The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason is now available in paperback!

This is the first biography of music journalist and Rolling Stone magazine co-founder Ralph J. Gleason. He was a key force in the development of American popular music from the 1940s into the 1970s, significant decades when most of today’s popular music genres, such as modern jazz, rock, and rhythm and blues, emerged. Gleason, unlike most of his peers, wrote about every idiom of American music. This gave him insights into the deep historical currents that ran through these genres, such as the struggle for racial equality.

An Extraordinary Music Journalist

Across his career, Gleason achieved remarkable accomplishments while risking his job and reputation to speak his mind.

First, he was a fiery commentator writing for hot jazz fanzines during the 1940s New York Jazz Revival, taking on major music critics. Moving from New York to San Francisco, he became a leading champion of West Coast Jazz, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle and Downbeat.

While most critics stuck to one genre, Gleason broke tradition and expanded his beat to include not only jazz but all postwar music genres. In the 1950s, he interviewed top musicians such as Miles Davis, Hank Williams, and Elvis Presley and reviewed their shows.

Legendary musicians revered Gleason, including Frank Sinatra, who was known for his antagonistic relationship with the press. Gleason praised Sinatra’s work in the 1950s but later wrote a scathing review of his performance at Madison Square Garden. Sinatra’s surprising response: “Ralph often led me to better performances, and I am eternally grateful to him for that. He remains a rare and gifted friend.”  

Not content to write about the music he loved, Gleason produced educational television programs, co-founded the Monterey Jazz Festival, and launched a jazz journal. Amid moral panics, he defended rhythm, blues, and rock ‘n’ roll from god-fearing critics. During Cold War paranoia, he critiqued colonialism and supported free jazz and its ties to Black Nationalism while other jazz journalists shied away. Behind the scenes, he advised leftist organizations, which landed him on government watch lists.

When San Francisco became the nucleus of American Bohemianism, Gleason promoted Beat Generation writers such as poets Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and novelist Jack Kerouac. As the 1960s counterculture grew out of this milieu, Gleason recognized its significance early on. He pioneered rock criticism and was among the first American critics to praise the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan.

Behind the scenes, Gleason helped spark the San Francisco psychedelic rock scene, which quickly spread globally. His expertise as a music journalist helped establish Rolling Stone magazine, and his contacts with musicians, record labels, and advertisers proved invaluable during the magazine’s early years. Gleason also produced critically acclaimed television documentaries featuring major musicians such as Duke Ellington, Dylan, and the Jefferson Airplane. Gleason continued to write prolifically until his untimely death in 1975.    

The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason

Ten years in the making, this book combines thorough research with captivating storytelling. It brings Gleason’s remarkable contributions to life while drawing on a significant body of exclusive sources.

The depth of research and verifiable information this biography provides are rarely found in books on popular music, yet its scholarly weight doesn’t weigh it down. It’s a fun read, engaging readers with exclusive interviews with important figures like Jann Wenner, Grace Slick, Greil Marcus, and Nat Hentoff. 

It’s also peppered with never-before-told anecdotes about Miles Davis, Lenny Bruce, Joan Baez, Ken Kesey, and others Gleason befriended. It reveals unpublished correspondence between Gleason and critical cultural figures like Kesey, Nelson Algren, and Jerry Rubin.

Another essential source is Rolling Stone magazine’s Ralph Gleason files, which had never before been made public. Tying all these sources together is a deep dive into Gleason’s writing from the 1930s into the 1970s.

Through Gleason’s activism, readers get an intimate look at important social and political movements, from the start of the American student protest movement at Columbia University in the 1930s to Gleason mentoring leaders of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the 1960s.

Ralph Gleason’s story has never been more relevant than today, as the Trump administration threatens to deport Columbia University student protestors. Gleason devoted his career to supporting musicians who furthered progressive social change. 

This book also comes at a time when many question the relevance of music journalism in the streaming age. Gleason exemplified the intellectually rigorous, politically engaged music critic we need today. He saw the people’s music as a force stronger than politics. His role was to direct readers to the progressive messages emanating from vinyl records and reverberant ballrooms.  

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The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason has garnered positive reviews and endorsements, and PopMatters and Best Classic Bands included it in their lists of the best music books of 2024. Here is a sampling:

“In this superb book, Don Armstrong gives Gleason what he deserves and what we desperately need: a richly detailed chronicle of this singular writer/producer/social activist’s career and a timely argument about the indispensable role such people play in shaping and sustaining our culture and our democracy.”

– John Gennari, author of Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics 

“The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason is a thoughtful celebration and an engagingly detailed reading of the work of one of the great American music journalists. Above all, Don Armstrong captures the astonishing energy with which Gleason sought to make sense of the music (and the country) that he loved.”

– Simon Frith, author of Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music

“Fascinating deconstruction and analysis of the esthetic and ethical crusade of America’s greatest and most eloquent musical critic, Ralph J Gleason, who understood that the people’s music — gospel, blues, folk, jazz and rock and roll — were at the root of American identity and at its best spoke with morality and honesty and had the power to sway a nation and to change our lives.”

– Jann Wenner, founder of Rolling Stone magazine and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame

“A thorough, unstuffy study of a figure who, like the early journalistic figures he encountered in his father’s horse racing papers, took on the role of secular priest, dishing out revelations and real talk in equal measure, all the while believing “in the magic that can set you free.”

– Declan Ryan, The Times Literary Supplement

“[This] book makes a strong case for Gleason’s continued relevance today. He catalyzed the entire San Francisco scene, Armstrong writes, which launched not only the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane and Creedence Clearwater Revival but the idea of writing seriously about the music the kids are listening to. He was also “an unapologetic polemicist fiercely dedicated to cultural democracy,” Armstrong writes, with a nod and a wink to the polarization of the present day.”

– James Sullivan, San Francisco Chronicle

“Armstrong places Ralph J. Gleason smack dab in the middle of music history and the overall counterculture of his times, reminiscent of Woody Allen’s Leonard Zelig character – he was backstage for many important events.”

– Chris Ingalls, popmatters

“We’ve waited too long for a full-length biography of legendary music journalist Ralph J. Gleason. Now, almost five decades after Gleason’s death in 1975 at age 58, Don Armstrong has produced The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason: Dispatches from the Front.”

– Peter Richardson, author of No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead

“Armstrong’s biography does what I want a biography of a critic to do, emphasizing the work, contextualizing it, exploring not just what went into Gleason’s writing but what came out—the impact his writing had, the feuds and the praise it inspired.”

– Scott Woods, rockcritics.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Images

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Number One Jazz Writer

1. The Horseplayer’s Son (1917-34)

2. Hot Jazz Off the Record (1934-38)

3. The Politics of Jazz History-Telling (1938-1946)

4. San Francisco (1946-56)

5. Winds of Change (1956-63)

6. An Entertainment of Dissent (1964)

7. The Jazz Liverpool of the West (1965)

8. A Sonic High (1965-67)

9. The Rolling Stone Generation (1967-69)

10. We’ve Had All That (1969-74)

11. Ralph, This is Your City (1974-1975)

Conclusion: One Picket Left

Endnotes

Index

The Life and Writings of Ralph J. Gleason: Dispatches from the Front

ISBN 9781501366987

The hardback edition was released on February 8, 2024.

The paperback edition will be released on August 21, 2025.

9 x 6 inches

289 pages

Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Publishing