Jazz Journalists Association - Member public profile

First name

W. Royal

Last name

Stokes

photo/avatar

City

Elkins

Country

US

I am a jazz

writer
web producer
radio/tv program host/producer

website/blog URL 1

wroyalstokes.com

I am the author/producer of

See below

Other key Publications/Productions

The Jazz Scene: An Informal History from New Orleans to 1990 (Oxford University Press, 1991), Swing Era New York: The Jazz Photographs of Charles Peterson (Temple University Press, 1994), Living the Jazz Life: Conversations with Forty Musicians about Their Careers in Jazz (Oxford University Press, 2000), and Growing Up With Jazz: Twenty-Four Musicians Talk About Their Lives and Careers (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Volume 1 of his trilogy of novels Backwards Over, Rufus Has Been on the Lam, saw publication in June 2015. (Volumes 2 & 3 will see print over the course of the 2015 summer.)
Royal is currently at work on a memoir and A W. Royal Stokes Jazz, Blues & Beyond Reader.

My interests in jazz are:

All periods and styles

More about what I do:

W. Royal Stokes was the 2014 recipient of the Jazz Journalists Association’s Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism Award. He has been observing the jazz, blues, and popular music worlds since the early 1940s. He was editor of Jazz Notes (the quarterly journal of the Jazz Journalists Association) from 1992 to 2001 and is a contributor to the annual Down Beat Critics Poll. He has been the Washington Post's jazz critic and editor of JazzTimes and is the author of The Jazz Scene: An Informal History from New Orleans to 1990 (Oxford University Press, 1991), Swing Era New York: The Jazz Photographs of Charles Peterson (Temple University Press, 1994), Living the Jazz Life: Conversations with Forty Musicians about Their Careers in Jazz (Oxford University Press, 2000), and Growing Up With Jazz: Twenty-Four Musicians Talk About Their Lives and Careers (Oxford University Press, 2005). His novel Backwards Over will see publication in 2011. He is currently at work on a memoir and a fourth collection of jazz and blues profiles. A paperback reprint of Growing Up With Jazz was published in the fall of 2008.

I support the JJA because

The JJA is the only international network of writers, broadcasters, photographers, and others documenting the jazz scene and its history. The notation above that my membership in the JJA commenced 17 March 2010 is incorrect. I have been a member of the JJA since 1989 and edited its quarterly Jazz Notes from 1992 until 2001. I let my membership lapse for several years in the 2000s because I was never sent a bill, and paid up in 2010. Thus the 2010 date above under "Member since . . . ," which I cannot edit a change of, is incorrect by 21 years.

W. Royal Stokes

Member profile details