Grammy
Award-winning jazz historian and author Dan Morgenstern has been awarded the
Rutgers University Award, one of its highest recognitions, by President Richard
L. McCormick. The award, which includes
both a medal and a citation, recognizes individuals who have given
distinguished service to the university and demonstrated great leadership or
made outstanding contributions in scholarship, public service, business,
industry, athletics, or the arts. Previous winners include Albert Schatz, co-discoverer
of streptomycin, and U.S. Senators Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg.

Dan Morgenstern with some of his Grammy awards.

The
award citation states, “Your
exceptional contributions to preserving, promoting, and advancing our
understanding of jazz, have ensured the enduring legacy of this great American
art form. In your work as Director of the Institute
of Jazz Studies at Rutgers-Newark since 1976, you have built the Institute into
the largest archival collection of
jazz and jazz-related materials in the world and a tremendous source of pride
among our university community.”

 Morgenstern retired from the jazz institute in January
2012.

“I join President McCormick in lauding the memorable
achievements of this remarkable Jazz Master,” stated Philip Yeagle, Interim
Chancellor of Rutgers-Newark. “Dan Morgenstern leaves a three-fold legacy: the
brick and mortar of the Institute of Jazz Studies in Dana Library; the
thousands of lives he has inspired and touched through his passion for
teaching, writing, preserving, and enjoying jazz; and the gift to the future of
jazz, here and around the world, of the archive he has built.”

The award was made to Morgenstern at a reception in
his honor on April 17.

Morgenstern’s
legacy truly is amazing.  An
internationally acclaimed historian, writer, and educator, he has received
eight Grammy awards, the latest in 2010 for his album notes for “The Complete
Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946), on Mosaic Records.” 

Morgenstern
received three Deems Taylor awards from ASCAP, the American Society of
Composers, Authors and Publishers. The first two were for his books, Jazz People and Living With Jazz; then in December 2007, he received his third, for
his liner notes on “If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It!" Earlier that
year, Morgenstern stood alongside other jazz luminaries on a stage in New York–
the only non-musician in the group – as he was named a Jazz Master by the
National Endowment for the Arts, receiving the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters
Award for Jazz Advocacy.  (The New York Times calls the “Jazz
Master” designation “the nation’s highest jazz honor.”)  That same year Down Beat magazine named Morgenstern the 27^th recipient
of its Lifetime Achievement Award, and The Recording Academy honored
Morgenstern with a Legacy Award.

Morgenstern’s
extensive knowledge of jazz led famed documentarian Ken Burns to ask
Morgenstern to act as senior adviser to his 10-part PBS series, “Jazz." Morgenstern, who
attended Brandeis University, has taught jazz history at the Peabody Institute,
Brooklyn College, New York University, and the Schweitzer Institute of Music,
as well as in the Masters Program in Jazz History and
Research at Rutgers-Newark.  He
co-produces and co-hosts the “Jazz from the Archives” program on WBGO-FM, and
co-hosts the monthly Jazz Research Roundtable at Rutgers-Newark.

Morgenstern’s career includes seven
years as editor of Down Beat
magazine, last editor of Metronome and
first editor of Jazz Magazine, stints
as jazz reviewer for the New York Post
and record-reviewer for the Chicago Sun
Times. He has written hundreds of articles, co-authored or contributed to
numerous jazz books, and is frequently quoted in the national media. He is
currently writing his memoirs.

The Rutgers Institute of Jazz
Studies, the world’s most extensive jazz archives, is part of the Rutgers
University Libraries. The IJS is housed in the John Cotton Dana Library on the
Newark campus of Rutgers, at 185 University Ave.: http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/IJS/