Rudi Blesh

Rudi Blesh ( born January 21, 1899 in Guthrie, Oklahoma; † August 25, 1985 in Gilmanton, New Hampshire ) was an American jazz radio journalist and author of books on early jazz and ragtime.

Blesh, after attending Dartmouth College as a jazz critic beginning of the 1940s for the San Francisco Chronicle and in 1944 for the New York Herald Tribune. He organized jazz concerts and promoted in his radio show This Is Jazz ( at Jazzology re-released ) the traditional oldtime jazz, which he set a monument in one of the earliest jazz books Shining Trumpets. But more important was his classic 1950 They All Played Ragtime, who brought this style of music only back to consciousness and to a first small comeback helped (long before another renaissance with the film The Clou 1972). Blesh also had his own label Circle, in which he, inter alia, the Library of Congress Recordings by Jelly Roll Morton published and Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Kid Ory, Wild Bill Davison. Blesh taught jazz history at various colleges and was also involved in the rediscovery of ragtime pianist Joseph Lamb and Eubie Blake.

Works

• Shining Trumpets. Knopf, New York 1946.
• With Harriet Janis: They All Played Ragtime. 1950th 4th Edition: Oak Publ, New York 1971 ISBN 0-825-60091- X.