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Morgenstern: Articles

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RIP Ira Gitler, jazz critic, producer, activist – and more
by Editor - Jazz Journalists Association · Mar 7, 2019
“Ira was my oldest friend,” wrote Morgenstern, emeritus director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, also an NEA Jazz Master and JJA Lifetime Achievement honoree, and Gitler’s editor at DownBeat in the ’60s “I could not count the times we shared the music, live or recorded, that was our passion... He was the dean.”
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Nat Hentoff memorialized
by Aidan Levy · Feb 26, 2017
Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism honoree - Civil liberties activist Michael Meyers, Voice colleague Tom Robbins, Dan Morgenstern, David Lewis (Hentoff documentary), pianist Joe Alterman and constitutional scholar John Whitehead all paid homage to Nat, who changed their lives via his career as record producer, novelist, columnist, activist/radio host.
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Introduction: The Invisible Giant - Journal: Current Research in Jazz ISSN 1944-4877 Volume: 4; Date: 2012
by Terry Teachout
Within the world of jazz, Dan Morgenstern's name is universally known. It is impossible to sensibly discuss jazz journalism and scholarship in the twentieth century and beyond without making prominent mention of him. Yet outside that world, Morgenstern is all but unknown. He is an invisible giant, content to labor in the shadows.
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'Special - From First to Last': Dan Morgenstern's Relationship with Louis Armstrong - Journal: Current Research in Jazz ISSN 1944-4877 Volume: 4; Date: 2012
by Ricky Riccardi
Over the course of two decades, Dan Morgenstern developed a close relationship with Louis Armstrong, resulting in some of Morgenstern's most inspired and passionate writing. This article examines what Morgenstern witnessed while in Armstrong's presence.
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'Living With Jazz'
by Ira Gitler
Alfred Appel Jr.'s review of Dan Morgenstern's "Living With Jazz" (Dec. 19) is, for the most part, laudatory, and with good reason. Then he resorts to the lock-step drill of too many reviewers of art, music and literature: "I've praised this highly, and now I must insert some negative criticism."
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Keeper of the Jazz Flame to Get His Due
by BEN RATLIFF 2006
NEWARK - DAN MORGENSTERN is the head traffic controller of jazz history. There are others who may know more facts within a specific constellation of jazz knowledge -- say, the Central Avenue nightclubs in Los Angeles during the 1940s. But Mr. Morgenstern is the one with the map of the universe. He knows who knows what.
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Jazz historian Dan Morgenstern, author of Living with Jazz
by Jerry Jazz · Feb 4, 2005
Interview with Jerry Jazz Musician publisher Joe Maita, Morgenstern talks about his career as a jazz journalist and scholar, his defense of the latter-day Louis Armstrong, and shares his perspectives on eleven unique artists who, in their own way, helped construct the foundation of the music Morgenstern has so eloquently advocated for over half-a-century.
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Heralding our dean of jazz journalism - Here’s to Dan
by Jazz Journalists Association · Jan 15, 2010
For a man who discovered jazz by winding up his mother’s portable phonograph, Morgenstern seems unperturbed by new music technology.
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Four Titans of Bebop, and ‘the Greatest Photo in Jazz’
by Peter Facini · Mar 11, 2019
The Open Door was a dark little joint that Mr. Haynes would later characterize as “a dump.” The jazz historian Dan Morgenstern was slightly more generous in his description: “It was a strange place but had great music.” - Sept. 13, 1953
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"Bill Evans - The Art of Playing" - Dan Morgenstern
by © -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved. · Jan 10, 2019
Source: October 22, 1964 Downbeat Magazine
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Interview: Dan Morgenstern (Part 1)
by Marc Myers · Dec 7, 2007
News flash: A two-CD set featuring 24 never-before released Louis Armstrong recordings from 1937 are coming from Music Masters early next year. Even better news—Dan is writing the album's liner notes. Dan discusses his approach in writing liner notes.
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Jazz Wax Interview: Dan Morgenstern (Part 2)
by Marc Myers · Dec 14, 2007
In this second installment of my two-part interview with Dan, he talks about the rise of drugs in jazz—and the factors that allowed rock to replace jazz as America's most popular music. Dan also recommends seven essential jazz CDs—and names three jazz artists who he says deserve greater recognition
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Jazz Wax: Dan Morgenstern at the Institute
by Marc Myers · Apr 7, 2008
Dan's personal tour of the stacks, aisle by aisle, section by section, looking at shelf after shelf of complete collections of jazz magazines from around the world, file cabinets of clippings arranged by artist, and 6,000 rare books dating back to the 1920s. Plus his job as a salesman at a record store.
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Jazz Profiles: Coleman Hawkins by Dan Morgenstern
by Steven Cerra · Sep 13, 2018
"Dan is also one of the few Jazz critics who could write about the not-so-great closing years of the great man’s career with a gentleness and compassion that is a reflection of his love for Coleman..."
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Count Basie, Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie, with an Introduction by Dan Morgenstern
by Albert Murray · Jan 31, 1986
Count Basie, Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie, as told to Albert Murray, with an Introduction by Dan Morgenstern. This reprint of the 1985 edition again “brings the voice of Count Basie to the printed page . . . ten years in the making.
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Kiyoshi Koyama, Prominent Japanese Jazz Journalist, Dies at 82
by Giovanni Russonello · Feb 17, 2019
Kiyoshi Koyama, widely regarded as Japan’s pre-eminent jazz journalist, who covered the music’s development throughout the 1960s and ’70s before becoming a producer of archival albums, died on Feb. 3 in Kashiwa, Japan. He was responsible for 1989 “Brownie: The Complete EmArcy Recordings of Clifford Brown.” Dan Morgenstern’s notes won a Grammy.
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R.I.P. International champion of creative music Koyoshi Koyama, Swing Journal editor and “Boxman,” dies at age 82
by JJA Editor · Feb 20, 2019
Dan Morgenstern wrote, “the Keynote box [is] perhaps the crown jewel” (Morgenstern earned a 1990 Grammy Award for his liner notes to the Kiyoshi-produced set Brownie: The Complete Emarcy Recordings of Clifford Brown).
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Herbie Nichols: A Jazzist’s Life By Mark Miller
by Sanford Josephson · Sep 23, 2010
Dan Morgenstern expressed the tragedy of Herbie Nichols most succinctly in a quote at the beginning of chapter five, which covers the period from 1958-1961. “Herb Nichols,” wrote Morgenstern in the January 1959 issue of Jazz Journal, “has, of course, recorded with Rex Stewart, and with his own trio on two ten-inch Blue Note LPs and on the defunct Hi-Lo label
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Mingus Speaks by John Goodman, photographs by Sy Johnson
by Renetta DeBlaze · Jul 27, 2013
Each chapter’s q-and-a is followed by commentaries by one or more of ten Mingus friends and associates, including George Wein, Dan Morgenstern, ...
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Lena Bloch Quartet - IBeam Brooklyn
by Dan Morgenstern · Dec 2, 2017
NYC's original City Guide - Activity Planner Articles

"A most impressive quartet–or rather, four equals perfectly attuned to each other"
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Dan Morgenstern: Jazz Master Award
by TOM DWYER · Jan 31, 2007
I first met Dan Morgenstern more than five years ago when I picked him up one Saturday morning outside his Journal Square apartment in Jersey City. Our destination was the Catskill Mountains home of the late George Handy, a genius experimental jazz composer/arranger from the 1940s' and 50s' with whom I had studied piano after getting out of the Army in 1970.
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