Award-winning music journalist and editor John Swenson, who covered a wide swath of musical genres throughout his career, died March 28 at home in Brooklyn, New York after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 71.
photo © Elsa Hahne/Offbeat
Over the past quarter-century, Swenson divided his time between New York City and a second home in New Orleans, ever adding to his encyclopedic knowledge and appreciation of music and its makers, be they from jazz and R&B to rock, pop and hip-hop. For many years he was a regular on the music media beat, documenting the JVC Jazz Festival in New York, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Montreal International Jazz Festival, SXSW in Austin, Texas and blues cruises at sea, as well as the New York and New Orleans club and concert scenes.
The Brooklyn native was a mentor, colleague and friend to legions of his peers (including this writer), and he had a lot of them, having worked for mainstream wire services and many popular music magazines for decades. He was an affable, non-judgmental presence – with a hearty laugh, untamed beard and what he called the world’s largest collection of Hawaiian shirts. He never drove a car, but was always happy to ride shotgun.
On his blog My Spilt Milk, Alex Rawls sums up Swenson’s essence: “John was part of the first generation of music writers in the late 1960s and early ’70s who tried to find ways to write about rock ’n’ roll that matched the energy, spirit and rebellious nature of the music. He wasn’t the stylist or the provocateur that some of his contemporaries were, but he built his career on an authentic, deeply felt passion for the music and the people who made it.”
Swenson worked as an editor at Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, Circus, Rock World, and was a contributing writer and editor of OffBeat magazine in New Orleans.
He authored 15 books, including biographies of Bill Haley, the Who, Stevie Wonder and the Eagles. New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans (Oxford University Press, 2011), his most recent book, documented in vivid detail musicians’ struggles to keep their beloved city alive in the wake of the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina.
For more than 20 years, starting in the mid-1980s, Swenson was a music columnist for United Press International and then the Reuters news service. He also co-edited the original Rolling Stone Record Guide with colleague Dave Marsh and edited The Rolling Stone Jazz and Blues Album Guide. He edited the short-lived Knit Media website jazze.com.
Swenson’s Offbeat story “Every Accordionist a King” won the 2007 New Orleans Press Club award for Best Entertainment Feature. His review of Dr. John’s Grammy-winning album City That Care Forgot won the 2008 New Orleans Press Club award for Best Critical Review. His account of musicians returning to New Orleans after Katrina, “The Bands Played On,” appeared in Da Capo’s Best Music Writing 2007 anthology.
Besides his passionate interest in music, Swenson was a veteran sportswriter. He covered the New York Rangers for 30 years, and worked as a horse-racing columnist and handicapper on the New York racing scene for the New York Post, and the New Orleans Fair Grounds meet for The Daily Racing Form. His Spur magazine profile on jockey Steve Cauthen, “Rise to Stardom, Fall From Grace,” was nominated for a National Thoroughbred Racing Association Eclipse Award.
Swenson started writing about music in 1967. He was a 1972 grad of Manhattan College, where he was editor-in-chief of the Quadrangle student newspaper and president of the ice hockey club. His immediate survivors include his wife Barbara Mathe and his brother Edward Swenson.
