About W. Royal Stokes:
My acquaintance with jazz 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 I commenced a
fifteen-year presence on public radio, hosting my own
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 major jazz writer for
nearly a decade.
I have edited Jazz Notes, the
quarterly publication of the Jazz Journalists
Association, since 1992 and my byline has appeared on
hundreds of LP & CD liner notes for prominent artists
across the spectrum of jazz from Count Basie to Sun Ra to
Ingrid Jensen.
The Jazz Scene: An Informal
History from New Orleans to 1990 was published by
Oxford University Press in 1991 and Swing Era New
York: The Jazz Photographs of Charles Peterson by
Temple University Press in 1994. They are available in
both hardback and paperback. My new book Living the
Jazz Life, also for Oxford Universty Press, is now
available. A second volume of photographs by Charles
Peterson is in the
works.
--WRS
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