About W. Royal Stokes:
My acquaintance with jazz and blues began in the
early 1940s when I was just entering my teens. I continued avidly
following it through that decade and the next and through my years
as a professor of Greek and Latin languages and literature and
ancient history in the 1960s.
In the early 1970s, having departed the academic life, I commenced a
fifteen-year presence on public radio, hosting my jazz shows, "I
Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say. . ." and Since Minton's,
in Washington, D.C. By the mid-70s I was writing for JazzTimes,
eventually becoming its editor, 1988-90, and in 1978 I became The
Washington Post's jazz writer for nearly a decade. I have also
occasionally contributed to Down Beat and other jazz
magazines.
I edited Jazz Notes, the quarterly publication of the Jazz
Journalists Association, from 1992 to 2001 and am a regular
contributor to Jazzhouse.org, the organization's website. My
byline has appeared on a hundred or so LP & CD liner notes for
prominent artists across the spectrum of jazz from the New Black
Eagle Jazz Band to Lionel Hampton to Count Basie to Sun Ra to Jaki
Byard to David Murray to Ingrid Jensen.
MyThe Jazz Scene: An Informal History from New Orleans to
1990 was published by Oxford University Press in 1991. Two more of
my collections of jazz (and a few blues) profiles were published by
Oxford, Living the Jazz Life: Conversations with Forty Musicians
about Their Careers in Jazz, in 2000, and Growing Up With Jazz:
Twenty-Four Musicians Talk About Their Lives and Careers, in
2005. Swing Era New York: The Jazz Photographs of Charles
Peterson was published by Temple University Press in 1994. They
are all still available. My novel Backwards Over will see
publication this year. I am currently at work on a family history
and a fourth collection of profiles. A paperback reprint of
Growing Up With Jazz was published in the fall of 2008. A second
volume of photographs by Charles Peterson is seeking a publisher.
--WRS
January 2009
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