Two jazz writers for the magazine pay homage to the indispensable accomplishments of jazz writer Dan Morgenstern, who passed away on September 7 at the age of 94.

Dan Morgenstern in 2012. Photo: WikiCommon

Dan Morgenstern’s accomplishments were vast and his recent death has evoked a predictable torrent of encomia. Because he made his reputation as an editor and writer, he was, loosely speaking, a member of the “critical” jazz establishment. However, while the praise acknowledges his contributions to jazz, many of the remembrances are deeply personal, reflecting the enormous breadth of personal, emotional ties that Morgenstern created in his 94 years.

To briefly recap some of what Morgenstern accomplished during the course of his career: he contributed thousands of articles to music publications. At various times he served as editor of Downbeat, Metronome and Jazz magazines. The liner notes Morgenstern wrote for records served as an unsurpassed entrée into the world of jazz for many; he received eight Grammy awards for those. He authored two preeminent books: Jazz People and Living with Jazz. He was the co-editor of the Annual Review of Jazz Studies and the monograph series Studies in Jazz. Morgenstern produced jazz concerts himself and was often an important talking head in many jazz documentaries. He was instrumental in the creation of Rutgers–Newark’s Institute of Jazz Studies; he became its director in 1976 and, under his guidance, the Institute amassed the largest collection of jazz documents, recordings, and memorabilia in the world.

I belong to a jazz listserv group that includes many of the foremost jazz scholars in the world (don’t ask how I got on the list). Many of these people have been posting memorials in the wake of Morgenstern’s death. A large number were either directly mentored by him, inspired to begin careers in jazz, or had their careers impacted because of their contact with him. The affection they hold for this modest man is palpable.

My small contribution to these tributes pays homage to the fact that, for his entire career, Morgenstern managed to bridge the racial gap. Even in the early ’60s, when Black-white relations were at their most difficult, he was able to negotiate difficult terrain. Despite the political turmoil, he remained a credible, widely admired spokesperson for the music.

I am interested in exploring the idea of jazz as a place where the Jim Crow/segregationist trappings of American society have been flouted, eluded or transcended. I had a few contacts with Morgenstern concerning the book I wrote about interracial recordings in early jazz, and each was positive and valuable. The race-mixing phenomenon I wrote about was almost entirely a musician-to-musician phenomenon. Understandably, the musician-jazz writer relationship is more fraught. Most jazz writers were white — especially early on — and there is considerable evidence that their miscalculations about the music, and condescension toward its performers, can be traced to subtle or more virulent forms of racism. Such was not the case with Morgenstern.

He and his family escaped Germany and the Nazis during WWII and eventually made it to America in 1947. He had already heard Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington and, as a jazz fan, he was eager to experience the American jazz scene. After a short time, Morgenstern’s love of the music and respect for its purveyors was recognized by both white and Black musicians. The story of saxophonist Coleman Hawkins loudly setting him up with a drink in a crowded musician’s bar, a sign of this acceptance, became widely known in jazz circles. He retained this broad-based acceptance until his death.

Morgenstern was, in a sense, in the belly of the jazz establishment, but he preferred to be called an advocate rather than a critic. His openness to any style of jazz, compounded by his love and respect for its creators, was exemplary — he brought out the best in all. He came, he listened, he wrote, and he inspired.

— Steve Provizer

There will undoubtedly be more comprehensive tributes to Dan Morgenstern forthcoming. Nate Chinen has written a beautiful remembrance for his indispensable Substack, The Gig. Likewise, Gary Singer’s obit in the New York Times. Singer (in a phrase quoted by Chinen) gets to the heart of Morgenstern’s achievement as a writer about jazz (he was uncomfortable with the word “critic”): “unpretentious prose, amplified with sweeping and encyclopedic historical context.”

Morgenstern as a writer first made an impression on me with his comprehensive track-by-track notes to the 1994 Columbia/Legacy boxed set Louis Armstrong: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1923-1934 (for which he received one of his eight Grammys for liner notes). His great ears, helped no doubt by his long friendship with Armstrong, provided extraordinary musical detail, from tonal effects (noting, for instance, when Armstrong made a rare use of mutes and distinguishing among them) to rhythmic subtleties, all informed by that biographical and historical context. This wasn’t mere pedantry — Morgenstern’s elucidation of detail was always in service to a larger point about the emotional effect of the whole. Writing about Armstrong’s 1925 “Cake Walking Babies (from Home)” (with Sidney Bechet), he cites the cornetist’s “climactic stop-time figures” as “a miracle of juggling subliminal note values,” and then concludes: “This is one of the first masterpieces of recorded jazz — and a rousing affirmation of life.”

Never pretentious, always on the money. And, like the best critics, he changed how you listened by focusing your attention on those details, enriching the music as a whole by changing how you heard it.

I met Morgenstern only once, years ago, at a panel discussion presented by the Boston chapter of the Jazz Journalists Association. We talked only briefly, but I’ll never forget one thing he said to me, apropos of I don’t know what: “It seems to me ‘vocalist’ is just a euphemism for ‘singer.’”

— Jon Garelick