Otis on Bix
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Jazz authors, editors and critics provide us with insights and information that helps enrich our listening experience.
To name but a few - Leonard Feather, Nat Hentoff, Ira Gitler, Dan Morgenstern, Doug Ramsey Ted Gioia, Gary Giddins, Howard Mandel, Bob Blumenthal, Mark Gardner, Mike Hennessey, Steve Voce, Alyn Shipton, Michael Cuscuna, Gene Lees, Martin Williams, Grover Sales, Don Heckman, Ralph Gleason, Phillip Elwood, Stanley Dance, Bill Kirchner, Robert Gordon, Jack Chambers, Terry Teachout, Kenny Mathieson, Len Lyons, Max Harrison, and Whitney Balliett, whom many consider to be the literary dean of writers on the subject of Jazz, - all make our awareness and appreciation of Jazz and Jazz musicians greater because of their skills as writers and storytellers.
But many of these writers' efforts on behalf of the music were still about a decade or more away when on September 14, 1943 merchant marine seamen Otis Ferguson’s ship, the Bushrod Washington, was hit by a radio-guided bomb off the coast of Salerno, Italy. The other seamen escaped before the vessel burned to the waterline, but the bomb had exploded in the messroom, to which Otis, as was his custom, had gone down alone for a cup of coffee.
Malcolm Cowley, his closest friend at The New Republic, the magazine that published much of Otis Ferguson’s writings, had this to say about him:
“Ferguson's name is legendary in the field of jazz. He has been called "the best writer on jazz who ever lived" and "the most brilliant of them all." One of the first critics to write seriously about this native American music, he brought an understanding and appreciation of jazz to an audience far wider than the original small group of aficionados. Professional jazz musicians have been among his most ardent admirers.” [The Otis Ferguson Reader, p. 1].
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