Born in Germany and raised in Austria and Denmark, where after the war “I really began to get into jazz.” Morgenstern moved to the U.S. in 1947 to rejoin his father, who escaped the Nazis in Austria. He worked for a bit at the New York Times before being drafted, returning to Germany to serve. On his return he used his G.I. Bill benefits to attend Brandeis University — and work for the New York Post. He returned each time to Jazz. Morgenstern wasn’t a musician: he wrote about music for Jazz Journal. That only lasted three years before he was hired to edit Metronome, starting in 1961, and then was hired away by Jazz in 1962, then Down Beat in 1967.
“Morgenstern became one of the pre-eminent eyewitnesses to jazz history in the second half of the 20th century,” the New York Times says, “invited to jam sessions, recording sessions and late-night gatherings to which few ‘civilians’ were given entree.” His in-depth study paid off: in 1976 he was named the director of Rutgers’ Institute of Jazz Studies, taking over from founder Marshall Stearns. Morgenstern continued Stearns’ work to make the Institute the world’s largest collection of jazz documents, recordings, and memorabilia. Morgenstern also produced concerts, including the Jazz in the Garden series at the Museum of Modern Art, and hosted television and radio programs; taught jazz history at universities and conservatories; and served as a panelist for jazz festivals and awards shows across the U.S. and Europe.
Probably for the public, Morgenstern is best known as a prolific author of comprehensive album liners, which won him eight Grammy Awards for Best Album Notes between 1973 and 2010. “I don’t like the word ‘critic’ very much,” Morgenstern wrote in his memoir and essay collection, Living With Jazz *. “I look at myself more as an advocate for the music than as a critic. My most enthusiastic early readers were my musician friends, and one thing led to another. What has served me best, I hope, is that I learned about the music not from books but from the people who created it.” He retired from Institute of Jazz Studies in 2011, but never stopped writing about Jazz. Morgenstern died from congestive heart failure in a Manhattan hospital on September 7. He was 94.