October Features
Great River Jazzfest | Final Notes
Richard Sudhalter: A Great
Jazz Scholar/Musician Passes
by Albert Haim
The pinnacle of Richard Sudhalter's legacy consists of three seminal works that filled deep voids in jazz scholarship: Bix, Man and Legend (1974, with Philip Evans and Richard Dean-Myatt), nominated for a National Book Award, revealed, with extraordinary intimacy, the life and music of the great cornetist, pianist and composer Bix Beiderbecke.
Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915 -- 1945 (1999), recipient of an ASCAP Deems Taylor Special Citation for Excellence and voted a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, is a masterful, exhaustive analysis of the contributions of white musicians to jazz, our uniquely American genre.
Stardust Melody: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael (2002), winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Timothy White Award for 2003, is a detailed biographical and musical study of the prolific composer of "Star Dust," a quintessential American song that counts more than 1,000 recordings.
But there is a lot more to Richard Sudhalter than his three books.
Richard Sudhalter was a superb musician who made numerous recordings as performer on cornet, flugelhorn and trumpet, usually leading the band as well. He was a news reporter who flew to Czechoslovakia in 1968 and became the only western journalist present when the Soviet troops invaded. His elegant prose and musical insights enriched numerous scholarly articles in magazines, journals and newspapers, as well as liners for LP albums and CDs. In 1983, Richard Sudhalter and John Chilton received the Grammy Award for Best Album Notes for Giants of Jazz: Bunny Berigan Performed by Bunny Berigan. Sudhalter was a concert producer/performer in the United States and Europe, a lecturer and a professor of music.
Richard Merrill Sudhalter was born Dec. 28, 1938, in Boston, Mass., to a musical family. His father, Albert, was an alto saxophonist. His sister, Carol, plays flute and saxophone. In a 1999 interview, Sudhalter was asked,"Do you recall the first time you were attracted to music?"
His response was, "Yes, with absolute clarity, though it was nearly half a century ago. I was 12 and had flogged away at the piano for nearly five years without discernible result when one day I found a Bix Beiderbecke record ("San," with Paul Whiteman's orchestra) in my father's record cabinet. He was an alto saxophonist, equally adept at "legit" and "hot" styles, and among his idols no one ranked higher than Bix and his saxophone-playing partner, Frank Trumbauer. The ringing, sweet-hot sound of Bix's cornet on that record electrified me; animated and astonished me. I couldn't wait for my dad to get home so I could ask him: 'Who is Bix Beiderbecke?' From that day on I was hooked on Beiderbecke in particular, hot jazz in general."
In the 1950s, the teenage Richard sat in at George Wein's Boston club Storyville with such legendary jazz figures as Bud Freeman, Pee Wee Russell and Vic Dickenson. He also met Bobby Hackett and Phil Napoleon. Sudhalter attended Oberlin College (1956-1960) where he studied music and English literature. He lived in Salzburg, Austria, and in Munich, Germany, in the 1960s. He taught English, played with jazz bands and worked at Bavarian State Radio. From 1964 to 1971, he was with United Press as a political correspondent from West and East Germany in 1964-66, staff correspondent from the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland in 1966-68, and bureau manager for Yugoslavia and the Balkans 1968-1971.
While in England, Sudhalter wrote numerous articles for the jazz publications Jazz Journal, Storyville, Into Jazz and Crescendo under the pseudonym Art Napoleon.
In 1974, Sudhalter founded the New Paul Whiteman Orchestra. Using original arrangements from the Whiteman collection in Williams College, he performed his own interpretations of Bix Beiderbecke's solos in live concerts, radio broadcasts over the BBC, in a BBC-TV documentary and on records.
Back in the U.S. in 1975, Sudhalter was with the New York Jazz Repertory Company in a Carnegie Hall concert in honor of Bix Beiderbecke.He wrote the script, narrated it and played several solos.
In the 1980s, Sudhalter was very active in the New York jazz scene as jazz critic for The New York Post, artistic director at New York's Vineyard Theatre, and a member of the Classic Jazz Quartet. He was a guest lecturer at Brown University, Oberlin College, and the 92nd Street "Y" in New York. In 2001 he was appointed Director of Jazz Studies and Associate Professor of Music at Five Towns College, Dix Hills, N.Y.
Sudhalter suffered a massive stroke in 2003. Although he recovered initially, over the next few years, his health progressively deteriorated, and he was diagnosed with multiple system atrophy. After a bout of pneumonia, he died on Sept. 19, 2008, in New York Presbyterian Hospital.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Richard Sudhalter. His writings, in particular Bix, Man and Legend, had a profound impact on me. Had it not been for Richard's comprehensive, insightful, and deeply moving account of Bix's life, my own life would have charted a far less rewarding course. Ultimately, I was inspired to create the Bixography website (www.bixography.com), embarking upon a marvelous and endlessly evolving adventure. Thank you, Richard!
October 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag
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