[Dixielandjazz] Brooks Kerr

[Joe Bebco]

My own brush with Brooks Kerr was a bit more esoteric. His obituary
was the first viral story we had on Syncopatedtimes.com. At the time
the website was only a few weeks old and none of the content from the
paper was on it. It was essentially just a place to put a paypal link
to renew the print paper. I was already writing obituaries for print
so I started putting them online as I wrote them. (It made for a
pretty depressing website, nothing but obits!)

When Brooks Kerr died a lot of the best information I found was from a
New York Times profile in the 1970s. He had a great quote about
himself, too good to pass up, so I used it and diligently cited the
source. Online I even linked to the original NYT story in their
archive.

A week later the site starts getting all kinds of traffic out of
nowhere. (At least for then, it was a quarter of what we get on a
normal day now but I was floored by it.)

The New York Times had cited The Syncopated Times in their obituary
for Kerr. They attributed to us the quote that we had clearly
attributed to them, and linked to us from their online story. They
also made it seem like the quote was much more recent than the early
70s if not contemporary.

We've had several more legitimate brushes with fame since, as after
that they from time to time began correctly citing us as a source.

Joe Bebco
Associate Editor
SyncopatedTimes.com (315) 507-5490
A monthly newspaper covering Hot Jazz, Ragtime, and Swing.