[Dixielandjazz] New York Times Obit - Famous Jazz CXritic

[Stephen Barbone]

Having lived in New York City and a fan of John Wilson for many years, I
am saddened to forward this report on his passing.

Steve Barbone


August 28, 2002 - New York Times

John Wilson, Jazz Critic, Dies at 89

By JON PARELES

John S. Wilson, the first critic to write regularly about jazz and
popular music in The New York Times, died yesterday at a nursing home in
Princeton, N.J. He was 89 and lived in Princeton.

Mr. Wilson contributed to The Times for four decades and was a widely
heard jazz radio host. He wrote about cabaret, pop, Latin music, comedy,
the folk revival and early rock 'n' roll, but he was best known as a
jazz critic. While his favorite music was the swing and traditional jazz
he had grown up on, he listened to and wrote about a broad spectrum of
popular music.

When Mr. Wilson began writing about jazz, clubs lined 52nd Street and
the bebop revolution was under way. He spent five nights a week at clubs
and concert halls, on a beat that stretched from Greenwich Village to
Harlem. In clubs like Basin Street East and Cafe Society he listened to
stars from the big-band era and rising young boppers, satirists and
chanteuses. His writing conveyed a genial connoisseurship of the music
and a quiet authority that made him widely respected among both
musicians and listeners. The saxophonist Sonny Rollins named "John S.,"
a tune on one of his most important albums, "The Bridge," after Mr.
Wilson.

In a review of one of his favorite pianists, Ellis Larkins, Mr. Wilson
wrote: "His playing is the epitome of effortlessness. His fingers seem
barely to make contact with the keys, yet as he brushes by them with the
flip of a finger, the music emerges with simplicity and clarity."

Writing about the style of a Chicago jazz clarinetist named Frank
Teschemacher, Mr. Wilson observed, "He played with wild swoops and
headlong daring that led him into theoretically wrong notes that he
turned into triumphs."

John Steuart Wilson was born in Elizabeth, N.J., and attended the Newark
Academy High School and then Wesleyan University. He earned his master's
degree in journalism at Columbia University. During World War II he
served in the Army and edited the base newspaper at Fort Dix, N.J., and
later a military women's journal in Paris. After the war he returned to
New York, where he was an entertainment editor, sports editor and
columnist for the newspaper PM and the New York editor of Down Beat.

He came to The New York Times in 1952 and was the newspaper's first
critic covering popular music. In the 1950's and early 1960's he wrote
about scenes as diverse as the mambo explosion at the Palladium and the
folk coffeehouses of Greenwich Village. Later, as other popular-music
critics joined him at The Times,he concentrated on jazz and cabaret. He
appeared regularly in the newspaper until 1994.

Mr. Wilson was married three times: to Catherine Beecher, briefly in the
1930's; to Susan Barnes, from 1950 until her death in 1981; and to Mary
Moris Schmidt, whom he wed in 1983. She survives him, as do two sons
from his second marriage, Gordon Barnes Wilson of North Adams, Mass.,
and Duncan Hoke Wilson of Eaton, N.H. Also surviving are Ms. Schmidt's
sons, Eric M. Schmidt of New York City and Aaron M. Schmidt of Boston
and two grandchildren.

Mr. Wilson wrote books on his favorite jazz eras. They include "The
Collector's Jazz: Traditional and Swing" (J. B. Lippincott, 1958); "The
Collector's Jazz: Modern" (J. B. Lippincott, 1959); and "Jazz: The
Transition Years, 1940-1960" (Irvington, 1966). He wrote regularly for
High Fidelity magazine and Video Review.

Mr. Wilson also brought his fondness for jazz to radio listeners. He was
a commentator on "The World of Jazz," a radio series on WQXR in New
York, from 1954 to 1970. His program "Jazz Today" was broadcast on the
Voice of America from 1971-89, and he was the host of "The Manhattan
Jazz Hour" on American Public Radio in 1985-86. "John Wilson's Classic
Jazz" was broadcast weekly on WQXR, from 1986 to 1993.

Through his decades with The Times Mr. Wilson remained a freelancer. He
said that he turned down offers of a staff position because it would
mean having to attend meetings.