Dan Morgenstern, an eight-time Grammy winner for his album liner notes, former director of Rutgers University's Institute of Jazz Studies, author and a "jazz advocate," as he liked to be called, died on September 7. He was 94.
Despite all of those titles and honors, Dan was the music's most modest and well-regarded historian and paternal figure among writers and critics. But despite his seniority and in-depth, first-hand knowledge of post-war jazz, he never lost his wit, passion or ability to put the jazz story's pieces together.
Soft-spoken and humble, Dan had an encyclopedic knowledge of jazz from its earliest days, and his sober analysis came through in his writing. He also was generous with his time.
Shortly after I started this blog in 2007, he invited me out to Rutgers for a tour of the IJS. There, he let me hold the "bones" of jazz—one of Lester Young's tenor saxophones, a trumpet played by Miles Davis and other instruments donated to the IJS by their estates. For a post on my time there, go here.
In tribute to Dan, here is my 2007 interview with him:
JazzWax: Dan, you’ve won multiple Grammys for your album liner notes. What are you working on now?
Dan Morgenstern: I’m writing the liner notes for a double CD of Louis Armstrong recordings from a 1937 NBC radio show. It’s a very exciting set. Many of the 24 tracks on the first CD have never been released before in any format—not even as bootlegs. The second CD features home recordings from Louis’ private tapes, including some music and conversation. The set is due early next year from Music Masters and will feature great big-band material. Some of the songs in the set were never recorded by Armstrong—not before 1937 or after.
JW: Where were these recordings hiding?
DM: They were in Armstrong’s own personal collection in the Louis Armstrong Archives at Queens College. The masters were Louis' private recordings of a weekly radio show he hosted in the spring of 1937. The recordings were taken off the air and cut onto 12-inch acetate discs.
JW: Just in the spring?
DM: For three months in 1937, Armstrong was the temporary
replacement for singer Rudy Vallee, who was on holiday in Britain. Louis subbing for Rudy Vallee isn’t as surprising as you’d think. Vallee was a big fan of Louis and even wrote the introduction to Louis’ first autobiography in 1936, Swing That Music.
JW: Who was the show's sponsor?
DM: In 1937, Vallee's longstanding weekly radio show on the NBC radio network was sponsored by Fleischmann’s Yeast. When Louis took over the show, it was called Harlem and featured Louis and his band, a comedy team and changing cast of musical guests. These recordings represent the first time a black artist was host of a nationally sponsored radio show. The sound quality is excellent thanks to a fine restoration job by Doug Pomeroy. What has been eliminated for this CD set is the show banter. You just hear Louis and his band.
JW: How do you approach writing liner notes?
DM: As a writer, the most important challenge I face is to say something that will enhance the listeners’ enjoyment of the music. The key is the right mix of biographical and musical information and what’s taking place on the recordings. For the biographical section, I like to write about what the artist was doing at the time the recordings were made. As for the performances, I always try to write about things that the listener might not immediately notice.
JW: Is it still a thrill to see your notes on an album?
DM: Oh, yes. One of my great pleasures as a writer in general is for someone to tell me that something I wrote—a book, an article, liner notes—exposed them to a specific artist or jazz in general. These days, I usually hear this from people of a certain age [laughs].
JW: For example?
DM: Recently someone came up to me and said, "When I
was in college, I read your Down Beat review of Dexter Gordon’s The Panther, and it opened a lifelong involvement in jazz." That was gratifying to me. Disc jockeys also tell me that they find my liner notes useful because the notes tell them who's soloing on tracks, if a song is slow or fast, and other details helpful in programming.
JW: What about research?
DM: I often do quite a bit of research on the artist and the moment in time when the recordings were made. I have an advantage, in that I’m here at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, where reference materials are at my fingertips. If I’m doing the liner notes for an album of a contemporary musician, then I want to interview the artist and/or people who know the artist well.
JW: Did you ever write a review or interview that angered a jazz musician?
DM: Actually, I’ve been kind of lucky in that regard. I’ve always tried to be careful not to misrepresent what musicians say for the sake of a catchy headline. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, that was difficult, since magazines were trying to stand out and anything controversial made for good copy.
