RIP Joe “Butter” Tamburo. Listening to “The Wonderful Wide World of Butter” on WDAS Sunday nights taught me that you had to play a record the right way to bring out its greatness. He and Andre were able to contextualize so many classic records for me, in large part because Butter was the one who BROKE those records, he was the one who chose the singles for Philly Int’l and other labels because he was a great DJ – somebody with a golden ear. When Andre and Butter played certain cuts on their live show – they were able to communicate to me, as a DJ, what the central message of the tune was, even if I had never quite been able to suss it out before. Butter was the voice of soul music in Philly for 50 years, a civil rights figure and just a beacon of warmth on the radio.

The following videos have Andre and Patti Jackson’s immediate reaction and reminiscences from Friday.