1 Funding for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program NEA Jazz Master interview was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. DAN MORGENSTERN NEA Jazz Master (2007) Interviewee: Dan Morgenstern (October 24, 1929 - ) Interviewer: Ed Berger with recording engineer Ken Kimery Date: March 28-29, 2007 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution Description: Transcript, 83 pp. Berger: It’s March 28th, 2007. I’m Ed Berger. I’m here at the Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark interviewing my good friend and colleague Dan Morgenstern. Ken Kimery is presiding at the technical aspects. This is for the Smithsonian Oral History Project. Dan, we want to begin the inquisition with your earliest memories, but first, for the record, could you state your full name and your birth date and place? Morgenstern: I’m Dan Michael Morgenstern. I was born on October 24th, 1929. I am presently director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University’s Newark campus. Berger: Why don’t you tell us about your ancestry, as much as you remember – your parents and even further back if you . Morgenstern: It’s a fairly complicated – but I’ll try to be brief. My father was born in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Between the world wars it was Poland. After World War II it became the Soviet Union, but now it’s Ukraine. So it had a scattered history. He was born into a Hassidic family, but not in what we generally think of as eastern European Jewry. We mostly think of what they call a stetl, which is a small For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or
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