A VERY SAD GOODBYE. Richard Sudhalter Cornettist and historian of pre-war ‘hot’ jazz.
Leave it to the Brits to remember this American.
Most of you I’ll bet never heard of this guy. Unless like myself you’ve had an overriding passion for the period’s music and BIX in particular.
This fellow wrote the bio on Bix that for me was the definitive word on the subject. (my lic. plate read, BIX LIVS)
My heroes since childhood have mostly been musicians and there wasn’t any higher calling that I could see. All I lacked was talent. Gee, in today’s musical world, I couldda been a contenda. I couldda been a star. A talentless one but perhaps a wealthy one.
So, today was a sad start to the day when I opened the morning paper and found this obit.
Had this man been a Brit, I’m almost certain there’d have been a Sir before his first name.
RIP, Richard Sudhalter
Richard Sudhalter
Cornettist and historian of pre-war ‘hot’ jazz whose playing was much influenced by Beiderbecke.
Last Updated: 12:31AM BST 03 Oct 2008
Richard Sudhalter, who died in New York on September 19 aged 69, was a jazz cornettist, critic and biographer; his career also included a period with United Press International (UPI) in Europe, first as political correspondent and later as a bureau manager.
Sudhalter’s playing style was an elegant variation on that of Bix Beiderbecke, and his main interest was in the jazz of the 1920s and 1930s. Friends often observed that he seemed to have been born 30 years too late and was busily making up for the error.
Richard Merrill Sudhalter was born on December 28 1938 in Boston, Massachusetts, into a musical family. His father, Albert Sudhalter, had been a professional saxophonist and Dick’s brother and sister were also musicians.
Dick took up the cornet at the age of 12 after hearing Bix Beiderbecke for the first time. The actual Beiderbecke solo, he recalled half a century later, occurred in Paul Whiteman’s 1928 recording of San: “I couldn’t wait for my father to come home so I could ask him, ‘Who is Bix Beiderbecke?’ From that day on I was hooked.”
Through his father’s contacts he met, and later sat in with, many distinguished jazz musicians of the older generation, encounters which strengthened his attachment to “hot”’ jazz.
Between 1956 and 1960 Sudhalter studied Music and English Literature at Oberlin College, at the same time studying trumpet privately with Louis Davidson of the Cleveland Symphony. Shortly after graduating he moved to Europe, living first in Salzburg and later in Munich, where he taught English and played in the Bavarian State Radio jazz ensemble.
Sudhalter joined UPI, in Berlin, as political correspondent for West and East Germany in 1964, moving to London as UK correspondent two years later. In 1968, when the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia seemed imminent, he flew to Germany, and from there succeeded in reaching Prague just before the Russian troops moved in. He was one of the very few Western journalists on the scene and his reports were front-page news.
Leaving UPI in 1972, Sudhalter settled in London to concentrate on music and begin work on a biography of Bix Beiderbecke with a fellow-Bixian, Philip R Evans. The book, Bix: Man and Legend, was published in 1974 to great critical acclaim and was nominated for a National Book Award in the United States.
In the same year Sudhalter and the alto saxophonist John RT Davies assembled in London the 29-piece New Paul Whiteman Orchestra, dedicated to recreating the music of the band of which Beiderbecke had been the star soloist.
In the orchestra’s ranks were musicians of several generations, including Britain’s veteran master of the bass saxophone, Harry Gold. After a triumphant debut at the Roundhouse, the orchestra gave numerous concerts and BBC radio broadcasts.
Sudhalter returned to settle in New York in 1975. To his writing and playing schedule he now added the duties of administrator of the New York Jazz Repertory Company. For this band he produced a Duke Ellington retrospective series of four concerts at Carnegie Hall, followed by programmes devoted to Whiteman, WC Handy, Hoagy Carmichael and others. In 1975 and 1976 he also acted as artistic manager of the annual jazz festival held at Nice. Despite all this activity the flow of articles, radio scripts and album notes continued unabated.
In 1978 he became jazz critic for the New York Post, and from 1983 to 1987 joined three like-minded musicians to form the Classic Jazz Quartet. At first they wanted to call themselves Bourgeois Scum, but were advised that not everyone would see the joke.
Sudhalter’s biggest, and most controversial book, published in 1999, was Lost Chords: White Musicians and their Contribution to Jazz 1915-1945. This scholarly and apparently innocuous title caused a furore on the American jazz scene, poisoned as it had become by racial politics.
At public lectures, where he sought to explain and defend his book, he was often shouted down by a claque of opponents accusing him of racism and of attempting to belittle black jazz musicians. To the impartial reader, Lost Chords is nothing like that. It seeks merely to give due recognition to white players, such as Billy Butterfield, Bud Freeman and Pee Wee Russell, in the context of jazz history.
His last book, published in 2002, was Stardust Melody, on the life and music of the singer and songwriter Hoagy Carmichael.
Sudhalter normally wrote as “Richard” and played as “Dick”. The impression left by the recordings of Dick Sudhalter is of a player of great sensitivity and charm, regardless of his admitted debt to Beiderbecke. His 1999 album, Melodies Heard, Melodies Sweet, catches the flavour of the man to perfection.
He is also to be heard on the soundtracks to a number of films, notably Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose and The Shooting Party, unmistakable for his mellow tone and bright articulation.
In 2003 he suffered a stroke, which put an end to his playing career, and his health declined thereafter.
Richard Sudhalter was married and divorced. He is survived by two daughters.
on 10/03/2008 at 03:20 AM
