The day Deborah Lewow told me she had been diagnosed with ALS I was doing that thing I do - sitting in front of the mirror scrutinizing my face and neck for signs that I had lost that tenuous toe hold on the safe side of the fine line that runs between average looking and ugly. You'd think that knowing someone close to your age who was facing an inevitable decline and devastating physical effects would make you reconsider the relevance of a little face droop and turkey neck in the overall scheme of things. To tell the truth, it did turn my head a little but I'm a product of the culture we live in where your inner voice whispers "live and love your life" while your surroundings whisper "that is, if you can fit into these specifications."  Deborah Lewow did not live by the rules of the transient phases of pop culture trends. She lived with joy, warmth, and love for people and music. She navigated the politics, upheavals, and one-upsmanship of the music and radio industries without ever sinking into their murky depths. She took care of the artists and radio programmers she worked with and went above and beyond the call of a job description in everything she did. When this disease started to take its toll she handled it with grace and dignity and continued to give so much loving energy to everyone who crossed her path.

I started talking to Deborah in the early 80's. I was working as Music Director at a high profile southern top 40 station. She was doing promotion for a record company, which meant that she called radio stations every week to try to get songs on the playlist and keep them there so they would climb the charts. We were both anomalies then. We were early arrivals in this radio and records world that had always been a playground for wild boys who were afraid that bringing in the ladies would mean stern or prissy frowns in the face of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. She was working records, I had a title and I was on the air when the sun was actually out - a rarity for women back then. We were also both in Georgia, more good ol' boy territory than forward thinking, but we both knew we were doing what we loved and were meant to be doing so #@*! it, you do what you do and don't let the sideshows distract you. 

What I loved about her was that most promotion people made you feel like you were just part of a process, an “add” then a tool to move a song up the chart. I called it feeling like “chart meat.” They would call you and spew numbers at you or reel off a list of the songs they were working whether they fit your station's approach or not. Deborah treated you like a person and actually  considered the individual station, their sound, preferences, and needs. Label reps don't want to hear “later,” or “no” but she didn't hard sell or play head games and she listened to your reasoning and respected it.

I left the biz and went into retail for a while, then into Adult Contemporary radio. I didn't hear from her for a while. Then I got a call from her out of the blue. She had just been hired to do promotion for GRP.  I had a brunch show. It was going to be a thrill to be talking to her again. Industry politics intervened though. Within the next year the format went into high profile mode. A lot of large market stations picked it up and a small group of programmers became very big names. The rest of us, the indies and the brunch show hosts, were spun to the sidelines by the record companies. They didn't need us anymore so artists and label reps were told to focus their time and budget on the “important” people. I would still hear from her from time to time though. She'd call just to check in and say hello, to see if I needed anything for the show, and she'd send me stuff, which was probably skirting the rules a little bit. She moved on to Warner Bros., a contemporary jazz dream job because their roster was loaded at the time. I was truly D-list by then – a brunch show in the same market as a powerful full time station – but I still heard from her. She even tolerated and helped facilitate my ritualistic journey to Atlanta every summer to see Al Jarreau at Chastain Park. It was a summer thing in full bloom to get away from real life and sit at the top of that theatre looking down on candle lit tables while dragonflies circled. Weird? Yeah. But she never even rolled her eyes. When the security staff at one venue were really nasty to my contest winner and me at a concert with one of her artists she raised a great southern ruckus and nobody ever got treated like dirt there again as far as I know.  We were both in love with the same band, Acoustic Alchemy, which wrote at least two songs with her in mind - “Georgia Peach,” and “Angel of the South.”  The last time I saw her was on their tour bus when they came to Jacksonville. It was right when the smooth jazz establishment was starting to cave in and we were talking about how to reboot, survive, and thrive through the challenges that were obviously on their way.

Deborah left the earth walk on the day before Halloween.  I in was front of a big group of people that morning at a dance fitness event, leading them through (or egging them on to) some wild choreography to reggaeton star Don Omar's "Galactic Blues."  I swear I felt her spirit fly by and wink. She was never genre or generation bound when it came to music. Losing someone you have known for a long chunk of your life always leaves an empty space. Losing someone who is near your age is mortality tapping its finger on your shoulder and going “Yo! You don't have all the time in the world, get on with it.”

Getting on with it means it is now up to us to pay Deborah's legacy forward. She always worked this music from the heart, not the numbers. She was one of our biggest crusaders and someone who had a deep wellspring of knowledge to use and share. She never quit learning and unlike a lot of boomers in the biz she never tried to dig her heels in and resist change. She learned about new technologies, kept a close eye on the evolving business models, and focused on how the contemporary/smooth jazz community could use them to our benefit. She was always looking for more ways to get the music heard and get more people into it. She's here is spirit now but if you're reading this you are still in a body so it's up to you, to all of us, to continue down the path she was on and do everything we can do to keep this music alive, vital, and to make it high profile and exciting again. Everyone can do something. Together we can do a lot.