Throughout his prolific career, Hentoff wrote on politics, foreign affairs, country music, and civil liberties. But his greatest legacy may be his body of work on jazz music, from television programs and magazines to his critical writings about the American music tradition. In 2007, Hentoff wrote for THE WEEKLY STANDARD about his own role in an important moment for jazz—one that included his beloved Billie Holiday.
Here’s an excerpt:
During television’s early years, jazz was infrequently seen, except when its few popular “names,” such as Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong, appeared on variety shows like Ed Sullivan’s. But on December 8, 1957, live on Sunday afternoon, many members of the jazz pantheon appeared on CBS-TV’s The Sound of Jazz, among them Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Red Allen, Gerry Mulligan, Pee Wee Russell, and Roy Eldridge. Because nearly all the legendary originals on the program are dead, videos of this historic (and never to be equaled) event have been played and replayed around the world. Along with the late Whitney Balliett of the New Yorker, I selected the musicians. For me, it was a jazz fan’s fantasy come true. Making it all possible was the producer, Robert Herridge, the most creative, and stubbornly independent, force I’ve known in my various television forays. (Among the works he transmuted to the screen were Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, All the King’s Men, and The Trial and Death of Socrates.) His only instruction to Whitney Balliett and me was, “Make it pure!” He didn’t care if most of the players were unknown to a general audience so long as they exemplified what Whitney had described as “the sound of surprise” of this music. Only one of our choices caused trouble. During a sound check, Herridge received a note from a representative of the sponsor, read it, and tore it up. He paraphrased the message for me and Whitney: “We must not put into America’s homes, especially on Sunday, someone who’s been imprisoned for drug use.” Herridge told the bearer of the note that if Billie Holiday could not go on, he, Whitney, and I would leave. The show went on.
Read the whole thing here to find out what Hentoff received after the show, an “award”, he said, that “excels any others I’ve received.”
