Saturn Biographies:
Moudry

Moudry (holding sign) with Marshall Allen;
Bill Boelens in background
I am, like Sun Ra, a native of Birmingham, Alabama (born 27 September 1947) and educated in the public school systems of the City of Birmingham and Jefferson County. I was struck by jazz mania during the Fall of 1957, by stopping on an AM frequency to listen to some totally new sounds: Charlie Parker. The programme was called The WAPI Jazz Festival and hosted by a local jock named Paul Adams. It broadcast on Saturday nights, 20:00-22:00 hours, if Auburn University's basketball team didn't have a game. I quickly found myself hating basketball, since it would keep me away from the music.

Bird, Monk, & Miles were the names of my deities by Christmas, 1957. I was, by self-admission, a very strange kid: a white child in Bombingham, Alabama, during the most intense phase of the Civil Rights Movement, who listened to strange music and whose heroes were all African-Americans.

Undergraduate and graduate education at The University of Alabama, ending with a BA in psychology & Western philosophy; half a master's in clinical psychology (switched canoes); MA American Studies; MLS Library & Information Service. Worked as a bibliographic specialist, paper conservator, rare books librarian, and manuscript librarian for The University of Alabama Libraries. Transferred to The University of Alabama @ Birmingham in 1992, first as a medical librarian and then changing canoes again and officially became a computer jock. Currently I'm the technical training specialist for the University of Alabama @ Birmingham's School of Education, Office of Academic Computing & Technology. More information on this gig is available if you're suffering insomnia.

Started producing and hosting jazz programmes for WUAL (91.5 FM, Tuscaloosa/Birmingham) when the station went on the air (February 1982) and continue to do my shows, Classic Jazz, Wednesday evenings & Creative Improv Sundays. WUAL is now the parent station of Alabama Public Radio, which can be heard through-out Alabama & parts of Mississippi, Tennessee and the panhandle of Florida. Classic Jazz is Web-cast through the WUAL Web site, in real-time: Wednesday evenings, 22:00–0:00 hrs. Central Time Zone (USA); Creative Improv is Web-cast Sunday evenings, 23:00–0:00 hrs. Central Time.

I've been a confirmed record collecting and card-carrying jazz addict since 1957 and have more 78s, lps, cassettes, reels, and CDs than I would want to admit in public, ranging from the New Orleans Rhythm Kings through the Arkestra, Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, and beyond. Main concentration is, obviously, jazz, with areas of the European Tradition (called, by some, Classical Music) from the Middle Ages to the current crop (with a very small sampling of the Classical and Romantic periods; go figgur); also some strange rock and folk, but a total absence of country & western.

Also, I run Saturn Web, the Web site that you're now visiting, always trying to add worthwhile information in the allied areas of Sun Ra, the Arkestra, Free Jazz and its devotees. Reviews of CDs, lps, concert tapes and other related happenings are constantly solicited.

I can be reached easily by the many routes offered on this Web site.


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