Category:Tom Morgan

Tom Morgan is a freelance author and radio producer living in New Orleans. His first book, "From Cakewalks to Concert Halls: An Illustrated History of African American Popular Music: From 1895 to 1930," published by Elliott and Clark, was awarded second place in the Ralph Gleason Music Book Awards for the best music books published in 1992. He has lectured at numerous colleges, high schools and elementary schools about jazz and blues and owns an extensive collection of early African American written sheet music. In 1996, he was an Associate Editor and major contributor for the African American Culture Volume of the "Dictionary of Twentieth Century Culture," published by Manly, Inc. For this project, he was in charge of all the musical entries.

In New Orleans, Tom has lectured over twenty times at the New Orleans Jazz National Park,covering a broad range of topics including: New Orleans recordings in the 1920s; the origins of the brass band funeral song, "Oh Didn't He Ramble;" and, Black Jazz Bands overseas prior to WWII. He also has given talks at the annual New Orleans Music Colloquium for the past four years and at the International Louis Armstrong Symposium held during the New Orleans Satchmo Summerfest. These lectures are attended by local jazz enthusiasts, tourists and local school children.

Tom has published many articles, most recently profiles of Clarence Williams and Joe "King" Oliver for the Louisiana Masters series in Offbeat Magazine. His Tuesday New Orleans Music Show (from 11am-2 pm, Tuesdays) and Jazz Roots Show (from 9-11am Wednesdays), can be heard on WWOZ-FM in New Orleans and on wwoz.org around the world. Prior to hosting radio shows on WWOZ, Tom produced two radio shows for WTJU-FM, a non-commercial radio station at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for eighteen years.

Tom has maintained, designed and hosted the Jazz Roots web site since 1995. This early Jazz web site is visited by an average of 2500 unique visitors daily. The site is included in many grade and high school courses as a web site to learn about early jazz and the history of black music at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.