Schnabel Will Search for New Talent : Radio: ‘Morning Becomes Eclectic’ host to do his last show today. Then he’ll put his talent to work for a record company.

Tom Schnabel, host of “Morning Becomes Eclectic” on KCRW-FM (89.9), was at a local record store this week when a woman browsing in the New Age section mistook him for a store employee and asked for assistance.

Schnabel responded as only a true music aficionado would.

“They were busy and I know where everything is, so I helped her,” he said. “She wanted to get this record that was really bad, and the record next to it was really good. I wanted to say to her, ‘Why are you getting that? Get this. This is so much better.’ ” But she walked away before he was able to proffer his advice.

After more than 11 years of filling the airwaves with his own melange of jazz, classical, popular and international music, giving such guidance has become second nature to Schnabel.

But after today, the devoted fans he has amassed while hosting his acclaimed public-radio program will have to get their guidance elsewhere. Following his sign off at noon, he’s leaving the three-hour weekday show to take a job with A & M Records.

“The thought of it makes me sad,” said Schnabel, 43. “It’s the best audience. The relationship you develop for 11 years with people while they’re working, while they’re living their lives, their crises and joys . . . it’s really important. Music is really important. It makes a difference in their lives. We’ve really had a chance to build this relationship. And now it’s changing and I’m sad.

“But I’ve been here 11 years and change is good for me,” he said. “And I’ll be working in the creative end of getting the music out there.”

His eclectic musical tastes will indeed be utilized at A & M when he starts there in early November, working with artists and looking for new talent to sign.

“He’s going to do what he’s become famous for: finding the best performances from all around the world,” said Diana Baron, A & M Records’ vice president of publicity.

“There are certain groups that I’ll find out about that no one else knows about. . . . I’ve already been doing that,” Schnabel said. “I’m always looking for oddball stuff. I already know certain artists who are incredible (but) who are underexposed or who perhaps don’t have a record that’s easily obtained. . . . That’s where my heart is--in finding new and interesting music. It will be a new challenge to be able to realize projects and perhaps to put some music out there that has never come out.”

Over the years, his show has featured such musical highlights as the debut of Paul Simon’s critically acclaimed “Graceland” album and Peter Gabriel’s score for “The Last Temptation of Christ,” plus the introduction of Algerian Berber music and instruments of the Iron Age to the airwaves.

The only requirement he ever had was that compositions be “music that stirs the soul,” he said.

Listeners will still have the opportunity to hear Schnabel indulge his wide-ranging tastes when he hosts a 90-minute program on KCRW-FM entitled “Sunday Brunch,” Sundays at 11 a.m., beginning Nov. 4.

Brent Wilcox, currently the host of “Nightland,” KCRW’s early morning show (12:30-3 a.m.), will take over the microphone on “Morning Becomes Eclectic” while a search is conducted for Schnabel’s permanent replacement.

Wilcox, 34, said that he shares much of Schnabel’s taste but acknowledges that the well-informed Schnabel--whom rock musician David Byrne once called “one of the five best jocks in the world”--will be a tough act to follow.

“He’s really established the Tom Schnabel presence, musically and personality-wise,” said Wilcox, a guitarist in several experimental avant-garde bands.

“A lot of our musical taste, particularly in world music, overlaps,” Wilcox said. “So I’ll still be hitting the same musical bases that Tom does, but putting it together differently.”