Floyd Levin (September 24, 1922 – January 29, 2007) was a jazz historian and writer whose articles were published in many magazines, including ''

Down Beat ' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chi ...

'', ''

Jazz Journal International ''Jazz Journal'' is a British jazz magazine established in 1946 by Sinclair Traill (1904–1981). It was first published in London under the title ''Pick Up'', which Traill founded as a locus for serious jazz criticism in Britain.Roberta Freund S ...

'', ''American Rag'', and ''

Metronome A metronome, from ancient Greek μέτρον (''métron'', "measure") and νομός (nomós, "custom", "melody") is a device that produces an audible click or other sound at a regular interval that can be set by the user, typically in beats pe ...

''."Floyd Levin, 84; influential jazz journalist and historian"
''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

''. Retrieved 11 June 2013. He received several awards for his work, including the Leonard Feather Communicator Award, given annually by the Los Angeles Jazz Society. He is the author of ''Classic Jazz: A Personal View of the Music and the Musicians'', which chronicles his first-hand encounters with many jazz musicians such as:

Benny Carter Bennett Lester Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. With Johnny Hodges, he was a pioneer on the alto saxophone. From the beginning of his career ...

, Barney Bigard,

Artie Shaw Artie Shaw (born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky; May 23, 1910 – December 30, 2004) was an American clarinetist, composer, bandleader, actor and author of both fiction and non-fiction. Widely regarded as "one of jazz's finest clarinetists", Shaw led ...

James P. Johnson James Price Johnson (February 1, 1894 – November 17, 1955) was an American pianist and composer. A pioneer of stride piano, he was one of the most important pianists in the early era of recording, and like Jelly Roll Morton, one of the key ...

and Louis Armstrong. Levin was instrumental in raising the funds for the statue of Louis Armstrong in

Louis Armstrong Park Louis Armstrong Park is a park located in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, just across Rampart Street from the French Quarter. In the 1960s a controversial urban renewal project leveled a substantial portion of the Tremé neig ...

, New Orleans.

References

External links

Floyd Levin
NAMM Oral History Interview (2002)
Floyd Levin Archival Collection Finding Aid
1922 births 2007 deaths American music historians 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers 20th-century American male writers {{US-historian-stub