RIPMJAZZ
photo of journal cover for JRD.png

The Jazz Record

Begun as a bi-monthly, before converting to a regular monthly publication, The Jazz Record was published by Art Hodes and edited by Hodes, Dale Curran, and Harold Hersey. Hodes described being approached by Eugene Williams and Ralph Gleason of the defunct Jazz Information to assume jazz duties at the radio station WNYC following Ralph Berton’s departure there. After some time at the radio station, Hodes saw the need for a journal served two purposes: to provide information on where to hear live jazz and to assist jazz record collectors on how to obtain recordings of jazz, especially hot jazz of earlier periods [The Jazz Record 1, no. 1: 3]. In total, Hodes published 60 issues, concluding in November 1947.

Art Hodes was an accomplished and respected blues and jazz pianist. Born in Mykolaiv (then Nikolaev) in Ukraine, his family fled to Chicago where he was educated at Hull House and began to play in Chicago clubs. After moving to New York, he played and recorded with many prominent hot jazz musicians, including Mezz Mezzrow, Sidney Bechet, and Joe Masala. He also established a record label, also titled The Jazz Record. Throughout his life, Hodes remained dedicated to traditional (hot) jazz and used The Jazz Record to investigate, illuminate, and argue for this style and those who practiced it and to argue against progressive jazz genres such as bebop. Selections from Hodes’s writings in The Jazz Record were published as Selections from the Gutter: Jazz Portraits from The Jazz Record (Berkeley, University of California Press: 1977).

Dale Curran, a printer by trade, was Hodes’s partner for four of the five years. As Hodes recalled, “We’d invite musicians to the office, break out a bottle, I’d ask questions and Curran would take down the conversation on a typewriter.” [The Mississippi Rag, Vol. 11 no. 8 (June 1984): 9]. As such, Hodes and Curran focused The Jazz Record on musicians themselves and the music they create, less so on news and gossip. Other contributors to The Jazz Record included Roger Pryor Dodge, Ralph J. Gleason, Rudi Blesh, Ralph Berton, Ernest Borneman, John Steiner, John Lucas, Robert Goffin, Carlton Brown, Warren “Baby” Dodds, Nesuhi Ertegun, Eugene Williams, Ross Russel, Mary Lou Williams, and William C. Love. George Avakian reviewed records and the bassist Jimmy Butts contributed the regular columns “Where they’re playing: a page of Uptown musical news” and “Harlem speaks.” The Chilean writer Alma Hubner wrote on jazz in Chile along with progressive and commercial tendencies in jazz.

In the end, Hodes couldn’t keep The Jazz Record going without Curran, at a time when Hodes lost his radio program due to criticism from New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. (See Selections from the Gutter, page 6.) The journal, and Hodes personally, was also criticized by Leonard Feather and those advocates for bebop and progressivism in jazz. Nevertheless, The Jazz Record provides a window into the a fascinating and thoroughly readable facet of jazz history.


“The Jazz Record was unusual among jazz magazines in that its founder and editor was a renowned jazz musician—pianist Art Hodes. Begun as a bi-weekly, the magazine became a monthly after ten issues. Articles written by musicians—or ghostwriters under their names—were frequent. Floyd Bean, Baby Dodds, Henry Goodwin, George Lewis, Mezz Mezzrow, Al Morgan, Dave Nelson, Jim Robinson, Gene Sedric, Zutty Singleton, and Mary Lou Williams were all officially contributors. Bassist Jimmy Butts wrote an unusual column of ‘uptown’ (Harlem) news during the Record’s first year.Other Record pieces were the work of regular jazz writers. Rudi Blesh, Nesuhi Ertegun, Ralph J. Gleason, John Hammond, Nat Hentoff, Ross Russel, John Steiner, and Eugene Williams all contributed articles, interviews, and reviews to this traditional-jazz-oriented periodical.”

Jazz Periodicals: 1930-1970, Greenwood Press, Center for Research Libraries (1977)

Discography Record Collecting