Jeff Kellam

Jeff is a native of Endicott, and as a kid was fascinated by the radio station he walked through each day delivering newspapers. In college, he got involved with the campus radio station, playing jazz and learning that the radio voice has only one listener at a time; it’s very personal communication.

After college, to prepare for the ministry, Jeff entered Union Presbyterian Seminary in Virginia, choosing that graduate school because it had an FM radio station, a charter member of NPR. That helped focus Jeff’s call to use mass media in ministry, and midway through his theological studies, he created an hour-long rock show for a youth audience. While originally a local program on Richmond, Virginia’s top rock station, Celebration Rock grew into a syndicated show nominated for a Billboard Music Award. Among the stations that carried the program: WAAL in Binghamton.

At the same time, Jeff was asked to produce and host a jazz show on public radio. His love of jazz fueled that long-running program, and also led to a Jazz Brunch on a Richmond commercial station, and to a syndicated program called The Spirit of Jazz. All that jazz was Jeff’s hobby, and opened doors to emcee jazz fests and concerts. (One special night he announced for Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, and Herbie Mann.)

Then a call from a Vermont church drew him away from radio for several years. After a time in Ithaca, Jeff returned to his hometown area, settling in Owego, and returning to broadcasting with a TV/radio interview program. It was there that he met Andru Bemis, learned of Binghamton’s community radio station WBDY-LP, and retrieved from his attic hundreds of LP jazz records to play on Classic Vinyl Jazz.