Friday, January 02, 2009

Hentoff's Half-Century

In the same week that The Village Voice published its annual jazz issue, the venerable New York City weekly gave a pink slip to columnist Nat Hentoff. While younger readers of The Voice might only know Hentoff for his social focus of the past couple of decades, he was one of the music's most authoritative champions in the paper's early years. Last year marked Hentoff's 50th anniversary with the publication, which was launched in 1955.

On a related note, if you ever get a chance to see the CBC one-on-one interview between Hentoff and Lenny Bruce, grab it. Terrific stuff.

3 comments:

tim said...

hey where can I find that interview...I dig Hentoff.
t

James Hale said...

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recorded it sometime in the early '60s. If my memory serves, it was broadcast a couple of years ago on one of CBC Newsworld's documentary programs. I'd suggest a search of their online archives, or perhaps drop a note to CBC Audience Relations. I've never seen so much smoke on a TV program.

Anonymous said...

This is not the first ugliness from the Village Voice ownership.

So months ago, they summarily dispatched Alan Rich, the acknowledged dean of classical music critics working today.

Alan is a peripatetic octogenarian who is never home, always at a concert, and whose writing is as sharp as ever at his blog, http://www.soiveheard.org