Chris Albertson (born
Christiern Gunnar Albertson) (
October 18, 1931) is a
New York City-based jazz journalist, writer and
record producer.
He was born in
Reykjavík and educated in
Iceland, Denmark and
England before studying commercial art in
Copenhagen. In
1947, Albertson made a discovery which was to change his life when he happened upon a
Bessie Smith recording on the Danish radio; it led to an abiding interest in
jazz and
blues music. On his home tape machine, Albertson recorded visiting British
New Orleans revivalists Ken Colyer, Chris Barber and
Lonnie Donegan in
1953. These recordings were subsequently released on the Danish
Storyville Records and
British Tempo Records labels, and remain in the former's catalog.
In
1957, after two years as a disc jockey for Armed Forces Radio at Keflavík Air Base, in Iceland, Albertson migrated to the
United States (naturalised
1963) initially working in commercial radio in
Philadelphia, WCAU (a CBS affiliate) and WHAT-FM, a 24-hour jazz station. At these stations, he conducted a number of interviews, including a rare one with
Lester Young, one of only two extant with the tenor saxophonist.
In
1960-61 he was employed by
Riverside Records' Bill Grauer as a producer. In this capacity, he arranged and recorded the last sessions of blues singer
Ida Cox (whom he brought out of retirement) and legendary boogie woogie pianist
Meade Lux Lewis, and supervised the label's memorable Living Legends series of location recordings. The initial albums in this series were made in
New Orleans and featured such pioneer
jazz musicians as pianist
Sweet Emma Barrett, clarinetist
Louis Cottrell, trumpeters
Percy Humphrey and
Kid Thomas, blues duo Billie and Dede Pierce, and trombonist
Jim Robinson. He continued the series in Chicago, with performances by
Lil Armstrong, Alberta Hunter, Little Brother Montgomery, and
Earl Hines . Albertson subsequently worked as producer for
Prestige Records, supervising sessions by, among others, guitarist/singer Lonnie Johnson, whom he had pulled from obscurity while working in Philadelphia. He also started his own production company, supervising sessions that included
Howard McGhee, Roy Eldridge, Bud Freeman, Ray Bryant, and
Elmer Snowden. In the mid-sixties, following a period as general manager of Pacifica station, WBAI, in New York, Albertson went to work for the
BBC in London, advising them on how to adapt their radio programmes for sale in North America.
In 1971, Albertson co-produced and hosted "The Jazz Set," a weekly television program that was aired from coast to coast by the PBS network and featured such guests as
Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, Randy Weston, Jimmy Heath, and
Ray Bryant. At this time, he was also producing reissues for
Columbia Records, most notably the complete
Bessie Smith LP sets. His work on these albums won Albertson two
Grammy awards (one in 1971 in the
Best Album Notes category for "The World's Greatest Blues Singer" and a Trustees Award), a Billboard Trendsetter Award and the
Montreux Jazz Festival's Grand Prix du Disque. His standard work,
Bessie, a biography of Bessie Smith, first appeared in
1972, with a revised and expanded version published by Yale University Press in
2003). Albertson has written TV documentaries, including "The Story of Jazz" and "My Castle's Rocking" (a bio-documentary on Alberta Hunter), as well as articles and reviews for various publications, including "Saturday Review" and "Down Beat". He was a contributing editor for
Stereo Review magazine for twenty-eight years.
In recent years, Albertson--who lives in New York City--has been a prominent contributor to several jazz bulletin boards on the internet, and he is currently working on an autobiography.
