Dave Denny (1944-2008): New Mexico’s Godfather of the Blues
It’s hard to imagine the evolution of KUNM and the Albuquerque-Santa Fe blues scene without the guiding, knowledgeable voice of Dave Denny. A husky, down-to-earth fellow, Mr. Denny hosted the old blues show on KUNM during the 1970s and 1980s. 
Later, until his untimely passing in 2008, Dave alternated the Wednesday night Blues Show with Jerome “Putnay” Thomas. Mr. Denny’s evening sign-off of “Thank you for loving the blues” was practically a trademark.
“I always liked checking out his radio show because he always played some great classic blues and was always sharing his latest discoveries. It was always a pleasure to run into him at all the local blues concerts because he was a wealth of information, a joy to talk to and a great storyteller,” said Jeff Sipe, local artist and bass player for the Memphis P. Tails and 61 Ghosts.
“I remember one conversation about how when you delved into the deepest waters of the blues you discovered guys like Skip James, Robert Pete Williams and Mississippi Fred McDowell. He really loved the music and devoted a large part of his life to learning about it.”
Dave was born in Albuquerque as the final, decisive battles of World War Two were unfolding. As a young man, he served in the United States Air Force and was stationed in the Washington, D.C. area during the first years of the Vietnam War. Family and friends remember him as musically attuned, generous, creative, community-minded, and pet loving. An international traveling man who lived “blues cruises,” in the remembrance of KUNM’s Mary Oishi, Dave took his listeners from north-central New Mexico on journeys of their own, transporting them to the audioscape of the Mississippi Delta, Chicago, Memphis and other places of fame, fortune and folly.
Rachel Kaub, former KUNM operations manager, summed up Dave as “an icon in the area’s Blues community, and a congenial spirit, who brought his indigenous perspective to a flourishing genre.”
According to Paul Ingles, KUNM’s former production manager and longtime producer of Peace Talks Radio, “Dave Denny was smooth on the air, and mellow in person. Knew his blues and had a devoted following to his show, which he shared with Putnay every other week. Always a good-natured presence at the station and at station events.”
Often, while he was checking in for some studio work, veteran KUNM producer and volunteer Kent Paterson would run into Dave at the command of the control board.
“He was a very personable guy, and a station stalwart. He was a soldier of KUNM, if you will,” Paterson said. “He’d religiously guard that creaky old audio board and magic mic, stoic but relaxed, gracing the airwaves with some of the best blues this side of the big muddy river. He was like a New Mexican Stevie Ray Vaughn, but with multiple channels and a thousand or more musicians to back him up.”
Though best known as a bluesman, Mr. Denny brought a diverse musical background, media sensibility and handy radio experience to KUNM. His previous experience in Albuquerque radio included a stint with the old KDEF in 1971, and a short-lived but significant role at KIPC (1976-77), a non-profit Duke City public station spawned by the All Indian Pueblo Council.
Dave worked for KIPC as an announcer, the Native American program director and program director, and even lent his hand to the construction of the station’s studios. He broadcast the blues and hosted “Just Jazz,” a morning show which on Thursdays was dedicated to the sounds of the 1930s and 1940s.
KIPC broadcast National Public Radio, and when the station financially collapsed in 1977 the door was opened for KUNM to begin carrying the national programming the following year.
Quickly realizing they had made a golden catch when Mr. Denny popped up in Oñate Hall, KUNM staff were soon crossing their fingers he wouldn’t get stolen away by the likes of NPR.
“Even though he began working just a few months ago, Dave has already made himself an important piece of the KUNM jigsaw puzzle,” reads an article in the April 1979 issue of Zounds!. “We just hope fame and fortune don’t steal him away from us too soon.”
But fears of losing Mr. Denny to a “bigger” stage proved off base and the native New Mexican radio man went on to serve KUNM for nearly three decades more. Following in the footsteps of previous KUNM blues deejays, including Richard Eager, David Nereson and Nancy Morris among others, Dave finessed Blues Wednesday as part of the station’s core format and defined the evening as a north-central New Mexico tradition.
In his early career at KUNM, he also hosted Singing Wire, the Native American music and public affairs program which was once broadcast on Sunday evenings instead of its current time slot of Sunday afternoons.
Mike Fleming, drummer for the legendary Duke City rock ‘n roll/rhythm and blues band Cadillac Bob, praised Dave as a man who not only broadcast the blues but actively promoted the music as well.
