Dick Bush Obituary

Bush, Dick 

by Amy Rabideau Silvers 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 

Edited by Ron Sayles

 

For the love of jazz, Dick Bush quit his job as a piano tuner in Chicago,  coming to Milwaukee for the chance to host a weekly radio program. He never earned a paycheck on the radio, working for free and the sake of all  that jazz. It was, he later wrote, the fulfillment of his lifelong dream. For most of Bush’s long stint on the air, first at WUWM-FM and then at  WYMS-FM, his co-host was his wife, Marian Bush, another former member of  the MARE. The couple, both blind, met through a tape correspondence club,  long before music fans shared on the Internet. 

Richard Bush died February 2, 2003 in Naples, Florida. He was 74. Bush  moved to Florida in 2001, following health problems that included  Parkinson’s disease and bypass surgeries. 

He was born in Racine but grew up on a farm in Pecatonica, Illinois, near  Rockford. He was one of seven children, three of whom were born blind. “I heard my first jazz when I came off the farm to attend the Illinois School  for the Blind at Jacksonville in 1939,” he later said. “On the farm, all I ever  heard was country music.” 

Friends recalled Bush talking about those days, including how he never did  graduate from high school at the School for the Blind. 

“He was kind of proud of the fact that he was kicked out before high school  graduation,” said Adrian DeBlaey, a friend, radio host and member of MARE. “He was kicked out because he went AWOL one weekend,” DeBlaey said. “He  took off for St. Louis to see Frankie Lane.” 

“He told me he did a lot of hitchhiking to get all over the country,” said Bill  Felton, another friend, volunteer radio host at WYMS and member of MARE. Bush learned to be a piano technician, working full time for the Chicago  school system. 

“In ‘47, there were clubs galore, a lot of big names in Chicago and New  York,” he said in 1984. “Dizzy (Gillespie) himself might be working in a club,  if you got tired of hearing him, you could go a couple of doors down and hear  Charlie Parker.” 

In 1955, Bush began collecting jazz, eventually acquiring thousands of  recordings. 

He was married and divorced twice before he married Marian, a  stenographer, about 1968. They moved to Milwaukee in 1977. “We gave up good paying jobs to come here” but found other piano tuning  and repair work in Milwaukee, Bush said in a 1978 interview. “What we’re  doing is about one-half as lucrative as in Chicago. But we’re sharing our  collection.” As formats changed, they switched to WYMS in 1981. Their priorities remained talking about jazz, sharing their extensive research  on the music and musicians, and interviewing the artists whenever they  could. 

Over the years, the list came to include jazz greats Milt Jackson, Jay  McShann, George Shearing, Bill Evans, Woody Herman, Teddy Wilson and  Anita O’Day. 

They conducted some interviews during a jazz cruise, later airing them on  the show. 

“Dick managed to get quite a few people to sit down for an interview in their  cabin,” DeBlaey said. “They said it was a pleasure to be interviewed by a  man who knew so much.” 

The couple played what they called “pure jazz.” They defined that as the jazz  played in the studio, not “produced” by engineers. 

In the mid-1990s, the Bush marriage fell apart. Although they divorced in  1995, the two made their peace before Marian Bush’s death of cancer, she  appeared on the radio program one more time. 

Dick Bush continued with the show until April 2001, when health problems  prompted his move to be near family in Florida. 

It was then that Bush decided to sell much of his music collection, housed in  the east side apartment he called home. Friends say that he was never really  the same again. 

“He lived for those Friday night jazz shows, that he so lovingly put together”  said Diane Loren, who also hosted jazz on WYMS. 

Increasingly, dementia clouded his memories. When a visitor would put jazz  into a CD player, Bush would listen intently to the old sounds he once talked  about on the radio. 

“He didn’t really know who I was, but he said I had a nice voice,” said sister in-law Kara Bush. 

“Hopefully,” Loren said, “he and Marian are up there, singing jazz with all the  greats we’ve lost.”