Gary Giddins
Gary Giddins (born March 21, 1948) jazz critic, author, director, is best known for his longtime work with The Village Voice. Born in Brooklyn, and raised on Long Island, Giddins graduated from Grinnell College, Iowa, in 1970. After some freelance work as a music and film critic, in 1974 he started writing his column "Weather Bird" for the Village Voice, which he ended in December 2003.
Giddins has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award, and the Bell Atlantic Award for Visions of Jazz: The First Century in 1998. His other books include Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams—The Early Years, 1903–1940, which won the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award and the ARSC Award for Excellence in Historical Sound Research; Weatherbird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century; Faces in the Crowd; Natural Selection; and biographies of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. He has won an unparalleled six ASCAP– Deems Taylor Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Peabody Award in Broadcasting.
Selected Works
Books
- Riding on a Blue Note (1981)
- Rhythm-a-ning (1985)
- Celebrating Bird (1987)
- Satchmo (1988)
- Faces in the Crowd (1992)
- Visions of Jazz: The First Century (1998)
- Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams (2001)
- Weather Bird (2004)
- Natural Selection (2006)
- Jazz (2009)
Films
- 1987 Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker
- 1990 Masters of American Music: Satchmo - Louis Armstrong aka Satchmo