Charles Edward Smith (jazz)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Charles Edward Smith (June 8, 1904 – December 16, 1970) was an American jazz author and critic. Born in Thomaston, Connecticut, he became an influential writer who helped shape early jazz history.

In the 1920s he began collecting hot jazz records and later worked with William Russell, Eugene Williams, John Hammond, Hugues Panassié, and Charles Delaunay in the Hot Record Society, which led to the creation of HRS Records. He and Steve Smith edited the jazz magazine Hot Record Society Rag. Smith wrote for journals such as the Symposium, Daily Worker, and Esquire, becoming one of the first important jazz critics of the 1930s.

With Frederic Ramsey, he published Jazzmen in 1939, one of America’s first jazz histories, and contributed to American Jazz Music with Wilder Hobson. They wrote about groups like the Austin High School Gang and conducted interviews with early jazz musicians such as Willie Cornish, Papa Jack Laine, Leon Roppolo, and Nick LaRocca. Smith and Ramsey argued that swing grew out of blues and traditional jazz.

During the Jazzmen research, musicians kept mentioning the New Orleans trumpeter Bunk Johnson, which led Bill Russell to rediscover him in 1942. In the same year Smith published the Jazz Record Book, aiming to create a list of the most important jazz records. His ideas influenced many later writers.

Smith wrote for The New Republic (1938) and Jazz Information, and he produced liner notes for Folkways Records albums, including Folk Music USA and Music Down Home. He also wrote the accompaniment text for John Hammond’s concert series LP From Spirituals to Swing – Carnegie Hall Concerts, 1938/39 (Vanguard).

The International Society of Jazz Research regards Smith as one of the era’s most important early jazz critics, alongside Hugues Panassié, Winthrop Sargeant, Wilder Hobson, Don Knowlton, and Aaron Copland.