Prior to assuming the position of director of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, Dan Morgenstern was best known as editor of Down Beat magazine. “Dan Morgenstern began his association with Down Beat in the early fifties not long after his graduation from Brandeis where he was editor of the campus newspaper. He became N.Y. editor of db in 1964 and succeeded Don DeMicheal as editor in 1967.” [1] This bibliography covers only those issues for which he was editor. As can be seen, Morgenstern continued to write articles and reviews of records, concerts, and books during this time and he also contributed after departing as editor.
Naturally, the articles published reflect the state of jazz at the time, mostly focused on the United States, but with some international coverage. This period of Down Beat was controversial, especially as the magazine expanded its purview into the realm of rock music. There was also debate regarding newer forms of jazz, whether free jazz or fusion. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the deaths of important figures from all periods of jazz — Billy Strayhorn and John Coltrane (both 1967), Wes Montgomery (1968), Coleman Hawkins (1969), Johnny Hodges and Albert Ayler (both 1970), Louis Armstrong (1971), Lee Morgan (1972), and Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith and Kid Ory (both 1973) — that seemed to suggest the end of an era. These issues also saw early bylines of names who later gained greater prominence: Gary Giddins, Bob Rusch, Michael Bourne, John Hasse, Brian Priestley, Bill Kirchner, Leonard Maltin, and Michael Cuscuna, to name but a handful. Down Beat veterans were well-represented in Leonard Feather, Ira Gitler, Martin Williams, Stanley Dance, and others, and there were occasional contributions by a wide range of musicians that included Rex Stewart, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Art Hodes, Carol Sloane, and John Benson Brooks.
Issues of this vintage are fairly readily available in academic libraries and have also been reproduced on microfilm. By this time Down Beat, first published in 1934, was being indexed in The Music Index, but the current electronic version does not extend back this far. It is also virtually impossible to use such an index to grasp the issue-by-issue contents of the magazine (including the regular columns). It is hoped that this full accounting of its contents will assist researchers in locating useful items. Rather than using abbreviations or only giving starting pages, the exact pages are supplied for each article. This precision may be of value when the issue in question is not physically available to the user and interlibrary loan duplication is required.
Editorial brackets will be seen frequently. In the interest of convenience, full names have been added when article titles refer to an artist’s name incompletely or only with a nickname. Reviews of records, concerts, books, and films have been analyzed. All record reviews give artist and album title. Concert reviews have been assigned geographic locations that will enable the user to locate all instances of, say, “Baltimore, MD”. Standardized terminology such as “blindfold test”, “solo transcription” and “arrangement” allow users to immediately find all instances of such articles.
The contents of the annual yearbooks are included. Though they are listed as issue 0, in fact, these do not have any volume/issue enumeration. They were not included with mail subscriptions and were only available at newsstands. One of their features was a limited index of the previous year’s issues. This bibliography supersedes those and is more comprehensive as well as more detailed.
Below is an article-by-article listing of the full contents of the issues that Morgenstern edited between July 1967 and July 1973.
[1] “Dan Morgenstern Resigns at db.” Down Beat 40:13 (July 19, 1973):11.
Author Information:
Michael Fitzgerald, founding editor of Current Research in Jazz, is assistant professor in the Learning Resources Division of the University of the District of Columbia, home of the Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives. He is author, with Noal Cohen, of the book, Rat Race Blues: The Musical Life of Gigi Gryce
(Berkeley Hills Books, 2002), which received the 2003 Award for Excellence for best research in recorded jazz music from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) and is coordinator, with Steve Albin, of the website www.jazzdiscography.com.
Abstract:
A bibliography of Down Beat magazine under the editorship of Dan Morgenstern. Reviews of records, concerts, books, and films have been analyzed.
Keywords:
Down Beat, jazz, magazine, bibliography, Dan Morgenstern
How to cite this article:
For further information, please contact:
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
This page last updated July 01, 2012, 22:07