Marshall Stearns

Marshall Winslow Stearns (October 18, 1908 – December 18, 1966) was an American jazz critic and musicologist. He was the founder of the Institute of Jazz Studies. which became a widely used text, as well as a popular introduction to jazz.

In 1952, he founded the Institute of Jazz Studies, which he directed. Later in the 1950s, he was a consultant to the United States State Department, and accompanied Dizzy Gillespie on a tour of the Middle East in 1956 sponsored by the office. Stearns taught at the New School for Social Research (1954–61) and the School of Jazz in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Stearns died on December 18, 1966, in Key West, Florida.

He and his second wife, Jean, co-authored Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance,