Dan Morgenstern

Dan Michael Morgenstern (October 24, 1929 – September 7, 2024) was an American jazz historian and archivist. Born to a Jewish family in Germany, Morgenstern fled Nazi-occupied Austria with his mother and in 1947 emigrated to the United States. He first began visiting jazz clubs as a teenager and worked at The New York Times. After serving in the U.S. Army, he attended Brandeis University where he first began writing about jazz music. He went on to become a professional jazz critic and editor. Morgenstern led several jazz magazines and directed the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University from 1976 to 2012. He earned eight Grammy Awards for his album liner notes and wrote two books on jazz.

Early life and career Morgenstern was the only child of a Danish-Jewish mother, Ingeborg von Klenau, and Jewish-Ukrainian writer Soma Morgenstern. He was born in Munich on October 24, 1929, and was raised in Vienna. The institute's collection "grew fivefold" under his management. He taught courses on jazz history at Brooklyn College, New York University, and the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. Morgenstern was the author of two books: Jazz People (1976); and Living with Jazz (2004), a reader edited by Sheldon Meyer (1926–2006). Both won ASCAP's Deems Taylor Award. In 2007, Morgenstern received the A.B. Spellman Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Personal life and death Morgenstern married twice. He divorced his first wife, Lenore Avin. He married again in 1974 to Elsa "Ellie" Schochet, with whom he remained until his death; the couple had two sons, Adam and Joshua.

Morgenstern died from heart failure in Manhattan, on September 7, 2024, at the age of 94.

Grammy Awards for Best Album Notes Art Tatum, God Is in the House (1973) Coleman Hawkins, The Hawk Flies (1974) Various (Savoy Records collection), The Changing Face of Harlem (1976) Erroll Garner, Erroll Garner: Master of the Keyboard (1981) Clifford Brown, Brownie: The Complete Emarcy Recordings of Clifford Brown (1990) Louis Armstrong, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1994) Fats Waller, If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It! (2006) Louis Armstrong, The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935–1946) (2010)

Source: