Frederic Ramsey

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Charles Frederic "Fred" Ramsey junior (born January 29, 1915 in Pittsburgh , † March 18, 1995 in Paterson ) was an American jazz and blues writer, photographer and record producer.

Life

Ramsey was the son of the painter Charles Frederic Ramsey (1875-1951). He attended school in New Hope (Pennsylvania), studied French at Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in 1936 and then worked for the publisher Harcourt Brace until 1939. In 1939 he published the basic book Jazzmen at Harcourt Brace with Charles Edward Smith (1904-1970) , one of the first books on jazz music in the USA. Authors included William Russell and Stephen W. Smith (who wrote the New Orleans chapter). In 1941/42 he worked for the Department of Agriculture and in 1942 for Voice of America . He wrote articles on jazz history for Down Beat , such as an interview with George Baquet in 1941.

From the 1950s onwards, he devoted himself to researching popular music from the American South, conducting interviews and making recordings for Folkways Records on a Guggenheim grant . These included blues musicians like Leadbelly, and Ramsey was part of a group of New York record collectors (called the Blues Mafia ) who played a role in the 1960s blues revival. He also oversaw a series of early jazz for Folkways ( Jazz series ).

From 1970 he worked with the Institute for Jazz Studies at Rutgers University (which is also where his written estate is) and researched the life of jazz legend Buddy Bolden in the mid-1970s . In 1987 he presented interviews with musicians from the early days of jazz on National Public Radio. The originals of his field recordings of African American music in the southern states are now with the Smithsonian Institution .

literature

  • The genesis of the book Jazzmen is dealt with in Bruce Boyd Raeburn's dissertation (Tulane University 1991), published as New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History , Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2009

Fonts

  • Editor with Charles Edward Smith Jazzmen: The Story of Hot Jazz Told in the Lives of the Men Who Created It , Harcourt Brace 1939, Limelight Editions 1985
  • with Charles Edward Smith, Charles Payne Rogers, William Russell The Jazz Record Book , New York: Smith and Durrell 1942
  • A Guide to Longplay Jazz Records , New York: Long Player Publications 1954, Da Capo 1977
  • Been Here and Gone , Rutgers University Press 1960, University of Georgia Press 2000
  • Where the Music Started: A Photographic Essay , Rutgers University Institute of Jazz Studies 1970
  • Editor Jazzways. A yearbook of Hot Jazz , 1946/47 (only published in these volumes)
    • with a contribution from Ramsey Going Down State Street on the beginnings of Chicago jazz

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Princeton University, Nassau Herald Yearbook, year 1936
  2. ↑ Biography of the father Charles Frederic Ramsey, Michener Art Museum ( Memento of the original from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.michenermuseum.org
  3. ^ Next were authors E. Simms Campbell, Edward J. Nichols, Wilder Hobson, Otis Ferguson, Roger Pryor Dodge
  4. ↑ Peter Wicke The sufferings of the white man. Constructions of authenticity in the history of the blues , in Michael Rauhut, Reinhard Lorenz (editor) I've had the blues a little longer. Traces of a music in Germany , Links Verlag 2008, 251
personal data
SURNAME Ramsey, Frederic
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ramsey, Charles Frederic Jr. (full name); Ramsey, Fred junior (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz and blues writer, photographer, and record producer
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Pittsburgh
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 1995
Place of death Paterson