami’s show around the time of his 20th anniversary in a campaign to eliminate the station’s specialty shows.
“Fans of the show sent more than 70 e-mails to the Chancellor’s Office,” Tammami said. “They fired the station manager and reinstated me with an apology.”
Zia also has a show at Baton Rouge High School from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Sundays. The last hour of that show is syndicated and played on KSLU in Hammond as “Dinner Jazz with Zia.” Tammami works full-time as a hydrology consultant, but he hopes to continue to share his love of jazz, the blues and world music for a long time.
“I’ve been doing this for 33 years,” he said. “And, God willing, I’ll have another 20 years left in me.”
Contact Ben Bourgeois at [email protected]