RIP Nat Hentoff - writer, critic, awkward bugger

[danny la rouge]

Nat Hentoff, columnist, critic and giant of jazz writing, dies aged 91

Nat Hentoff, columnist, critic and giant of jazz writing, dies aged 91

"Son says longtime Village Voice columnist died of natural causes, after long career in which he wrote more than 25 books and collaborated with Bob Dylan".

I have several of his books and books he edited and co-edited. He was a true giant of music writing.

 

[danny la rouge]

Nat Hentoff, Freedom Fighter

"The jazz critic, novelist, and free-speech advocate Nat Hentoff died on Saturday at the age of 91. In well over a half-century of writing and advocacy, Hentoff passionately defended the importance of freedom in the most capacious sense—as the unqualified right of expression, whether that meant a riff from John Coltrane’s sax or an unpopular, even offensive idea. "

"Hentoff published numerous articles in The Nation over the years. In his regular column, “Indigenous Music,” which ran from 1976 to 1980, Hentoff roved all across the American musical landscape, writing not only about jazz music, but all kinds of folk music—from trumpeter Clifford Brown to Joan Baez, and all eras, from Dixieland to the avant-garde. "

 

[danny la rouge]

"Nat Hentoff will hopefully long be known for his prodigious writing. Books, columns, criticism — my God, the man wrote album liner notes for everyone from Bob Dylan to Miles Davis. But the secret to his craft was that he was a great listener, and gave his subjects the room to stretch out. My friend David Lewis, who made a marvelous documentary about Nat, The Pleasures of Being Out of Step, pointed that out to me after he had waded deep into the mighty Hentoff archive: Jazz musicians loved Nat, Lewis reported, because he was the only critic who let them speak in their own voice."

The Voice of the Voice: Nat Hentoff, 1925–2017