[Dixielandjazz] More on Fred Starr

[Norman Vickers]

  I "Googled" Fred Starr and came up with this brief article from the Johns
Hopkins U. Magazine, June 2002.(see below) In case you're not now overly
saturated on the subject.  The first article on Starr I came up with was a
recentletter to the editor of the English Edition of Pravda relating to
nuclear weapons and the fact that USSR exploded its first nuclear device in
1949.. etc. and hoping that US & Russia might prevent WWIII.  Fred has
written a book about America's first piano virtuoso, Louis Moreau
Gottschalk.
In thinking about Starr's multi-facted career, I am reminded of two
saxophonists Leonard Garment and Allen Greenspan who went on to other
leading postions in government.  I read recently that Garment, now in
retirement from government, is actively working toward development of a jazz
museum in Harlem.
 --------------------------

Y O U R    O T H E R    L I F E ( From Johns Hopkins Magazine, June 2002)
Affairs Foreign and Familiar
Photo by Sam Kittner

 Fred Starr splits his time between the political corridors of the nation's
capital and the sultry halls of Southern jazz. Week to week, he might be
called on to give a briefing on Afghanistan to the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
and then jam on the saxophone at a New Orleans jazz club.

"It's very complicated, and sometimes nearly impossible," says Starr, a
noted musician who is chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at
Hopkins' Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. During a two-day
span in April he briefed the National Security Agency, National Geographic,
the CIA, and a group of New York business people on the situation in
Afghanistan and other issues. With homes in Washington and New Orleans, how
does he fit it all in? "The glib answer is, 'I don't play tennis.'"

About two decades ago, Starr (also a former Oberlin College president, a
Russian history specialist, book author, and New Orleans architecture
aficionado) helped found the Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble. The group,
which has made six recordings, is a fixture on the New Orleans music scene
and regularly plays at clubs and orchestra halls in Japan, Russia, Austria,
and Istanbul. The nine-member ensemble focuses on music from New Orleans'
early days of jazz, mostly syncopated dance music from the 1920s and
earlier, including compositions by such artists as Jelly Roll Morton.

Starr, primarily a clarinetist, helped rediscover the style influenced by
African, European, South American, and Caribbean music: He and his
colleagues turned up scratchy recordings and tracked down musicians from the
era. "We were digging up these forgotten pieces and forgotten styles for our
own enjoyment," he says. "We wanted to get back to the original
music." --Joanne Cavanaugh Simpson

----------------------------------------
Norman Vickers
JazzDoc