[Dixielandjazz] Francis Newton RIP

ROBERT R. CALDER serapion at btinternet.com
Tue Oct 2 01:30:25 PDT 2012


He took his jazz-writing pen-name from Frankie Newton, very discriminating; and because his father, Percy, was English, the spelling of his given surname was changed to HOBSBAWM,  so the second vowel sound would as in English orthography rhyme with AWE rather than  WOW...

His one jazz book was called THE JAZZ SCENE and he refers in his autobiography, whose name I can't remember, to his lasting and continuing interest in jazz.  And at the age of 95 the historian and longtime Marxist E.J. Hobsbawm has departed this life, and with him the Viennese German he spoke in his student days. Not to mention a certain profile, if raised higher than most by merit, common among the first European-based European encouragers of jazz. 


There is no shortage of press commemorations, eulogies, encomiastic articles. 


Robert 


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