Introduction

White men born in 1917 America were not typically found frequenting Harlem jazz clubs in the 1930s. Or, 30 years later, championing the San Francisco counterculture and defending Lenny Bruce against obscenity charges.

But that was Ralph J. Gleason. Throughout his long career, he remained surprisingly open-minded to new ways of thinking and diverse forms of music. All the while challenging the status quo.

Broad-mindedness set him apart, as he readily embraced the culture, beliefs, and values of others, even when they differed from his own. Gleason celebrated highly unconventional music and culture that broke new ground.

The Beginning of Gleason’s Unorthodox Views

In my book, The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason, I trace the beginnings of Gleason’s unorthodox views to his conversion to jazz as a teenager. Indeed, for a white Catholic kid from an Irish-American family in the early 1930s to fall head over heels for Duke Ellington’s music was blasphemous to many. Duke’s music was so out of bounds that most radio stations programmed it for the wee hours of the morning lest it contaminate youngsters like Gleason.

When Gleason raved to his high school chums about Ellington, Earl Hines, Cab Calloway, and his other new heroes, few shared his excitement. As a result, he felt alienated.

Although existentialist philosophers view alienation as a fundamental aspect of the human experience, try explaining this to an adolescent. Gleason’s tender teenage psyche never recovered.

Moreover, Gleason’s jazz-related sense of isolation followed him to Columbia University. His saving grace, however, was discovering a hot jazz cult on campus where radicals put out the Columbia Daily Spectator, the school’s student newspaper. In fact, within two years, Gleason penned “Off the Record,” certifying discs by Bix Beiderbecke and torching those by the “sweet” bands dominating college dance floors.    

As my book shows, Gleason acquired his jazz bona fides at the same time he plunged into Columbia’s student protest movement. The result: music and progressive politics became inseparable for Gleason.

Why Care About the New York Days?

However, you may ask, “I know Ralph Gleason as the unofficial chronicler of the San Francisco counterculture, friend of Jerry and Grace, co-conspirator of Jerry Rubin, but why care about the New York days?”

Here’s why: The 1930s in New York City marked the beginning of America’s counterculture movement. Misfit writers, jazz virtuosos, and budding anarchists mixed it up in basement clubs on 52^nd Street, and sitting ‘round tables in the White sections of Black clubs, lower-melanated intruders drawn by the hard-swinging sounds of Cab Calloway and Jimmie Lunceford.

Gleason also loved the jazz old-timers, such as Bunk Johnson; their stories fascinated him. Not only their accounts of birthing jazz, but also their tales of Jim Crow abuse and the hardship of poverty. In fact, these stories stirred Gleason’s empathy for Black Americans, and he incorporated the musicians’ accounts into his music writing. I discuss this in Chapter 3, “The Politics of Jazz History-Telling.”

By the time he was thirty, Gleason had a firm understanding of the intricate connections between music and politics. He saw this firsthand during World War II, working in the Office of War Information. The U.S. propaganda organization broadcast American music across fascist Europe, fostering cultural democracy through jazz, country, and folk music.

Gleason and other progressive music enthusiasts of the time began to wonder, maybe it would be music, not politics, that would cure America of its puritanical hangups and currents of rightwing government oppression.

The First Counterculture Sensibility

This counterculture sensibility also arose in jazz scenes in the Midwest and West.

It came to the San Francisco Bay by emigres like pianist Jelly Roll Morton, and poets Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. And music critic Ralph Gleason, newly married to the supercool Jean Rayburn, a Downbeat contributor who shared Ralph’s love of the roughhewn music of Bunk Johnson and other jazz pioneers.

Ralph and Jean chased the jazz revival to San Francisco after the war and settled across the Bay in leafy Berkeley. Here, Gleason’s broad-mindedness flourished.

After writing for DownBeat and hot jazz fanzines, Gleason found a permanent home at the San Francisco Chronicle. There, starting in 1951 in the Sunday arts section, Gleason penned a weekly column called “Rhythm Section.” He applied his mastery of jazz criticism to the entire spectrum of postwar music genres from country music to R&B.

This is one of my favorite parts of the book: For the next decade, “Rhythm Section” and its successors, such as “On the Town,” gave that golden age of American music the respect and critical thinking it lacked elsewhere. Thanks to Gleason’s extraordinarily open ears, readers were treated to articles about revolutionary musicians from all genres, many of whom were marginalized due to racism, societal disapproval, or the public’s narrow tastes in the 1950s.   

