Native radio legend John C. Scott died on Friday, Sept. 22. He was 80.

Scott, whose actual title was John Scott Ulm, spent greater than three a long time because the host of the John C. Scott Present, which bounced from AM station to AM station and typically stretched so long as 4 hours a day, 5 days per week. This system introduced listeners right into a mid-day political dialog, that includes in-depth interviews with politicians, journalists and neighborhood leaders. Through the years, visitors ranged from U.S. senators to candidates for varsity board.

Scott’s most up-to-date gig was an hour-long present on Saturday afternoons on KVOI 1030 AM. He broadcast his final present on July 15 and his closing visitor was Tucson Metropolis Councilman Steve Kozachik.

“John has served as a supply of knowledge on this neighborhood for many years,” Kozachik mentioned. “He is an icon and within the truest sense of the phrases, ‘He shall be missed.’ This previous yr has been agonizing for John. First shedding his spouse, then his daughter. He has lastly discovered some peace and if there’s extra for us past this existence then John is reunited with these he misplaced, and in a heat embrace that may final into eternity.”

“For many years, his marvelous radio voice broadcast interviewed so many individuals in our neighborhood,” mentioned former U.S. Rep. Ron Barber. “I had the great fortune to be interviewed by John and it at all times was a spotlight of my day. John was by no means afraid to go after elected officers who he felt weren’t correctly serving the folks. He had sturdy opinions on many subjects and also you could not hearken to his reveals with out being challenged by the positions he took.”

“He was a private pal, a really severe speak present host and he represented a candid voice on all issues political,” mentioned the ex-congressman. “You by no means needed to guess the place John stood on the problems. He shall be sorely missed in Tucson.”

Scott received his begin in radio when he was nonetheless an adolescent in Kansas, after doing a stint in a juvenile reformatory for passing a nasty test.

After arriving in Tucson within the late Nineteen Sixties, Scott labored as a TV newscaster earlier than leaving that job in 1972 to serve one time period as a Democrat within the Arizona Legislature.

He returned to TV and radio broadcasting and in 1989, he launched the John C. Scott Present.

Scott’s son, Mark Ulm, labored along with his father because the present’s producer for greater than 25 years.

“He simply lived his life the way in which he wished,” Ulm mentioned. “He was the Ron Burgundy of Tucson. Him and (former information anchor) George Borozan and a few of these guys. These guys dominated the roost again within the ’70s, being on tv.”

He mentioned Scott died at house and whereas he didn’t have a confirmed explanation for loss of life, his father had struggled with COPD.

“He smoked for 100 years,” Ulm mentioned. “It caught up with him.”

Showing on the present was a ceremony of passage for rookie politicians. Jonathan Paton, who represented Tucson within the Arizona Legislature from 2005 to 2010, referred to as Scott the “first threshold guardian.”

“It was your first shot at being broadcast throughout city,” Paton mentioned. “Earlier than social media, earlier than blogs, earlier than any of that, he was the hyperlink you needed to the a lot wider world.”

Scott would broadcast a stay present from midtown’s Austin’s Ice Cream on election nights. Paton remembered stopping by in 2004 after, on his third strive, he received a seat within the Arizona Home of Representatives.

“It was actually cool,” Paton mentioned. “You kind of felt such as you’d arrived, occurring the present after an election that you simply’d received.”

Scott’s present steadily moved across the dial.

“We moved the present to 5 totally different stations by means of the years,” he informed the Sentinel in 2013, at one among a number of factors he introduced his retirement. “We had been at KTUC, then KTKT, KVOI, the Jolt, then again at
KVOI.”

He’d return to the air a number of occasions after that. KVOI ended his broadcasts there in 2016, as a result of his liberal speak did not match the conservative bent of many of the station’s programming. He wasn’t a fan of right-wing speak radio.

“It is all about creating concern and animosity,” he mentioned. “For those who scare
folks, anger folks, you may develop an viewers for that.”

He picked up once more on KEVT, branding himself as a “progressive.” Then returned to KVOI in 2020 after the station was offered.

Scott, an interviewer who was by no means shy about sharing his personal
opinions, left many listeners unclear about the place he stood on the
political spectrum, as he challenged each Republican and Democratic
politicians alike. His stint in elective workplace, as a one-term member of the state Home, was as a Democrat. However he unsuccessfully ran in a 1998 GOP legislative main.

Longtime pal Byron Howard mentioned {golfing} with Scott was an journey, particularly when he’d been ingesting.

“He misplaced management of the golf cart and dumped it into the lake at El Rio, so we received kicked out of there,” Howard mentioned. “I might inform you loads of humorous tales about our {golfing}. Lots of people wouldn’t discover it humorous, nevertheless it was.”

Howard mentioned he finally helped Scott get sober, despite the fact that Scott punched him within the nostril whereas he was taking him to a rehab clinic.

“He broke my nostril,” Howard mentioned. “He didn’t wish to go.”

