Bluegrass Broadcaster Shipley Dies

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HIS NAME MAY NOT be known to most D.C. hipsters, but broadcaster Red Shipley trafficked in a kind of indie music that's as endangered as anything on college radio — and far more time-tested.

Shipley, who died of cancer over the weekend, was the host of WAMU's "Stained Glass Bluegrass" program, which aired from 1982 until last month, when the NPR affiliate jettisoned its bluegrass programming. But his presence on local radio dials reaches back nearly a half-century, from small stations in his western Virginia home to the big-city outlets in D.C.

This writer spent many a Sunday morning wrapped in the pastoral sounds of Shipley's playlist, which was always punctuated by his good-natured, good ol' banter.

We didn't know much about bluegrass — and certainly not the gospel-tinged sort that was Shipley's bailiwick — when we started listening, but Shipley was a heck of a teacher. As the area's airwaves grow increasingly homogenized and packed with iPod-friendly mixes of the same tired pop songs, we'll be hard-pressed to find another voice quite like his.

Get more on Shipley's life from The Post's Marc Fisher.

» "Red Shipley, Stained Glass Bluegrass Host, Dies" [Raw Fisher/WaPo]
» Red Shipley [WAMU]