JW: How did you handle that?
DM: When I spoke with jazz musicians back then, invariably something would be said during the interview that was an aside or said in a certain context. If I had taken those comments out of context and put them in print to boost a magazine’s visibility, it would have annoyed or frustrated the artist, which is unfair.
JW: No one ever became angry?
DM: There were only two instances. The first occurred in the 1960s, after I reviewed the Newport Jazz Festival and noted that Elvin Jones’s drumming was too loud. The next time I saw Elvin, he cornered me. He was big and could look fierce with those funny teeth that made him look like a dragon.
JW: What happened?
DM: After he expressed his displeasure, I told him that he indeed sounded loud and that maybe he wasn’t aware that the people doing the sound put too much juice on the drums and that I probably should have worded it that way. Elvin understood. Afterward we were the best of friends again. I’ve found that artists don’t bear grudges when you explain to them why you were critical.
JW: What was the second instance?
DM: It occurred in May 1965, when George Russell
returned to New York between stays in Europe. We talked about what was going on in contemporary jazz here and abroad. George was a serious composer who had developed his own concept of Lydian tonality and was an intellectual about the concept of freedom in jazz. During the interview, he expressed certain reservations about the new free-form jazz. After his comments appeared in Down Beat, some avant-garde jazz musicians must have hit on him, complaining that it was hard enough to attract audiences without those kind of remarks.
JW: Why, what happened?
DM: To appear politically correct, George accused me in a letter to the Down Beat editor of misquoting him, which wasn’t true. I was pretty upset about it, and my editor, Don DeMichael, backed me up when printing George's letter. It's all water under the bridge now.
JW: Did you ever worry that becoming too close with jazz musicians could compromise your objectivity?
DM: You have to be very careful not to let the bonds between you and musicians cloud what you’re saying. If you’re a writer, your responsibility always is to the reader or listener. If you shortchange your audience, you’ll lose your credibility. I tried to avoid such conflicts by simply not writing about bad performances unless I had to. At that point, I’d always frame my remarks by saying that the artist didn’t have a particularly good night rather than completely trashing him.
JW: Isn't that pulling your punches?
DM: Not at all. It's being honest. As a writer, you always want to remain a certain distance from the artist so your objectivity isn't clouded. Or you need to be frank upfront with the reader by saying from the outset, "This is someone I know well." Again, how the reader perceives you and your agenda means everything to your integrity and reputation.
JW: Why did so many jazz artists turn to drugs in the 1940s and 1950s? Was it fear of improvising in front of live, critical audiences?
DM: That anxiety played a role, but there were many other factors. Drugs in jazz probably started during World War II, with the easy accessibility of morphine. Before World War II, there was little drug availability or drug use among jazz musicians. There was plenty of pot smoking and drinking, since many musicians during prohibition played in speakeasies. Playing jazz is very strenuous and challenging, and booze and pot were there to take the edge off.
JW: What role did World War II play?
DM: Hard-core drug use started after guys who had become addicted to morphine came out of the service. Maybe they had received a shot of morphine for pain or illness and got used to it. If you were in the war, there were always ways to get more morphine from medics to ease such problems. As these servicemen were discharged, they returned to society. It takes only one or two people to get anything started.
JW: And Charlie Parker?
DM: He was the one who got the drug scene started in jazz, and his talent and drug use affected a lot of younger players who admired him. They thought using drugs would help them play better, even though Parker discouraged other musicians from using drugs. Drug use also was a social thing for musicians at the time. It had to do with the feeling of being an outsider, of not being accepted by the public, and being in an insular, closed community of musicians.
JW: But there were other reasons for drug use beyond trying to be like Bird, yes?
DM: Other musicians used drugs so that when they played in a club situation, they could distance themselves from the tension of performing and close themselves off from mainstream audiences. Or from personality problems. Everyone who started taking drugs thought they could deal with it. No one took drugs thinking they would ever get hooked. But most of them did, and many died too soon.
JW: You were the editor of Metronome, Jazz and Down Beat magazines in the 1960s, when rock took hold. How did that happen?
