The JJA celebrates the life and works of Dan Morgenstern, whose love and comprehension of jazz resulted in decades of documentation, commentary and standards-setting for journalists, scholars, musicians and all members of the international community of jazz.
Morgenstern is especially noted for stewardship of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, for his books Jazz People and Living with Jazz, for most productively editing DownBeat from 1967-73, for his many personal friendships with the earliest and greatest of jazz musicians, and for enormous, unquantifiable behind-the-scenes support for personal and institution efforts to expand jazz’s reach, respect and enjoyable impact. There is nary a player, jazz journalist, researcher, student or arts administrator who has not benefited from his work, or come away from an encounter with anything but wisdom, usually delivered with gentle humor. Many full obituaries (recounting his childhood escape from Nazi Germany) and tributes are emerging. Here is the video of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem’s panel discussions held in honor of Dan’s 88th birthday — with the Man himself in attendance.
Thanks to Hank Hehmsoth for creating the Dan Morgenstern Collection, which has all 148 record reviews he wrote as DownBeat editor in the 1960s (PDFs), eight Grammy winning essays for record albums, filmography, artist video portraits I(ncluding tributes to Dan by the late Michael Cuscuna and JJA Award-winning Ted Panken), interviews (All PDFs text searchable, with citations, accessible for the vision-impaired. Also at Youtube: “Just Jazz”, Dan Morgenstern’s PBS TV production from Chicago, 1970., featuring performances by Erroll Garner, Ray Nance, Dexter Gordon, Gene Ammons, Bobby Hackett with Vic DIckenson, Don Byas, Art Hodes and Wild Bill Davison, and Billy Eckstine, among others.