“I knew him from sight. I really knew him from coming to shows at the El Rey….he was a real supporter of blues shows coming to Albuquerque,” said Fleming, who was also played with the late and great Bo Diddley.
“He’d interview acts or shows coming to town.. I listened to him on the radio a lot and then see him at the blues shows. He was a real advocate for the blues.”
Fleming played drums at the historic blues jams which were held Wednesday evenings during the mid-1980s at the El Madrid Lounge just south of downtown Albuquerque. Local musicians Wendy Beach, Maud Beenhouwer, Duke Dewey, Roy Dog, Billy Jordan, John Bernard, and Ron Lipton were among the rhythmic souls who got the floor of El Madrid moving and shaking, Fleming said.
“There was a cross-section of humanity. You had bikers, lawyers, yuppies, students.” He remembered revved-up partiers stealing sips of whisky purchased from the bar’s drive-up while waiting in line to get inside the door for some real blues action. And mixed in with that “cross-section of humanity” grooving away hump day at El Madrid was Mr. Dave Denny.
At the time El Madrid was run by the late conga-playing and sometime singing George Madrid, who was another unsung, pivotal figure in the annals of Albuquerque blues history.
The forerunner of a Duke City music scene that later flourished at El Rey, the Sunshine Theater and the old Dingo Bar, El Madrid’s jams helped establish a local tradition that lives on today with the Blues Wednesday jam at the Monte Vista Fire Station in Nob Hill, featuring the likes of the Memphis P-Tails, Sherri Gonzales, Felix Peralta, Joe “Daddy” Warner, Jimmy Stallings (aka J.J. Light), Stanley Kee, Chris Rodriguez, Joanie Cere, Dave Paul, Enrique Rael, and a cast of other talented characters jumping out of the pages of a ‘Burque blues book Dave Denny helped write.
Dave was a regular fan as well as an emcee at El Rey shows and festivals in Madrid, the old mining town-turned ghost town- turned hippie hideaway- turned trendy arts center on Highway 14, the slow and scenic Turquoise Trail between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
Mr. Denny was “one of the nicest guys in the world, and knew his s… about blues music,” declared former KUNM deejay Charlie Zdravesky, a.k.a, as “Mr. Hot Lix” or simply “Charlie Z.” “I know he had a helluva fan base.”
Zdravesky said Dave once invited him to help emcee one of Madrid’s blues shows only to have the promoters subsequently make an unexpected request.
“They asked me to emcee the blues shows instead of Dave, and I kind of felt bad about that,” he said.
Zdravesky recalled Dave’s fun-loving streak, including the time at a loosely clothed KUNM party when the blues jock emerged from the hot tub feeling, “mighty, mighty fine,” as Mr. Hot Lix used to say it on his Saturday evening show, and rolled off to the side “like a beached whale.”
Juliette Craig, former KUNM volunteer coordinator, holds many memories of KUNM’s bluesman extraordinaire.
“Dave Denny wasn’t shy. In fact, he reveled in the spotlight. In addition to decades of curating and hosting The Blues Show, Dave also appeared on screen. He had a talent agent who regularly sent him to audition for film and television projects. Dave proudly talked about movies filmed in New Mexico in which he’d played a part, or served as an extra,” Craig said.
“Dave also acted on stage at the Adobe Theatre. Whenever I bumped into Dave Denny, he enthusiastically told me about his many high profile acting projects. While hosting The Blues Show at KUNM, Dave enjoyed fielding calls and requests from listeners. He was a good storyteller, and eagerly connected with music lovers over the airwaves, on the phone, or in person. Dave Denny wasn’t shy.”
Added Jeff Sipe, “I remember that the last few times I spoke with him he was enjoying his new vocation being an extra in the movies. He was a great guy and shared a lot with the Albuquerque music community. We all miss him.”
KUNM Development Director Mary Oishi, who inherited Dave’s slot on the Blues Show after he suddenly died, wrote about her predecessor in the KUNM publication Zounds!
“It was such a shock and a loss to the KUNM community when he passed away unexpectedly the night before the Fall pledge drive. He gave literally decades of dedicated service to KUNM. I sat in with him and Putnay on every fundraiser since I arrived here in 1999,” Oishi wrote.
