Much as I dote on people who read this column, I must urge them to do a little listening on their own, or my efforts here will continue to meet pairs of uncomprehending eyes. No one ever learned to like jazz simply by reading about it, and today I want to call attention to the various excellent opportunities there are now of hearing jazz on the radio. Of course, first-hand experience is the ideal, but it is not always possible to see a good jazz performance in person, so that the radio becomes the obvious substitute.

Yet it has for a long time been difficult to find any good music of this kind on the radio. You can hear Teddy Wilson's band for short spells Friday evening on the Duffy's Tavern program, but except for an occasional late broadcast by some good orchestra, there's hardly anything interesting. If you can't drop off to sleep before two o'clock, however, there is something to be heard almost every night. Within the past two weeks, for instance, I have, through adroit manipulation of the dials, found Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Jay McShaun, not to mention some people called the Six Korn Kobblers who had a good muted trumpet in their midst.

Most of this was on small stations, the kind you can hear only if your radio is placed at the right angle and with the antenna just so. There are also four programs of records on local stations, of which none is the 920 Club and one is the Crimson Network's Nine O'Clock Jump. Then there is WEEI's all-night session after one o'clock, guided by an amusing night owl named Sherman Feller. More on the order of the Crimson Network's program is the Swing Nocturne on WCOP at ten-thirty Mon.-Wed.-Sat., at which Bill Ingalls, Boston correspondent of Downbeat, usually plays plenty of fine small-band recordings.

Finally there is George Frazier's Saturday morning session at eleven-fifteen on WEEI. George isn't quite as at case as he is in print five days a week, but something interesting always happens. Last week Ben Pollack divulged in an interview that Benny Goodman used to play cornet occasionally in the most exciting Bix Beiderbecke vein. Of late, the program has included at times a record-spotting quiz, at which this column will be represented tomorrow, along with Count Basic, Al Morgan, and perhaps Lionel Hampton.