The Pendulum Swings for KCSN’s Chuck Cecil

Like many public radio stations operating out of college campuses, Cal State Northridge’s KCSN-FM (88.5) features programming mostly appealing to a, well, postgraduate demographic.

So it’s probably a good thing that the station is adding a show with proven appeal to a younger audience.

What’s joining the station’s lineup of National Public Radio news, classical music and weekend Americana sounds? Though it might surprise you, it’s “The Swingin’ Years,” a weekly look back to the big-band era hosted by veteran Los Angeles radio personality Chuck Cecil. It begins airing at the station Saturday in what will be its weekly home from 1 to 3 p.m.

“I have teenagers coming up to me, and it’s a very funny feeling,” says Cecil, 77, of recent encounters at swing concerts he’s emceed. “I’m grandfatherly, and they go, ‘We love the show and the history.’ It’s never happened before and it’s happening now.”

Indeed, Cecil has gotten a cross-generational boost thanks to the swing upswing of recent years from such young acts as Brian Setzer and the Royal Crown Revue. He’s been heartened, he says, by turnouts such as the 6,000--mostly teens to fortysomethings--for a recent Royal Crown performance at the Santa Monica Pier. And many of them are serious not just about the music but about the dance steps.

The new interest in swing has coincided with what has been Cecil’s first substantial stretch off the L.A. airwaves after a virtually continuous run of 48 years. Cecil’s been on L.A. radio longer than even Vin Scully, and has a voice just as recognizable.

He began in radio in January 1952 at KFI-AM (640). After 21 years there, he spent 11 years at KGIL-AM (1260), then a couple at the now-defunct KPRZ-FM and most recently a 13-year run at Pasadena City College station KPCC-FM (89.3). But with the operation of that station taken over by Minnesota Public Radio, which eliminated almost all music programming in favor of talk and news, “The Swingin’ Years,” featured on a small syndication network of 15 stations nationally, hasn’t been available in his hometown since March 4.

But KCSN General Manager Rene Engel, a former assistant program director at KPCC, made sure that didn’t last long.

“We started to talk to him immediately,” says Engel, adding that there had been some talk of picking up the show two years ago. “We in fact had Chuck Taggart doing an hour called ‘The Swing Shift’ before his ‘Down Home’ show on Sundays and it was important to us to always have this fully rounded and comprehensive coverage of American music. Now we’ve got really the source, the guy who’s really the voice of swing music and knows it better than anyone else.”

For Cecil it’s gratifying to be going to a station that already was cultivating this appreciation--especially one that’s in his own backyard; he and his wife, Edna, have lived in the San Fernando Valley most of the 53 years they’ve been married.

“We were listening to KCSN the other night and a young woman played ‘Let Me Off Uptown,’ and I said, ‘There was a long time I think I was the only one playing this music,’ ” he says. “It was a lonesome thing in a way, but it seemed there was a little treasure there and no one else was tapping into it.”

Cecil Began Program at Dawn of Rock Era

In some ways, Cecil says the current situation reminds him of the show’s origins.

“When I was starting ‘The Swingin’ Years’ it was when the rock ‘n’ roll era was just beginning and there was a sort of lull of music that was at the cutting edge,” he says. “There wasn’t any great form of music capturing everyone’s minds yet. It seems like we’re going through the same kind of period. But there is much exciting music, much from the Latin inspiration and from hip-hop. And what young people find is energy in the old songs.”

And frankly, he thinks some of the young fans are even more dedicated to the music than many in his generation.

“The difference is I’ve noticed the young people dance to the music but don’t pay too much attention to the musicians,” he says. “My generation gathered around the bandstand because we weren’t good dancers. There’s a certain involvement in time on the kids’ part to learn to swing dance. So I think [the interest] will go on for a while. But I think the interest of young people in this style is that they’re waiting for something to captivate them.”

Though he appreciates the young fans, he takes little credit for their interest in swing.

“It’s not me,” he says. “It’s the music. I stay out of the way of the music. I don’t try to be a musician or interpret it as a musician does. I just try to be the go-between.”

* Chuck Cecil’s “The Swingin’ Years” can be heard Saturdays from 1 to 3 p.m. on KCSN-FM (88.5).