Marshall Stearns

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Marshall Winslow Stearns (October 18, 1908 – December 18, 1966) was an American

musicologist. He was the founder of the Institute of Jazz Studies.[1]

Biography

Stearns was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Edith Baker Winslow (maiden; Edith Baker Winslow; 1878–1952) and Harry Ney Stearns (1874–1930). His father was a Harvard University graduate and an attorney.[1]

Stearns played drums in his teens, and attended

Harper's, Life, and Musical America
.

In 1950, Stearns was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and he used the proceeds to finish his 1956 work The Story of Jazz,[2] which became a widely used text, as well as a popular introduction to jazz.[3]

In 1952, he founded the

New School for Social Research (1954–61) and the School of Jazz in Lenox, Massachusetts
.

Stearns died on December 18, 1966, in

Key West, Florida.[1]

He and his second wife, Jean, co-authored Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance,[4] which was published posthumously in 1968.

Family

Stearns was married twice. He was first married on October 18, 1931, in

Joseph Moore Dixon (1867–1934), was, from 1921 to 1925, the seventh Governor of Montana
.

Stearns then married – in October 1956, in

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where, in 1945, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English.[5]
Her mother, Helen Barnett (née Helen Isabell Beaty; 1889–1981), was a music teacher in White Hall. Jean's father, Fleet Barnett (né Ralph Fleetwood Barnett; 1895–1981), owned and operated a pottery shop in White Hall.

References

  1. ^ a b c "The Marshall Winslow Stearns Collection" (PDF). Retrieved 2015-02-03. Marshall Winslow Stearns was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Harry N. and Edith Stearns on October 18, 1908. ...
  2. ^ Marshall Stearns, The Story of Jazz, Oxford University Press, 1956.
  3. ^ Marshall Stearns, The Story of Jazz, New York: New American Library/Mentor Books, 1958.
  4. ^ Stearns, Marshall; Stearns, Jean (1968). Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance.
    1. OCLC 655466715 (all editions)
      .
    2. OCLC 900269 (all editions)
      .
    3. ISBN 0-0287-2510-7, 978-0-0287-2510-9
      .
    4. ISBN 0-3068-0553-7, 978-0-3068-0553-0
      .
      5. (the Da Capo edition is accessible via
      Archive.org – link
      )
  5. University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. 1945. pp. 31 ("Class of 1945") & 369 ("Trelawney"). Retrieved February 4, 2021 – via Internet Archive
    .

Further reading

  • Mario Dunkel, "Marshall Winslow Stearns and the Politics of Jazz Historiography". American Music 30.4 (2012): 468-504.
  • Allmusic
  • Daniel Zager/
    Grove Jazz
    online.
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