The folk, folk-rock and singer-songwriter communities lost one of their most ardent champions and promoters last week with the passing of Pete Fornatale, who died on April 26 at age 66. The pioneering veteran New York radio DJ suffered a massive stroke after being in intensive care following a cerebral hemorrhage earlier in the month.

On Saturday, May 5, from 4-8 p.m., WFUV (90.7 FM) in New York, and streaming online at wfuv.org, will celebrate the life and 40+-year career of the pioneering veteran New York radio DJ. Since 2001, that had been the time slot of his popular show, “Mixed Bag,” which derived its name from that of the classic Richie Havens album.

Pete Fornatale in the WFUV studios.

A passionate champion of singer-songwriters, who loved folk and folk-rock music and vocal harmonies and liked to delve deeper into albums, Fornatale originated “Mixed Bag” in 1982 on WNEW-FM (a legendary New York rock station whose staff he joined in July 1969, just weeks prior to the Woodstock Festival). “Mixed Bag” moved to WXRK-FM (K-Rock) in 1989 before returning to WFUV, the Fordham University station where Fornatale’s radio days began 25 years earlier. He loved the idea of having come full circle. As a 19 –year-old Fordham sophomore in 1964, the Bronx native created the station’s first free-form rock and roll show, “Campus Caravan.” It was during those years that he first interviewed a duo named Simon & Garfunkel, with whom he’d later forge close bonds and about whom he’d write a book (on the making of the classic 1968 album, Bookends) and do a series of multimedia presentations.

Like many others here in the New York metropolitan area, I was very saddened by Pete Fornatale’s death. In the days since his passing, I’ve struggled to find the words to express my feelings. Many of his legions of fans have been sharing their thoughts and memories on a fan page established in his honor on Facebook and have been flooding WFUV with personal reflections and expressions of sympathy. For its part, the station and its on-air staff have been paying homage to Fornatale in the days since his passing through moving, heartfelt, and often tear-provoking tributes both on-air and online. I’ve choked up numerous times listening to his former colleagues play songs that reflected his musical tastes, at times interspersing them with recorded clips of Fornatale. As one fan posted, WFUV conducted a “virtual wake” for the beloved DJ during the days following his death – recognizing how much his fans needed to mourn him.

Although I did not really know him as well as others did, Pete Fornatale was an integral part of my life. He introduced me — and many others — to some wonderful artists whose music has become the soundtrack of our lives. I had the pleasure of interviewing him for both The New York Times and a group of Long Island community weeklies in 1989 as he marked his 20th anniversary with WNEW-FM and later as he moved “Mixed Bag” to K-Rock. I continued to listen to him on the radio through his stint there and up through his last show on WFUV earlier this month.

His “Mixed Bag” Program Took an Eclectic and Adventurous Free-form Musical Approach

An anomaly during an age of streamlined, homogenized, strictly formatted FM rock radio, “Mixed Bag” did not adhere to any standard playlists. As its name implied, it was eclectic and adventurous. Pete employed a more free-form musical approach, programmed thematically, and featured album cuts along with interviews with the artists making the music. As such, he was kind of a throwback – in a very positive sense – to radio personalities in the early innovative days of FM radio. Fornatale, who viewed himself as a conduit between listeners and artists, told me in 1989 that “To me, the beauty of FM had always been the contribution of the individual on the air making the selection of music to play for the listeners.” At that time he aptly described his show as “a lightning rod for the performers who make the music and the audience interested in the music,” noting that “Mixed Bag” appealed to “a community of listeners that come to share their mutual interest in a particular kind of expression and entertainment.”

Fornatale viewed music as a bridge from the past to the present and expressed delight in the knowledge that his show was also helping to bridge generations “Mixed Bag,” he said, was dedicated to keeping alive the music that’s been around for a while – “that great catalog of folk, folk-rock and acoustic music from the last quarter of a century” – while also exposing the new music that some of those established artists were making and providing “a means of exposure for the totally new generation of artists choosing this medium in which to express themselves.” Through “Mixed Bag, Fornatale certainly helped launch the careers of –or at least bring considerable recognition to — a number of newer folk artists through the decades.

Over the years, I’d also seen Fornatale and exchanged greetings at various concerts; the Hungerthons that he hosted for World Hunger Year (now WhyHunger), on whose board he served; and at library programs on such topics as the history of rock n’ roll, Woodstock, and Simon & Garfunkel — which also were among the subjects of books that he wrote. In late December, I enjoyed a multimedia presentation that he gave on Simon & Garfunkel at the Port Washington Public Library (with Art Garfunkel as his special guest). Pete also joined folk-rock duo Aztec Two-Step as host and narrator during its ”Simon & Garfunkel Songbook” shows.