DM: Jazz was already facing problems by the time rock really started to win over large numbers of young listeners starting in 1964. There was a time in this country when jazz was part of the popular music mainstream. It was played by big bands, and people danced to it. People who weren’t really jazz fans consumed the music and enjoyed it. In addition, great American composers wrote terrific songs for shows that were easily adapted by jazz bands.
JW: What changed?
DM: During and after World War II, jazz became more complex—and more demanding for the listener. Audiences began to shrink. Even within the jazz-listening fan base, there was a deep split between the 'moldy figs,' those who loved swing, and the radical bepoppers. The rivalry between these two camps became quite intense, and the battle turned off many people unnecessarily and made them less open-minded to the new jazz.
JW: How did jazz lose its young fans?
DM: Jazz musicians stopped playing for dancers, and they lost gigs—and an even larger slice of their audience. By the early 1950s, R&B, followed by rock in the mid-1960s, started capturing more young listeners who wanted music to dance to and no longer identified with jazz. Also, a racist attitude toward jazz was emerging that didn’t exist before. By 1964, jazz was already weakened by internal and external changes, and it didn’t take much for rock to become more popular, especially with teens.
JW: How were jazz magazines affected?
DM: In 1967, when I took over as editor of Down Beat, the magazine was being reshaped by these changes. Curiously, the pressures we faced at the magazine didn’t come from our jazz readership. Circulation was flat but it wasn’t declining. Instead, it was the advertiser base that was changing. As rock records became hot sellers, record companies devoted fewer ad dollars to their jazz labels. We became more dependent on ads from the makers of instruments and accessories.
JW: What was the result?
DM: Advertisers put pressure on us to feature more rock coverage in our pages. We had no choice but to make changes. After all, a magazine pays its bills with advertisers’ dollars, not subscription checks. But when we tried to cover rock seriously, our jazz readers threatened to cancel. So we tried to find people who could write about rock intelligently. And we covered bands like Blood Sweat and Tears and Chicago that were influenced by jazz. Eventually readers came around.
JW: Which jazz albums still move you most today?
DM: I listen to a lot of contemporary recordings as well as reissues. What I keep coming back to is the music I grew up with in the 1930s and '40s. These recordings are musts for anyone's collection:
Billie Holiday and Lester Young: A Musical Romance (Sony) features the best of the beautiful Columbia recordings these two made together.
The Tatum Group Masterpiece (Pablo)are fantastic. They capture Art Tatum with Ben Webster, Roy Eldridge and many other superb musicians.
Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald together were extraordinary. The best of their Verve recordings are available on The Best of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong (Polygram). Or you can buy The Complete Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong (Polygram). The sessions combine the most beautiful American songs with the most beautiful treatments. And Louis is so great on there.
The Duke Ellington band of 1940-1942—also known as the Blanton-Webster band—is timeless and immortal. Their recordings are on a four-CD set, Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band (RCA).
Count Basie’s recordings with Lester Young still swing. This material includes Basie’s output for the Decca and Columbia labels. You’ll find these recordings on Count Basie: Complete Original American Decca Recordings (Definitive Classics) and Count Basie: The Complete 1936-1941 Columbia Recordings (Definitive Spain).
And finally, Charlie Parker's Savoy and Dial recordings are fantastic. All of these sessions have been combined on several different boxes, including Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes (Savoy).
JW: What three jazz musicians have been overlooked and are worthy of greater listener attention?
DM: I’d have to say clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, pianist Jimmy Rowles and Tony Fruscella, a wonderfully fluid trumpet player who had terrible trouble with narcotics. He left the jazz scene in the 1960s and died young in 1969. Fruscella’s recordings with Stan Getz in 1955 and his Atlantic album, Tony Fruscella, are excellent. They are available separately—or together on the box, Tony Fruscella: The Complete Works (Jazz Factory).
JazzWax clip: Here's Dan and me weighing in on the birth of the extended LP solo on Zoot Sims's Zoot Swings the Blues for a docu-clip by Bret Primack for Prestige about 10 years ago...
