The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #32730   Message #432758
Posted By: Sandy Paton
04-Apr-01 - 01:33 AM
Thread Name: Bill Domler, founder, the Sounding Board
Subject: RE: Bill Domler, founder, the Sounding Board
This is in the Hartford Courant this morning:

W. Domler Dies; Aided Folk Music

By ROGER CATLIN
The Hartford Courant
April 03, 2001

William L. "Bill" Domler, a printer who was credited for building a thriving folk music scene in Hartford and served as a popular FM folk music personality for nearly 20 years, died Monday from injuries suffered in a fall two weeks earlier. He was 53.

Domler, who lived in Canton's Collinsville section, fell outside his shop in Simsbury on March 18. Friends say he went to his shop, The Speediest Printer in Town, about 6:30 a.m. that Sunday to do some work. He wasn't noticed until 10, when a co-worker found him lying unconscious outside the shop.

"Bill really is the reason that there are folk venues in the Hartford area," said Susan Forbes Hansen, a longtime folk radio personality who also hosts a number of festivals. "He has done so incredibly much for folk music in Connecticut and beyond."

Domler started many of the major folk series in the Hartford area, beginning with the Sounding Board Coffee House in a church basement Saturday nights in West Hartford. His parents, Len and Fran Domler, took over the running of the Sounding Board as Domler moved to start the New Harmony folk series in Canton, which was to become the Roaring Brook Concert Series.

Domler in recent years helped establish the Connecticut Audubon Coffeehouse Series in Glastonbury. He and his father also started the free Connecticut Family Folk Festival in Elizabeth Park in 1974, which ran for 25 years.

He hosted a weekly morning folk music program on the University of Hartford station, WWUH, 91.3 FM, for nearly 20 years before he signed off earlier this year.

Services are pending.

Sandy