Here’s a link to a video clip from one of “The Simon & Garfunkel Songbook” shows that took place earlier this year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6nELLJNLpg

“I feel blessed that I got to know him and to hear him on the radio,” Aztec Two-Step’s Rex Fowler told WFUV’s John Platt in a recorded interview that aired on Platt’s “Sunday Breakfast” program on April 29. Describing him as “truly a visionary and the quintessential progressive FM radio disc jockey,” Fowler said: “Pete Fornatale raised the IQs of progressive FM deejays and raised our IQs and awareness as listeners. In my opinion, Pete will live on in the music that he was so passionate about.”

In a blog post on WFUV’s website, Platt, who worked directly with Fornatale and produced “Mixed Bag” for more than a decade, starting in 1985, at WNEW-FM, wrote: “Part of what made Pete special was that he was a product of a particular moment in time, as he often noted himself – the moment when the FCC mandated that FM stations not simply simulcast what was airing on AM and when there was an explosion of artists creating exciting new music that couldn’t fit on AM. It was a time when it mattered more how you put the music together and could talk about it than how mellifluous your voice was. Let’s face it; Pete would have never been hired on an AM station. Neither would I.”

On this week’s “Sunday Breakfast,” a program he has hosted for 15 years, Platt paid tribute to Fornatale – playing music he hoped would resonate as a way of saying farewell to a friend, interspersed with excerpts from recorded conversations with such notable artists as Roger McGuinn, Graham Nash, Tom Paxton and Peter Yarrow that he had elicited in the days since Pete’s passing.

“There has been such an outpouring of affection, love and respect for Pete,” Platt said, noting that hundreds of people had shared their thoughts on WFUV’s blog. For his own part, Platt noted how he and Fornatale were first brought together in 1985 and described Pete as “not so much a mentor as a big brother in some ways.”

“I had already been doing radio professionally for 16 years by then, so I was hardly a neophyte, but I definitely learned a lot from him about the structure of a radio program and the art of interviewing. Pete was one of the best interviewers ever. He said it was about establishing trust. He was always prepared, and he listened. When you do that, good things happen. Those are lessons I still follow.” When Fornatale interviewed artists, it felt like a conversation, Platt recalled. Noting that he was in the studio when his colleague interviewed some of the greats at WNEW, Platt acknowledged, “It was really a privilege to be able to produce interviews like that.”

More Artists Share Their Reflections on Pete Fornatale

Many of the artists whom Pete interviewed — or, more accurately, engaged in conversation — over the years shared similar sentiments. “When we would talk together, the nature of our discussions would be very personal, deep and revealing, They were the kind of in-depth discussions you rarely hear in the media,” said Peter Yarrow in recorded remarks. “Pete was as much a friend and an ally as he was a media person. He was very special to all of us.” Similarly, Roger McGuinn, a frequent guest on “Mixed Bag,” told Platt: “He was always so supportive and positive. He seemed so laid back and casual, but he was very professional all the time. That’s probably why he attracted such a large audience. They probably felt like I did – that they were listening to a friend.”

Calling Fornatale “the voice of New York radio for so many years,” Graham Nash referred to him as “a gentle giant” who was “very grateful for his career in radio and wanted to pay back… He certainly had a singular vision about how radio could communicate about music and good ideas.”

Tom Paxton reflected: “Pete was part of the community. He was as much a part of this music as the musicians.” Calling Fornatale “an evangelist,” Paxton continued,”He loved his opportunity to spread this music, to send this music out to new listeners.”

Pete Fornatale enjoyed engaging in conversations with artists as much as they appreciated him. In a 1989 interview with me, he described “Mixed Bag” as “a different breed of cat than whatever else is on the radio … not only because of the content of the show, but also in the method of presentation.” Both, he believed, “must be preserved and given the opportunity to breathe and grow and discover and enlighten and inform and, hopefully, above all, entertain.” Seated in the living room of his former home in Port Washington, Long Island, he related how much the guest segments of the show meant to him: “I love the idea of radio as a medium of live music. To know that you’re hearing a moment as it happened — just the artist, the microphone, and you in your living room or bedroom listening — that, to me, is one of the purest moments that you can have. And for me, its doubly, triply exciting because I’m sitting there in the room with the artist. No club, no concert hall, no concrete stadium is ever going to give you the sense of closeness to the music as I’ve been privileged to get by doing the show.”

Likewise, I and generations of New York area folk and acoustic music lovers were privileged to be able to tune into “Mixed Bag” over the years. Pete Fornatale will be sorely missed but will live on in our memories and in the music that he was so passionate about introducing to us.

A concert in tribute to Pete Fornatale will be held in the near future. His family has requested that contributions be made to WhyHunger in his honor. For more information, visit www.petefornatale.com.