Dan Morgenstern obit

Dan Morgenstern, Chronicler and Friend of Jazz, Dies at 94

He wrote prolifically about the music and played an important role in documenting its history, especially in his many years with the Institute of Jazz Studies. 

He was not on the list.

I just received word from my good friend Jeff Lowenthal that Dan Morgenstern has moved to another neighborhood and we can begin the serious business of missing him.

I will let his distinguished friends compile the lists of achievements that educated and enlightened so many of us for decades. I first became of Dan’s easy majesty as a youthful record buyer: his liner notes were plain-spoken eloquent, the concise loving ruminations of a man who had given his heart, early on, to jazz. I am sure we all have our favorite Morgenstern-epigrams, committed to memory from staring at the backs of records and the paper inserts of CDs.

I believe I first encountered him in person at one of David Ostwald’s Louis-immersions at Birdland, and I approached him in the way I approached Whitney Balliett, with the reverence one gives a great teacher. And eventually he recognized something in me so I was allowed to chat with him and record his irreplaceable stories. I knew then and know now that this was a deep privilege, for I saw Dan be very impatient, even caustic, with those he felt had misrepresented his sacred music.

But between 2017 and 2019 he warmly welcomed me to his apartment on West End Avenue, and, even more, he welcomed my camera. His enthusiasms were wide-ranging, his stories unforgettable. He told tales of Tommy Benford, Al Hall, Frank Newton, Mary Lou WIlliams, Donald Lambert, Eubie Blake, Nat Lorber, Buddy Tate, Willie the Lion, Lester Young, Art Tatum, Lips Page, Buddy Tate, Gene Ramey, Coleman Hawkins, Buster Bailey, Ben Webster, Stanley Dance, Eddie Condon, Jimmie Rowles, Bunny Berigan, Lee Wiley, Teddy Wilson, Jimmy Rushing, Brew Moore, Tony Fruscella, John Carisi, Vic Dickenson, Bobby Hackett, Dill Jones, Sidney Catlett, Joe Thomas, Dick Wellstood, Kenny Davern, Buzzy Drootin, Morey Feld, Zutty Singleton, Charlie Shavers, Tommy Dorsey, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Tony Parenti, Harry James, Herschel Evans, Bob Casey, Robert Clairmont, George Duvivier, Duke Ellington, Buddy Rich, James Moody, Tadd Dameron, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Ruby Braff, John Hammond, Helen Humes, Booker Ervin, James Baldwin, Cecil Scott, Gene Ammons, Svend Asmussen, Frank Chace, Pee Wee Russell, Wild Bill Davison, Billie Holiday, Don De Micheal, George Brunis, Kenny Dorham, Randy Weston, Eddie Costa, Martial Solal, Sonny Stitt, Lee Konitz, Dexter Gordon, Artie Shaw, Willis Conover, Symphony Sid Torin, Joe Wilder, Count Basie, Cozy Cole, Perry Como, Milt Hinton, Benny Goodman, Tommy Flanagan, Stan Getz, Benny Goodman, Jack Purvis, Lena Horne, Fats Waller, Ira Gitler, Django Reinhardt, Ella Fitzgerald, Art Hodes, Tubby Hayes, Clark Terry, Slim Gaillard, Pops Foster, Sandy Williams, Bennie Morton, Jack Purvis, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Jaki Byard, Jerry Newman, and of course Louis. Also delightful stories of record collecting, of Fifty-Second Street, of being “under the influence.”

I am sure I left some names and subjects out. But, as I said, it was a privilege. He hadn’t known every one of those artists first-hand, but he had seen and spoken to most of them. Obviously his view of jazz was heroically embracing: he got excited about Booker Ervin and Donald Lambert, Pops Foster and Jaki Byard. And he was generous: I can recall only one musician he didn’t want to talk about, for reasons that meant a good deal to him. If he hadn’t seen the person first-hand, he had insightful things to say about their recordings, their place in the great pageant of the music.

The interviews listed above (more than one hundred) are accessible on YouTube, and in them Dan lives on. I will share only two here, for reasons that will become obvious.

Morgenstern was raised in Vienna and Copenhagen and arrived in the United States in 1947. He wrote for Jazz Journal from 1958 to 1961, then edited several jazz magazines: Metronome in 1961, Jazz from 1962 to 1963, and Down Beat from 1967 to 1973. In 1976, he was named director of Rutgers–Newark's Institute of Jazz Studies, where he continued the work of Marshall Stearns and made the Institute the world's largest collection of jazz documents, recordings, and memorabilia.

Over the course of his career, Morgenstern arranged concerts (including the Jazz in the Garden series at the Museum of Modern Art); produced and hosted television and radio programs; taught jazz history at universities and conservatories; and served as a panelist for jazz festivals and awards across the U.S. and Europe.

Morgenstern is known for having been a prolific writer of comprehensive, authoritative liner notes, a sideline that garnered him eight Grammy Awards for Best Album Notes from 1973 on.

Morgenstern is the author of two books: Jazz People (1976); and Living with Jazz (2004), a reader edited by Sheldon Meyer (1926-2006). Both were winners of ASCAP's Deems Taylor Award.

In 2007, Morgenstern received the A.B. Spellman Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy from the National Endowment for the Arts.