WUCF was easily the best local music radio following Hurricane Irma

As power blinked off in neighborhood after neighborhood on Sunday night, we turned to our battery-powered or hand-cranked radios and boomboxes for a dedicated connection to the outside world, and local news/talk stations like WDBO and WTKS and WMFE (before it got knocked off the air) really delivered with informative, around-the-clock coverage.

But after the carnage cleared and the winds died down early Monday, we needed some music to soothe our impossibly jangled nerves. And y’know what, the oft-overlooked WUCF Jazz 7 More on 89.9-FM really did the trick.

Throughout the day, the station kept it moving with tracks from John Coltrane, Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Zoot Sims and Nancy Wilson, which sounded just superb through our little hand-held radio. And by the end of the night, we were definitely soothed by a rerun of a particularly beautiful episode of “Piano Jazz” where pianist and host Marian McPartland interviewed and duetted with vocalist Ernie Andrews on a run of tunes including a ridiculously moving rendition of “Time After Time.”

Thanks for the audio relief.

This article appears in Sep 6-12, 2017.