However, Howard mentioned, as soon as Scott received sober, he by no means fell off the bandwagon.

“He by no means cheated once more,” Howard mentioned. “However we by no means might get him to give up smoking.”

Invoice Buckmaster, longtime host of the Buckmaster Present on KVOI and former anchor of KUAT-TV’s Arizona Illustrated, mentioned Scott was a pal who mentored him when he left TV and went into radio.

“I owe John a ton as he helped ease my transition from TV information on ‘Arizona Illustrated’ on AZPM to my very own speak radio present in January of 2011,” Buckmaster mentioned. “I simply noticed him on Wednesday and my final phrases to him had been: ‘We have got to get you again on the air.’”

magistrate Ray Carroll, who was a daily visitor on the present after he was appointed to the Pima County Board of Supervisors in 1997, mentioned Scott “was my favourite political commentator on the radio dial.”

“Now he’s going to hitch my favourite political commentator from the weekend dial, Emil Franzi,” Carroll mentioned. “God bless these two guys for all they did for this neighborhood.”

Loft Cinema Basis Govt Director Peggy Johnson, who had an extended profession as a political correspondent for the native PBS affiliate, mentioned Scott was the primary individual to present her a broadcast job, at KCUB radio.

“John later employed me to do the sportscast on the 9:30 p.m. information on Channel 11,” Johnson mentioned. “He was bigger than life and whereas we regularly didn’t see eye to eye, we at all times had a shared historical past.”

“Though John was on the radio far longer than he was on TV, he at all times dressed up relatively greater than most radio hosts,” mentioned Dylan Smith, editor and co-publisher of the Tucson Sentinel. “He’d put on a wonderful costume shirt when it was time to broadcast — typically with a window-pane test. Proper earlier than he’d take the air, he’d alter his cuffs and tilt his microphone simply so — he was a craftsman who knew that speaking into the facet of the mic would darken up the sound to enhance his deep voice, however being barely off-axis would additionally mitigate the proximity impact of his resonant phrases. It gave him some area to change into animated as he talked, without having his voice shift and get skinny or too boomy over the radio as he moved and received louder (and typically even louder).”

“These stentorian tones had been his trademark, as was typically being as cantankerous as his fellow native radio fixture Emil Franzi. John did not endure fools calmly, on or off the air. He may very well be a Democrat at occasions, a Republican at others, however his important dedication was to calling bullshit relatively than pushing any specific political platform over the long run,” Smith mentioned.

“I’ve at all times mentioned ‘I am within the hemp enterprise,'” Scott informed the Sentinel in 2013. “I might give
folks simply sufficient rope to both cling themselves as they talked, or
they might pull folks together with them.”

“We did 1000’s of reveals, tens of 1000’s of interviews,” he
mentioned. “I interviewed Invoice Clinton. We broadcast from Vietnam and China,
Washington and Israel. We made a yearly journey as much as the Legislature.”

Scott recalled a 1989 interview with U.S. Sen. John McCain that touched on the Keating 5 scandal.

“‘That is
the dumbest query I’ve ever heard,’ McCain mentioned. So I replied,
‘Senator, when you forgive me my dumb questions, I will forgive you your
dumb solutions.’ And we had a pleasant relationship after that; he was on
the present many, many occasions,” Scott mentioned.

In 2011, a two-hour broadcast of Scott’s program was featured on C-SPAN within the wake of the Jan. 8 shootings.

Political advisor David Steele, who previously labored as an aide to Dennis DeConcini, remembered the primary time he noticed Scott in individual.

“As a child rising up in Douglas, he was the primary ‘superstar’ I met,” Steele mentioned. “It occurred at a Boy Scout Jamboree camp on the San Pedro River. He was a dashing anchor at one of many native TV stations and gave an excellent speech to a bunch of Boy Scouts subsequent to an enormous bonfire. He at all times remained a star to me.”

“He would increase an unbelievable sum of money,” mentioned longtime pal Ann Rodriguez, the previous Pima County recorder. “He would increase $21,000 in small donations.

Terry Dee, who launched the Habitat for Humanity Habistore, mentioned Scott was an enormous supporter.

“John got here to me and mentioned he want to do his present as soon as per week for the shop to assist us get began for free of charge,” he recalled. “We did it for 9 years.”

“John was proud as hell when he was acknowledged with the ‘Golden Mike Award’ from the native department of the American Promoting Federation in 2013,” Smith mentioned. “As a lot as he loved poking the bear — which received him sued and ranted about by numerous politicians — he cared about native small companies and charities. That reward for his a long time of dedication was very significant to him.”

Scott appreciated to explain his present as speaking politics “over a yard fence.”

“On daily basis, we gave folks one thing they didn’t know — an interview, some perception right into a information story,” Scott informed the Sentinel in 2013. “Our concept was to at all times ask, ‘what can we study from this?’ For those who listened to the John C. Scott Present and also you realized one thing, our thought was that was a very good present.”