Rudi Blesh

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Rudi Blesh with Baby Dodds (left), riverboat on the Hudson (New York) , around July 1947.
Photograph by William P. Gottlieb .

Rudi Blesh (born January 21, 1899 in Guthrie , Oklahoma , † August 25, 1985 in Gilmanton , New Hampshire ) was an American jazz radio journalist and author of early books on jazz and ragtime .

After attending Dartmouth College, Blesh worked as a jazz critic in the early 1940s for the San Francisco Chronicle and from 1944 for the New York Herald Tribune . He organized jazz concerts and promoted traditional old-time jazz on his radio show This Is Jazz (republished by Jazzology) , which he also memorialized in one of the earliest jazz books Shining Trumpets . More important, however, was his 1950 classic They All Played Ragtime , which only brought this genre back into consciousness and helped it make its first small comeback (long before another renaissance with the film The Clou in 1972). Blesh also had his own label Circle , on which he a. a. The Library of Congress published recordings by Jelly Roll Morton , Louis Armstrong , Sidney Bechet , Kid Ory , Wild Bill Davison . Blesh taught jazz history at various colleges and was also involved in the rediscovery of ragtime pianists Joseph Lamb and Eubie Blake .

Works

  • Shining Trumpets . Knopf, New York 1946.
  • with Harriet Janis: They All Played Ragtime . 1950. 4th edition: Oak Publ., New York 1971 ISBN 0-825-60091-X .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ The mother of the trombonist and actor Conrad Janis . She was also a co-host on Rudi Blesh's radio show This is Jazz and ran the Circle record company with him
personal data
SURNAME Blesh, Rudy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Guthrie , Oklahoma
DATE OF DEATH August 25, 1985
Place of death Gilmanton , New Hampshire