DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. The revered jazz historian, archivist and critic Dan Morgenstern died earlier this month. He was 94. Morgenstern spent a lifetime as an enthusiastic advocate for jazz and for 35 years directed the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, building a collection of jazz recordings, memorabilia and writings that's the largest collection of its kind in the world. In his New York Times obituary, Barry Singer noted that Morgenstern was, quote, "one of the last jazz scholars to have known the giants of jazz he wrote about, both as friend and chronicler, a jazz writer uniquely embraced by jazz musicians, a nonmusician who captured their sounds in unpretentious prose, amplified with sweeping and encyclopedic historical context, " unquote.
In 2007, Morgenstern received the NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy. Dan Morgenstern was born to Jewish parents in Munich in 1929. His father was the cultural correspondent for a German newspaper and had written critically of the Nazis. As the pressure mounted, his father escaped to France. Dan and his mother fled to Copenhagen, but when the Nazis reached the city, they were smuggled out of Denmark by the Danish resistance and found safety in Sweden. The family reunited in New York in 1947 after the war. When Terry Gross interviewed Dan Morgenstern - that was in 2004 - he told her about his introduction to jazz during the war. He was 8 years old.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
DAN MORGENSTERN: What got me - really got me involved was seeing Fats Waller in Copenhagen in September of 1938. And, you know, that was a great experience. I had never seen anybody like that before. Well, there wasn't anybody like Fats Waller, you know? There never has been since. But he was so - you know, so vital and so overpowering, in a way, you know, but he was physically very large. I had not seen many Black people in my life before then, and he was, as he would say, mesmerizing.
TERRY GROSS: Would you choose a record that you loved when you were young, during the war, when you were fleeing from the Nazis - a record that still means a lot to you?
MORGENSTERN: Well, I guess, you know, this is, of course, a kids' record, but it's also - in retrospect, it's a good jazz record. That was Chick Webb's "Dipsy Doodle," which featured a vocal by the then still very young - about 19-year-old - Ella Fitzgerald. And then, after the vocal, it had a tremendous trombone solo by Sandy Williams, whom I subsequently got to know after I came to this country. And that was just a record that I loved, and I particularly liked, you know, the nonsense lyrics. I knew some English, but not really a lot, but it has sort of silly lyrics, you know, and then that trombone solo afterwards. So, you know, that's a record that I'm still very fond of.
GROSS: Why don't we hear it?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE DIPSY DOODLE")
ELLA FITZGERALD: (Singing) The Dipsy Doodle is easy to find. It's almost always in the back of your mind. You never know it until it's too late. And then you're in such a terrible state. Like, the moon jumped over the cow, hey diddle - that's the way the Dipsy Doodle works. When you think that you're crazy, you're the victim of the Dipsy Doodle. But it's not your mind that's hazy. It's your tongue that's at fault, not your noodle. (Scatting) Dip, dip, dip, dip, Dipsy Doodle. You think you're crazy, the things that you say, like, rhythm got I and hot am I. That's the way the Dipsy Doodle works.
GROSS: That's Chick Webb and Ella Fitzgerald, "The Dipsy Doodle," a record that meant a lot to Dan Morgenstern when he was growing up. In 1947, after the war, you and your mother moved to New York, where your father had already moved. What are some of your earliest memories of discovering jazz as a New Yorker and actually being able to, say, like, go to concerts and go to record stores?
MORGENSTERN: Well, I have this line that I've used a lot. I used it in my very subliminal appearance on Ken Burns' "Jazz," which I had the pleasure of...
(LAUGHTER)
MORGENSTERN: I was an adviser to that, but on screen, I only appeared for about 10 seconds. But what I said is something that I've often said, which is that when I came to New York, you know, what I wanted was not to see the Empire State Building, but I wanted to see 52nd Street. 52nd Street, after all, was alive at night, you know? And I was still only 17. But I managed to get there, and to me, it was - you know, it was paradise. I mean, you could - one side of the street, you could hear Sidney Bechet, and across the street, you could hear Charlie Parker, and Billie Holiday was next door. You know, I mean, it was just an incredible place.
GROSS: You've described yourself as having been more of a jazz journalist and jazz proselytizer than jazz critic. Would you choose a record that you feel you helped affect the destiny of, or helped change the attitude toward - a record that you loved that you thought wasn't really - wasn't getting adequate attention or wasn't really understood?
MORGENSTERN: Well, one of the things that I found irksome was the attitude that then existed towards the work of Louis Armstrong. People had a tendency to look at it in terms of the Hot Five era - you know, "Heebie Jeebies" - and then jump to the All-Stars and "Hello, Dolly!" And everything in between was sort of being ignored. And to me, and others, as well, that was, you know, some of the peak achievements of Mr. Armstrong. So in particular, I had a chance to do liner notes for a collection of wonderful material from the mid-'30s that had more or less been neglected.
In particular, one thing that was on there was a piece by Armstrong himself called "Swing That Music," which is just a wonderful demonstration of his awesome trumpet prowess, and also kind of reminded me - and the way he punches out 42 high C's, you know, after the vocal reminded me of the way Joe Louis punched out Max Schmeling. And I was able to bring that into better focus and kind of illuminate that aspect of Armstrong's artistry, and I'm happy about that.
GROSS: Why don't we hear that Armstrong recording of "Swing That Music"? And this is from 1936?
MORGENSTERN: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SWING THAT MUSIC")
LOUIS ARMSTRONG: (Singing) And my heart gives a chill. I feel such a thrill. My feet won't keep still when they swing that music. Rhythm like that puts me in a trance. Oh, you can't blame me for wanting to dance. From what I understand, it must be just grand to play in a band when they swing that music. I'm just happy as can be when they swing that music for me.
GROSS: My guest is Dan Morgenstern. Since 1976, you've directed the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. And in that sense, you've become really important as a collector of jazz history. I mean, the institute is - I don't know - perhaps the most important collection of jazz history in the country, one of the most important in the world. What are one or two of the objects in the collection of the Institute of Jazz Studies that mean the most to you and that have an almost, like, magical aura surrounding them?
MORGENSTERN: Well, I think that would be the instruments. We have quite a collection of instruments that belong to famous and maybe even not-so-famous musicians, and some of those people are people that I felt very close to. So those things represent a very tangible, you know, aspect of my own life with this music, such as, you know, Ben Webster's tenor, Lester Young's tenor, the one he used when he was with Basie. And we have odd things like plastic gardenia of Billie Holiday's. When she couldn't get a real one, you know, she used that. And Billie was somebody that I just absolutely loved.
And then manuscript - we have a wonderful manuscript by Louis Armstrong. And we have - oh, I don't know if I can use the expression tchotchkes, but we have things like - we have an Ella Fitzgerald - a little sculpture made of spoons and forks which actually represents her, you know, with a microphone in her hand. And that was sitting on her mantelpiece. She really liked that. And those things are special. You know, they have an aura.
GROSS: Well, Dan Morgenstern, thank you so much for talking with us.
MORGENSTERN: It's been a great pleasure, and thank you for having me.
DAVIES: Terry Gross spoke with Dan Morgenstern in 2004. The revered Jazz historian, author and archivist died earlier this month on September 7. He was 94 years old. Coming up, TV critic David Bianculli reviews HBO's "The Penguin," the latest spin-off of the Batman series. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET'S "UNSQUARE DANCE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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