Rutgers Jazz Historian Dan Morgenstern Wins His Eighth Grammy Award For Album Notes --and Sets a Record in Process

NEWARK, N.J. –  The Grammy Award has again been awarded to jazz historian, writer, and educator Dan

Morgenstern, longtime director of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies on the Newark campus of Rutgers.  The Jersey City resident received his eighth Grammy yesterday for his album notes for “The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946), on Mosaic Records. “ With this latest award, Morgenstern now holds the record for the most Grammies in album notes.

 To hear Morgenstern discuss the album –and hear outtakes of Armstrong’s music – go to   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t97UhlU5TVY .

Morgenstern’s last Grammy win was in 2007, when he was honored for his notes on Fats Waller for “If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It!" “These were both truly labors of love,” says Morgenstern.  “Fats blew me away when I saw him in Copenhagen –I was almost 9 years old – and so much of the music in the seven-CD Mosaic Armstrong box has been part of my life  since discovering it, on 78 rpm singles, ages ago.”

This Grammy is the latest award bestowed upon Morgenstern during his lifetime of contributions to jazz.  In December 2007, he received the Deems Taylor Award -- his third, and his second in a row --from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) for his liner notes on “If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It!"   Earlier that year, Morgenstern stood alongside other jazz luminaries on a stage in New York – the only non-musician in the group – as he was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, receiving the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy.  (The New York Times calls the “Jazz Master” designation “the nation’s highest jazz honor.”) 

Indeed, 2007 also was the year that Down Beat magazine named Morgenstern as the 27^th recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award, and the year that The Recording Academy honored Morgenstern with a Legacy Award. 

Morgenstern’s extensive knowledge of jazz led famed documentarian Ken Burns to ask Morgenstern to act as senior adviser to his 10-part PBS series, “Jazz." Morgenstern co-produces and co-hosts the institute’s “Jazz from the Archives” program  on WBGO-FM, and co-hosts the monthly Jazz Research Roundtable at Rutgers-Newark.

Morgenstern’s career includes seven years as editor of Down Beat magazine, stints as jazz reviewer for the New York Post and record-reviewer for the Chicago Sun Times, and currently editor of the Annual Review of Jazz Studies and the monograph series Studies in Jazz. He has written hundreds of articles, and co-authored or contributed to numerous jazz books.

The Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, the world’s most extensive jazz archives, is part of the Rutgers University Libraries. The IJS is housed in the John Cotton Dana Library on the Newark campus of Rutgers, at 185 University Ave.: http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/IJS/