Beyond Music: Gleason’s Broad Cultural Tastes

Moreover, Gleason’s broad cultural tastes extended beyond music; he wrote passionately about cutting-edge literature, film, and stand-up comedy. For example, he applauded books like Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son. In addition, Gleason compared these authors, as well as others, such as Nelson Algren and Ken Kesey, with musicians like John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

Gleason continued to make such music-lit comparisons after the rock revolution swept the country in 1964. For example, he compared the Beatles to the rebellious teens in Colin MacInnes’ novel Absolute Beginners.

Although he did not review films, Gleason loved cinema, as shown in his introduction to Casablanca: Script and Legend. Additionally, he embraced so-called “sick comics,” such as Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, and deeply admired Dick Gregory. Ultimately, Bruce became a close friend, even babysitting Gleason’s son! My book contains great anecdotes about Bruce and the Gleason family.

A Political Re-Awakening

However, Gleason covered more than cutting-edge culture. The rise of the New Left in the early 1960s re-awakened his progressive political instincts. In his music columns, Gleason fervently advocated for racial equality, incorporating social commentary into his music writing. He highlighted leftist thinkers such as Malcolm X, C. Wright Mills, and Frantz Fanon.

His editors at the Chronicle and DownBeat urged him to tone down his rhetoric. Undeterred, Gleason continued to connect the dots between musicians like John Coltrane and social issues, such as Black Nationalism. You can read about this in Chapter 5, “Winds of Change.” 

Closer to home, Gleason supported the rising student protest movement at UC Berkeley. In his columns and behind the scenes, Gleason supported progressive groups like the W.E.B. Du Bois Society and the Free Speech Movement. His behind-the-scenes activism landed him on government watch lists.

Therefore, by the time Gleason became the world’s chief advocate of the San Francisco counterculture, he had been sparking music-oriented youth cultures for three decades. This was Gleason’s superpower. Generation after generation, his first love was the music of young firebrands tearing up the old rules and writing new ones. Dizzy Gillespie, Hank Williams, Miles Davis, Johnny Cash, Ornette Coleman, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, members of the Jefferson Airplane – all in their twenties when Gleason fell for their music.

Ralph Gleason and the ‘60s Counterculture

Now, on to the ‘60s counterculture. This is a good time for me to illustrate my closing points about Gleason’s open-mindedness.  

First, although many think Gleason’s relationship with the Flower Children was uneventful, this is not so. Yes, he pretty much single-handedly brought the San Francisco counterculture to the world, with the help of Bay Area correspondents at Newsweek and Crawdaddy.

However, as the scene evolved, Gleason took it upon himself to occasionally critique it, pointing out both its weaknesses and its strengths. This caused a schism between Gleason and elements within the Bay Area counterculture. This divide continued after Gleason co-founded Rolling Stone in 1967. That story has been oft retold, but my research adds a wealth of fresh insights into Gleason’s experiences at Rolling Stone and his relationship with Jann Wenner.

Once again, Gleason discovered that holding unpopular beliefs within his social circle came with a price, the risk of rejection by one’s comrades. This raises my final point about the alienating effects of Gleason’s broad-mindedness. Estrangement from the Establishment is one thing. But alienation from one’s circle of co-conspirators is another.

Conclusion

Without me giving the story away, Gleason came to terms with the counterculture.

Moreover, he sustained his wide-open tastes into the 1970s. His final major music reviews focused on the new wave of roots rock artists, including the Band, the Allman Brothers, and Boz Scaggs. His final Chronicle column? A glowing recommendation for Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train. The young critic, who, like Gleason, never shied away from critiquing sacred cows, including Gleason himself, had shared galleys of the book with Gleason for his comments.

For my book, I interviewed Marcus about his evolving relationship with Gleason. He had some great stories.  

A final note. Gleason exemplified the type of broad-mindedness that is sorely needed today. In the political sphere, Donald Trump’s MAGA movement glorifies intolerance. In the world of mass media pop music journalism, the industry has lost its openness to cutting-edge sounds. I plan to discuss the relevance of Gleason to today’s world in a future post.   

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