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Dan Morgenstern, jazz historian and critic, dies at 94

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Gosh, I'm sorry to see this news. The jazz critic and historian Dan Morgenstern has died. Over seven decades, Morgenstern edited major jazz magazines, wrote books, produced concerts, won Grammys. He oversaw one of the largest jazz archives in the world. And I ran into him sometimes when I was working, many, many years ago, at WBGO, a beautiful jazz station in New Jersey. Dan Morgenstern was 94, and Tom Vitale has this appreciation.

TOM VITALE, BYLINE: When he was 87 years old, Dan Morgenstern recalled a turning point in his life more than 60 years earlier. He was out of the army, attending Brandeis University on the GI Bill, when he produced a solo piano concert by virtuoso Art Tatum.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DAN MORGENSTERN: Then, on the way back, I thanked him. And then he said, I should thank you, because this is the first time I've ever done a solo concert all by myself.

(SOUNDBITE OF ART TATUM'S "TOO MARVELOUS FOR WORDS")

MORGENSTERN: But that struck me. And that's when I decided that I wanted to do something for the music that would make it impossible for somebody like that genius not to be recognized.

VITALE: So he went to work, right out of college, as a jazz critic at the New York Post. In the 1960s, he edited the two most influential jazz magazines of the day - Metronome and Downbeat. In 1973, he won the first of his eight Grammy awards for his liner notes to an anthology of Art Tatum recordings.

TAD HERSHORN: He would hear things, subtleties, that will always be beyond me. And he is not a musician, but his ear was so great.

(SOUNDBITE OF ART TATUM'S "TOO MARVELOUS FOR WORDS")

VITALE: Tad Hershorn is a journalist and archivist at the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, one of the world's largest collections of jazz documents and recordings. Dan Morgenstern became director of the institute in 1976. Hershorn says Morgenstern's perspective was unique.

HERSHORN: He was there, and you'd think about mythic things. When Bud Powell returned from France in, like, 1964 or something, Dan was there to meet him at the airport. You want to ask about Billie Holiday's funeral? These are people who meant so much to him.

VITALE: Hershorn says that affinity had a lot to do with Morgenstern's background. He was born in Munich in 1929, the son of two Jewish authors who had to flee from the Nazis. He and his mother made it to Denmark.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MORGENSTERN: The Danish Underground got my mother and me to Sweden. My father had all kinds of adventures. He didn't make it to Denmark. He was in France, but he came here in 1941. I came here in 1947.

VITALE: By the time he got here, he'd already heard Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington on his mother's phonograph.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MORGENSTERN: When I came to America, when I came to New York - you know, a lot of people want to see the Statue of Liberty. I wanted to see 52nd Street, and that's true (laughter). I was only 17, but I managed to sneak in. And Charlie Parker on one side of the street, Sidney Bechet on the other, you know, Billie Holiday down the road a piece - amazing. Amazing. So I got hooked.

VITALE: And as he wrote about them, he got to know them as people.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MORGENSTERN: Jazz musicians who came up during the period when the music was really coming into its own, with the swing era and all that, were a remarkable group of people who had to go through a lot of hardship. They came out of that with their humanity and their artistry intact, and they're just great people.

VITALE: When he was 87, Dan Morgenstern said he had a great life because he was able to do some good for jazz.

For NPR News, I'm Tom Vitale in New York.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Tom Vitale