How I’ll miss Bob Harris – radio will be a worse place without him
Whispering Bob Harris’s voice is as much a soundtrack to the life of his listeners as the music he plays.
Radio 2 has been a quieter place for the past few months without it. Since April, Harris’s shows – Sounds of the 70s and Bob Harris Country – have been covered by stand-ins and special guests, so it was not a huge surprise to hear the news today that he is retiring from the BBC after 56 years due to ill health. But it is still incredibly sad.
Harris, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2007, has long been open on Instagram about his treatment – and how much it’s been giving him a kicking – and in April shared that the cancer had spread to his spine. He has been having radiotherapy and recovering at home since, but in a statement today he announced that he had made one of the hardest decisions of his life.
“It’s incredible to think that my broadcasting career has spanned almost 56 years,” he said. “I am very fortunate to have spent my entire working life doing something I love so much. I am a massive BBC loyalist, and I’m grateful that I have always been given the freedom to build my programmes in my own way.”
I’ve been dreading this day. I have been listening to Bob Harris for as long as I can remember. When I was a teenager, before Taylor Swift had released her first single and when country music didn’t have a chance in hell of being played on any other show, listening to Bob Harris Country on Thursday nights felt like being part of a special little club, where I’d hear my favourite songs by the Dixie Chicks or Alison Krauss or Emmylou Harris and realise I wasn’t the only one (though I did wonder if I was the youngest). He was also the first person to play Swift on UK radio.
His show was where I’d discover artists I came to love, like Kacey Musgraves or Roseanne Cash, where I’d hear live sessions straight from Nashville and intimate interviews in which Bob and country’s all-time greats sounded like old friends (they probably were). It was where I’d find out about country concerts in tiny venues and see the same faces every time I made the pilgrimage. For years, to watch live country music in the UK was to stand in a crowd of disciples of Bob Harris and his gravelly voice.
It is thanks to him that that special little club went mainstream. Country music is everywhere in the UK now – it’s on mainstream radio playlists (and specialist country stations), there are annual festivals across the country, major pop artists are going country and UK country has become a genre all of its own – which was unthinkable 15 years ago.
I remember the very first year of the Country to Country festival – which Harris championed and curated – and how astonishing it was that fans of this niche genre could fill the O2, and not just the 400-capacity Bush Hall. Now country artists like Zach Bryan and Luke Combs sell out Hyde Park and Wembley. And Bob is often still in the crowd, still devoting all his time to what he loves. Last year, at the Royal Albert Hall, country institution the Grand Ole Opry held its first ever show outside of Nashville, and Harris, sitting in the stalls, got a standing ovation. It could not have happened without him.
Country music has only been a fraction of his career, of course, and many more will remember the decades before, the iconic Old Grey Whistle Test, the archive of which must be one of the greatest documents of 20th-century music on Earth. No matter the genre or the century, how deeply Bob cares about the music he plays and how desperate he is to share it has never waned.
That’s always been the job of a DJ. But in a world where the value of music is eroded and how we discover it has transformed from records and radio plays to algorithms and streaming figures, it’s remarkable that even at 80, a recommendation from Bob Harris can transform an artist’s career more than any viral single. He is the best of the BBC. Even in the tougher and tougher broadcasting climate, his shows always still felt like a special little club.
Especially because of his stories. Nobody still working in radio has worked through so many eras of popular music, and whether it’s a rock and roll legend or a rising star, he’s met them and has an anecdote about them. I remember interviewing him in my early twenties and forgetting to ask questions because I was hanging on every word as he told a story about staying at James Taylor and Carly Simon’s house in the 70s.
There can’t be many people truly dismayed about retiring at 80, but in his farewell, you can feel Bob’s regret. Ours is even greater. What a privilege it has been to listen to his reliable, unique, gift of a voice for so long and to have discovered so much music and joy and connection through him. Radio will be a stranger and quieter place without him.
