Anderson@Large

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

Sixty-one years ago on August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people gathered for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Jazz musicians were the vanguard of the movement for freedom and civil rights, a fact acknowledged by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival.

Long before Beyoncé was born, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins recorded “The Freedom Suite” which featured Oscar Pettiford on bass and Max Roach on drums.

Thousands of people from across the country arrived in Washington, DC on the “Freedom Train,” a special fleet of trains chartered by A. Philip Randolph, organizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

From Louis Armstrong’s “Black and Blue” to Charles Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus,” jazz musicians talked the talk and walked the walk. Trumpeter Lee Morgan and Max Roach were among the musicians on board the Freedom Train from New York City to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Newport Jazz Festival

I last attended the Newport Jazz Festival, then known as the JVC Jazz Festival, in 2007. The lineup included Dave Brubeck, Jack DeJohnette, Al Green, B.B. King, Christian McBride, Branford Marsalis, Marcus Miller, Joshua Redman and Susan Tedeschi.

The 2024 Newport Jazz Festival kicks off on Friday, August 2.

The event is sold out so let’s look at the iconic festival’s origin story, the Storyville jazz club in Boston.

In the Newport Jazz Festival’s monthly newsletter, fittingly titled “Storyville,” John Peabody writes:

To go back to the very beginning of Newport Jazz— and really Newport Folk as well— get on Boston’s Green Line and take it to Copley Plaza. Walk one block south on Exeter past the public library to the Copley Plaza Hotel.

Long before Miles played Newport Jazz and said, “I wasn’t real popular at this time, but that began to change after I played at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955.”

Before there was Nina playing Porgy to a hushed audience in 1960, or Duke, who declared, “I was born at Newport in 1956.” Well before Dizzy, Monk, Mingus, Aretha, Frank Zappa, and Led Zeppelin in 1969 and before Common, Norah Jones, Christian McBride, The Roots, and Jon Batiste, there was George Wein, standing in front of the Copley Plaza Hotel in 1950 with dreams of a jazz club he’d call Storyville.

Read more

2025 NEA Jazz Masters

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced the recipients of the nation’s highest honor in jazz.

The 2025 NEA Jazz Masters are:

• Marshall Allen is a master saxophonist and 100-year-old leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra.
• Marilyn Crispell is an avant-garde pianist and composer.
• Chucho Valdés is a pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger, and influential figure in modern Afro-Cuban jazz.
• Gary Giddins is a jazz critic and biographer, and recipient A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy.

NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD, said:

We are delighted to welcome these four luminaries to the ranks of NEA Jazz Masters—they have each in their own way played a crucial role in the nurturing and evelopment of this art form and demonstrate the immense diversity and creativity found in jazz today.

Each honoree will receive an award of $25,000 and celebrated at a free tribute concert held in collaboration with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on April 26, 2025. For more information, go here.

Lee Morgan Proposed for Google Doodle

Edward “Lee” Morgan was born in Philadelphia on July 10, 1938. Since his last heavenly birthday, Lee has been honored with a Pennsylvania historical marker.

At the dedication ceremony, he received commendations from Governor Josh Shapiro, Senator Bob Casey, Representatives Dwight Evans and Brendan Boyle, state Senator Vincent Hughes, City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker.

Lee’s masterpiece, “The Sidewinder,” was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry on April 16, 2024.



To celebrate Lee’s 86th birthday, I proposed the legendary trumpeter for a Google Doodle. If Google accepts my proposal, Lee will join his former bandleader, Dizzy Gillespie, who was honored with a Google Doodle on October 21, 2010.

Happy birthday, Lee.

Black Music Month: Max Roach

This year marks the centennial of the birth of drummer, composer, bandleader and activist Max Roach. His groundbreaking album, “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite,” was influenced by the Emancipation Proclamation and the emerging Civil Rights Movement.

Born in North Carolina, Roach’s family moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, when he was four. He grew up near the corner of Greene and Marcy avenues where the City of New York has co-named a street for the iconic drummer. Fittingly, the “Max Roach Way” co-naming ceremony was held on Juneteenth, Freedom Day.

The Library of Congress recently opened the David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery.

The permanent gallery, “Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress,” features more than 120 items from across the Library’s holdings. The depository for the Max Roach Papers, the manuscript page for “We Insist!” is on display in the new gallery.

A Tale of Two Headlines

Two days after Lee Morgan’s historical marker was unveiled, The Philadelphia Inquirer published this demeaning and defamatory headline.

Writing for The Inquirer, Shaun Brady dug up fake news that Lee Morgan’s gravesite had “vanished” and a white fan “unearthed” it. Even if the claim were true, why did Brady and his editor, Bedatri Choudhury, devote coverage of the dedication ceremony to “news” first reported by NPR in 2022?

Shaun did not interview Lee’s family members. In an email, Choudhury wrote, “In retrospect, he should’ve spoken to Mr. Morgan’s family.”

Lee is buried alongside his father, Otto Morgan. There was a callous disregard for the emotional distress and harm the false claim would inflict on Lee’s family.

After I complained that Brady’s “different angle” portrayed the family in a false light, the headline was changed.

An Update was added at the end of the article: “This story has been updated to clarify that the grave of Lee Morgan was never lost, but simply covered over.”

The Update begs the question: If Lee’s gravesite was never lost, what was the point of Brady’s story? Nine of the 17 paragraphs are about the “discovery” and the “discoverer.” Lee Morgan played second fiddle to a random white man.

The headline was changed but the damage had already been done. The body of the story will live forever on the Internet.

While the family explores their options, I want The Inquirer’s journalistic negligence to become a case study about the importance of fact-checking and editing.

Lee Morgan, Black Excellence and Sensational Journalism

An African proverb says, “Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero.” On International Jazz Day, we told the story of Lee Morgan, a story of Black Excellence.

Even when we tell our story, a white journalist lionizes a white man in his report on the dedication of Edward Lee Morgan’s historical marker.

Writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Shaun Brady dug up the sensationalistic claim that a white fan “discovered” Lee Morgan’s “lost gravesite.” The “discovery” was made after the fan wandered around White Chapel Memorial Park during the coronavirus pandemic. When he finally asked for help, the groundskeeper took him to the location. The grave marker was obscured by overgrown grass and vegetation at a time when there was a worker shortage across the board.

The “discovery” was so sensational that nine of the 17 paragraphs in Brady’s story are about a mediocre white man. That is more than the combined number of paragraphs about the legendary Black trumpeter, the Black family who loves him, the Black musicians who knew him, the Black property owners who preserved the memory of the Aqua Lounge, and the Black woman who nominated Lee Morgan for a historical marker and listing on the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.

It was lost on Brady that he should have fact-checked the claim. I brought his journalistic malpractice to the attention of his editor, Bedatri Choudhury. Her response: “In retrospect, he should’ve spoken to Mr. Morgan’s family.”

In a recent profile of longtime jazz producer Leo Gadson, Michelle Lyu wrote:

Today, the narrative of jazz is shaped by an essentially white worldview; one which separates it from the people who made the major contribution to its creation and continuance.

This white worldview turned a joyous celebration of Black Excellence into a white savior story. In so doing, The Inquirer tarnished Lee Morgan’s legacy and portrayed his family members in a false light.

Malcolm X is memorialized on the mural that overlooks Lee Morgan’s historical marker. Our Black Shining Prince warned us about newspapers.

The sensationalistic claim published in The Inquirer has readers “hating” the Black family for not knowing the location of Lee Morgan’s gravesite and “loving” the white man who discovered a gravesite that was not lost.

Lee Morgan’s family will correct the false and defamatory claim by any means necessary.