Stanley Dance

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Stanley Dance (born September 15, 1910 in Braintree , Essex , † February 23, 1999 in Escondido , California ) was a British - American music critic and author of biographies on jazz musicians .

Live and act

Stanley Dance began writing articles on jazz for French magazine Jazz Hot in 1935. In 1937 he came to New York and visited the local jazz scene. There he met the producer and journalist Helen Oakley , whom he married in England in 1947. After Dance had sold his shares in his inherited family businesses (including the tobacco trade), he moved with his wife to Connecticut in 1959 , where he devoted himself entirely to jazz. a. Organized revisions of swing music for Decca. From 1948 until his death he wrote for the Jazz Journal and also for Down Beat , Saturday Review, Music Journal, Melody Maker and others. a. In the 1950s, he played a key role in the formulation of the term mainstream jazz to describe the music scene between the Dixieland traditionalists and bebop or modern jazz . In 1964 he ensured the rediscovery of Earl Hines , whose manager he was for many years. Dance was friends with Duke Ellington and assisted him in putting together his biography "Music is my Mistress" while he accompanied him on his world tours. For the book "Duke Ellington in person", which he wrote with Mercer Ellington , he received the 1979 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award .

Dance wrote the liner notes for countless album covers , as well as for albums by Duke Ellington and Count Basie . For this he won the 1964 Grammy Award for the best text for the album "The Ellington Era" as a co-author . In 1999 he was honored with the admission into the " Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame ". Posthumously he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Jazz Journalist Association .

Stanley Dance is controversial for its views on bebop and subsequent innovations in jazz. He achieved his reputation in the jazz scene as a “chronicler of swing ” and as a competent author of biographies on jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Earl Hines as well as on swing music (first with Scribners in New York).

Selected bibliography

  • Jazz Era the Forties (The Roots of Jazz) (Da Capo Press, 1961) ISBN 0-306-76191-2
  • The World of Count Basie (Da Capo Press, 1985) ISBN 0-306-80245-7
  • The World of Duke Ellington (Da Capo Press) ISBN 0-306-81015-8
  • The World of Earl Hines , Scribners 1977, Da Capo Paperback, March 1983, ISBN 0-306-80182-5
  • The World of Swing: An Oral History of Big Band Jazz. With introduction by Dan Morgenstern (Da Capo Press; Diane Publishing Company re-edition 2003 ) ISBN 0-7567-6672-9
  • The Night People - The Jazz Life of Dicky Wells , Crescendo 1971, Smithsonian 1991 (Oral History)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hines himself often has a say in it, as do the former members of his bands
personal data
SURNAME Dance, Stanley
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American music critic and biographer
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Braintree , Essex
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1999
Place of death Escondido , California