Word: jazzing
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...June for Arguin Island, off the Atlantic coast of French West Africa, in a 15-ton ketch called Daisy of Maldon, plan to do hydrographic surveys for the Admiralty, poke archaeologically at a 18th century Portuguese fort, skindive for wrecks, and test the effects of a four-man jazz combo on African ears. "Also," says Expedition Leader Anthony Churchill (no kin), "we may try distilling gin from seaweed." Oxford's Exploration Club is sending out a group which will exhaustively classify the flora and fauna in a mountain-locked Tanganyika valley...
...wail of jazz drifts smokily through San Francisco bistros, the lean man with the horn-rimmed glasses and a grey-flecked crew-cut walks up to the bar and acts like the squarest square from Endsville. He orders milk. But from the Red Garter to the Purple Onion, not an eyebrow lifts. Everyone knows that on matters that count-a beat and a lyric-Columnist Ralph Gleason. 42, has a taste so cool that he turns out much of the solid reporting and comment on the convoluted world of jazz...
Busy as a one-man combo, the teetotaling Gleason writes four columns a week on jazz and records for the San Francisco Chronicle (circ. 225,429), edits a magazine he helped found last year named Jazz-A Quarterly of American Music (circ. 5,000), and tosses off such extra projects as organizing jazz TV programs and festivals. His 1958 book, Jam Session, has sold 5,000 copies, is now in a British edition. Last year Gleason became the nation's first syndicated jazz columnist, now sounds off weekly in 15 papers from the Los Angeles Mirror-News...
Hooked with the Measles. Calling the tune as he hears it, Columnist Gleason has earned such a reputation among San Francisco jazz addicts that his column of praise made a hit out of Louie Armstrong's earthy recording of Mack the Knife after it had been all but ignored by local stations. On occasion, the amiable Gleason can peel skin. He risked the formidable anger of Pat Boone fans by describing Pat as "nice, clean-cut, antiseptic, spiritless, pallid, pretentious and even a bit of a phony." Last week, in his syndicated column, he took a long look...
Born in New York City, Gleason got hooked on jazz during his junior year in Chappaqua's Horace Greeley High School, when, during a siege of measles, he dialed in Armstrong, Hines and Henderson on his bedside radio. At Columbia University, Gleason was news editor for the Spectator, often nursed a beer all night long in the jazz joints on 52nd Street. With all that jazz, Gleason finally collapsed, quit college in his senior year. Cracks he: "I'm not copping a plea, but I did get a throat infection, and that cooled...