Harrison Ridley Jr.

Who was Harrison Ridley Jr.?

Harrison Ridley Jr. was a teacher and broadcaster on African-American music.

Ridley taught music history at Temple University and Villanova University, he was the host of a Sunday night radio show on WRTI entitled, "The Historical Approach to the Positive Music." The "historical approach" Ridley took was to focus in particular on one artist, and use his entire four-hour program to give the listener a sense of that artist's contribution to the tradition. Often he would focus on a specific period in an artist's career, such as early Duke Ellington or Miles Davis recordings from the 1960s. The show ran for more than thirty years and was very popular in the Philadelphia area. Ridley would often reference the fact that his phone lines in the studio were full of calls—local jazz celebrities had been known to call in during a show as well.

Ridley was also a record collector and archivist. In the course of fifty years of collecting, he amassed over 8,500 LPs, 3,000 78s, 200 45s, 300 CDs, and 6,000 books on African American history and music. He specialized in Duke Ellington albums, and was also an expert on Benny Carter.