Remembering Ralph J. Gleason

Ralph J. Gleason’s name still appears on the masthead of Rolling Stone, and despite his death in 1975, his spirit continues to hover, however faintly, over the magazine’s desire to include social and political reporting alongside music criticism. A sample of Gleason (selected by his son, Toby) has been collected between hard covers in a pair of books from Yale University Press, Conversations in Jazz: The Ralph J. Gleason Interviews and Music in the Air: The Selected Writings of Ralph J. Gleason.

Gleason was already among the first American writers to take jazz seriously before he migrated from the East Coast to San Francisco after World War II. He penned music reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle and Down Beat and became such a respected figure among jazz musicians (at a time when the music reached unparalleled heights) that many would stop by his house in Berkeley and allow their host to tape their conversations. Those recordings were the basis for most of Conversations in Jazz.

Gleason had opportunity to speak with many of the great luminaries, including Horace Silver, Dizzy Gillespie and John Lewis. Decades before his association with Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones was already coming to terms with the fact that the jazz he loved wasn’t selling and he needed to find other gigs. Duke Ellington told Gleason that “listening” is the most important thing a musician or composer can do. Gleason’s interview with John Coltrane was among the most extensive ever recorded.

While many jazz critics of his generation gazed with scorn, the open-minded Gleason embraced 1960s rock music and had a ringside seat at the emergence of the San Francisco scene. Some of his writings on rock are included in Music in the Air. Coming across as a supportive avuncular mentor for the ’60s generation, Gleason is often dated in today’s eyes through his exertions to stay hip, his prose peppered with such affirmations as “dig” and references to money as “bread.” At his best moments as a rock critic, he practiced the Duke’s dictum about careful listening.