”People listening didn’t know this, but after every fundraising show, Dave would walk back to the phone room and write his own check to KUNM. He was one of those big-hearted volunteers who loved the station so much he gave considerably of both his time and his money… “
illustration: J.D. Sipe Folk Art
So what’s the Greater Albuquerque blues scene like as the 21st century rolls on, in the post Dave Denny years ? Longtime KUNM Blues Show fan Craig Stokes, co-founder and president of the now defunct New Mexico Blues Society (2009-2014), had a few thoughts to pass along. Before it folded, the non-profit blues organization produced shows and supported the musical education of several students.
For Stokes, today’s challenges range from the absence of regular Duke City blues clubs to the paltry compensation endured by local musicians. He regretted the loss of downtown venues as well as the old Club Rhythm and Blues that once howled the night away on the corner of Carlisle and Central, billing both local and national performers.
According to Stokes, “Albuquerque needs a venue. The El Rey at one point was doing really well, the Dingo, which doesn’t exist…”
On the other hand, promising developments stir on the north end of the Albuquerque metro area, in the town of Bernalillo, where the New Mexico Jazz Workshop has revived a Madrid-style blues festival and the Kaktus Brewery holds a regular Sunday jam session.
If the blues scene in north-central New Mexico encompasses musicians, fans and festivals, the radio waves where Dave Denny’s voice once excelled still play an important role in keeping a uniquely American music alive, Stokes added.
“I hope it will always go on,” Stokes said of KUNM’s Blues Show, which is clearing the half-century mark as a Wednesday night staple. “It would hurt if I knew the show was gone.”
Once called “The Godfather of the Blues,” Dave Denny peacefully passed away on October 17, 2008, three days shy of his 64th birthday. He was buried in Paguate, New Mexico, on Laguna Pueblo tribal land.
In tribute to a homegrown blues musicologist, curator and promoter, the blues people of New Mexico came together for a historic tribute concert at El Rey on November 7, 2008.
“I just remember all the good local bands that were around played, like Chris Dracup, Melvin Crisp, John Patrick Nieto,” recalled Putnay Thomas, who assisted Dave’s girlfriend with organizing the show. “Anybody who was blues in town played that concert in one way or another…they all wanted to be part of it.”
In assessing Dave Denny’s role at KUNM and in the cultural history of New Mexico, Putnay recalled how the man rose to the mic at a time when a musical genre that’s glided through peaks and valleys over the years was climbing up a summit.
“Well, I think he had a major impact to the local blues community, for sure. These people were really paying attention to that blues show he was playing. It seemed at the time blues was a hot commodity and everybody wanted to be a part of it. He was a popular personality, and I kind of followed him and took his lead,” the KUNM deejay said.
Years after Dave’s premature passing, Putnay said he still gets calls from listeners who say, “‘Oh, Dave used to play this or that,’” in remembrance of Blues Wednesdays past. “Basically, he came to voice the blues musicians, to local and national…,” Putnay added. “His KUNM legacy is cemented in the hearts of the listeners.”
Decades after Dave Denny helped institutionalize Blues Wednesday, listeners slogging it through Hump Day can still turn the dial to 89.9 FM Albuquerque, at 7 pm Mountain Standard Time, or live stream on the computer for three hours of some of the finest and most genuine blues music.
Dave Denny is survived by a girlfriend, Carol Lynn Ryan, his dog Yoda, extended family and friends, the New Mexico blues community, and an appreciative audience wherever KUNM reached on Blues Wednesday. Mr. Denny was preceded in death by his parents Benjamin and Rosenda Denny, brother Benny Jr. and his pets Sleepy, Sadie and Posole.
Prior to Dave’s El Rey tribute show, Albuquerque musician Steve Whitman attended the Burque bluesman’s burial and posted a report back on Duke City Fix.
“The services in Paguate were very simple and touching. Dave was a vet, so they had an honor guard and played Taps,” Whitman wrote. “Hearing that lone bugle out there among the mesas and sagebrush was very poignant…Adios Dave-thank you for loving the blues.”
Information: Charlie Zdravesky, Kent Paterson, Juliette Craig, Paul Ingles, Michael Fleming, Rachel Kaub, Jeff Sipe, Jerome “Putnay” Thomas, Peggy Hessing, and Craig Stokes. Albuquerque Journal, October 22, 2008 and October 6, 2017. New Mexico Daily Lobo, August 31, 1976 and July 20, 1978. Zounds! April 1979 and December 2008. Duke City Fix, October 23, 2008.
edited by Kent Paterson
