Timme Rosenkrantz (1911-1969) was a Danish journalist, author,
concert and record producer, broadcaster and entrepreneur. He was
the first European journalist to cover the jazz scene in New York's
Harlem, from 1934 to 1969. Learn even more about Timme Rosenkrantz
at the following website, www.jazzbaron.com.
Translator and editor Fradley Hamilton Garner is International
Editor and columnist for Jersey Jazz, a monthly journal of the New
Jersey Jazz Society. He's also a columnist for the online
AllAboutJazz.com.
Harlem Jazz Adventures, adapted and edited by international jazz
journalist Fradley Hamilton Garner, is a fascinating and exuberant
account of Rosenkrantz' encounters with the giants of jazz.
Anecdotal chapters tell of his encounters with the likes of Louis
Armstrong, Benny Carter, Duke Ellington, and virtually every player
in each and every band that passed through town.
*Seattle Post-Intelligencer*
Better than any 90-minute documentary on the history of Harlem in
the 1940s Timme's memoir is a rare treasure of countless anecdotes,
stories, facts and insights (as well as some fables) on the way the
jazz masters lived, loved and how many myths, lores and legends
started circulation. For any scholar of jazz this book is a
must-have.
*Jive-Talk.com*
Anyone who dug Esi Edugyan’s 2011 Giller Prize-winning Half Blood
Blues was left wanting more from the Golden Age of Jazz. But here’s
a twist. Instead of black musicians going to Europe, how about a
true story of a Danish aristocrat so smitten with the music that he
relocates to New York? Written by a baron, witty short-story
writer, record producer and concert promoter — a hapless
entrepreneur dubbed “Honeysuckle Rosenkrantz” by Fats Waller — this
newly translated memoir swings us into the orbits of Louis
Armstrong, Benny Carter, Art Tatum, Duke Ellington, Bud Powell and
scores of other greats.
*Movie Entertainment*
Timme’s memoirs give an accurate picture of what was endearing in
the man: his enthusiasm for the music, his love of eccentrics (he
was one himself), his amused comic view of the world. This is not a
book of grievances and grudges; reading it is like spending time
with a jovial elder who fixes you a drink and launches into yet
another hilarious tale of men and women long gone — all first-hand,
told with a fan’s ardor. ... Timme gives us an insider’s view of
Harlem night life and early morning revels, of the numbers racket,
of running a record store uptown — the characters and details. The
book is the very opposite of analytic 'jazz literature' in its warm
embrace of the scene, the musicians, and the reader. It is
irresistible reading for jazz fans who wish, like Timme, to have
been behind the scenes. He was there, and his stories sparkle with
life. I know that jazz fans have been waiting a long time to read
these pages, and I would have expected nothing less from the man
Fats Waller dubbed 'Honeysuckle Rosenkrantz.'
*Jazz Lives*
Timmie Rosenkrantz is instantly likeable in this engaging memoir.
... Fradley Garner ... has captured the very personal prose 'sound'
of author Timme Rosenkrantz.
*New Jersey Jazz Society*
Garner has done a terrific job of translating the writing of
Rosenkrantz to the English. The text is highly readable, and makes
Rosenkrantz’s passion for jazz come alive on every page. Garner’s
footnotes are concise, and put the stories related by Rosenkrantz
into perspective. Placing them at the end of each chapter, rather
than the usual placement of notes at the back of the book makes
them easily accessible, and useful, rather than being a chore to
locate and read. ... Harlem Jazz Adventures is an enjoyable and
fascinating volume that presents one man’s unique involvement in a
world that he loved. Rosenkrantz offers a lot of inside looks at
many musicians who are legendary in the history of jazz, and his
passion for the music and the players comes through in his words.
Thanks to Fradley Garner, we can all enjoy this entertaining
reminiscence.
*Jersey Jazz*
Rosenkrantz is an entertaining storyteller who dismisses any impact
he may have made as producer or writer, describing himself as more
of a fan. Immersing himself as a resident of Harlem upon arriving
in the US, he built relationships with numerous jazz artists. His
sense of whimsy is ever present, with a gift for providing detail
about his friendships and the many performances he attended,
including after-hours scenes that would have been impossible for a
typical jazz fan. ...His unique portrait of a foreigner able to
immerse himself in the Harlem jazz scene during its heyday gives
jazz fans a rare look at life among his favorite musicians.
*The New York City Jazz Record*
Mr. Rosenkrantz’s lovely stories are also a brilliant example of
the power of one of William Zinsser’s key points in his On Writing
Well when he enjoins us to '... let the person speak to the reader
in his own words.' The very manageable chapters and the cozy manner
in which the stories contained in them are told create a much
welcomed first-person narrative at a time when many of the books
being published on the subject of Jazz are overly analytic and
coldly academic in nature. Credit for the engaging 'tone and tenor'
of Mr. Rosenkrantz’s memoirs must be given to Mr. Fradley Garner
for his brilliant English translation/adaptation which is replete
with a number of explanatory footnotes that help make the book even
more lucid. . . .If this book is a testimonial to anything, it is
to the fact that Mr. Rosenkrantz definitely knew how to have fun
with Jazz. . . .No words could form a better description of the
'Jazz Life' lived by Baron Timme Rosenkrantz as depicted in Harlem
Jazz Adventures: A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934-1969.
*Jazz Profiles*
The book is also about the characters you never hear about: the
speakeasy owners and bouncers, the Runyonesque gangsters who 'take
care' of each other in inhospitable ways, the audience-minded,
profit-driven publishers (sound familiar?), the cheap
taking-advantage-of-musicians-at every-turn club owners (sound
familiar?), the hangers-on, the shop owners, even the landlords. By
the end of Rosenkrantz’s diary-like narrative–in bite-sized edible
chapters–you come away not only with a strong sense of the jazz
musicians of the era in that place, you also come away with a
strong sense of the character of Harlem at this time.
*JJA News*
Taken alongside his witty and warm remembrances, one gets a feeling
for a very special man, who had a deep love for jazz. While
TimmeRosenkrantz never got rich promoting jazz, the love and
respect he had for the musicians was reciprocated many times
over.
*Jazz History Online*
The jazz-mad Timme wrote a memoir in Danish of his time in New
York, and its English-language version is now available in this
edited and ample form….It represents not a portion of jazz
history’s more general sweep but its teeming minutiae in one
important place, recorded by an astute observer of a scene he
embraced devotedly.
*Jazz Journal*
Timme Rosenkrantz’s Harlem Jazz Adventures give us a unique look at
the musical world of New York in the 1930s and 1940s, a time of
transition between swing and bebop, when musicians with aesthetic
self-confidence and drive continued developing jazz. Between the
many anecdotes that make the reading so fascinating, one discovers
again and again the seriousness with which these musicians pushed
their art forward.
*Jazzinstitut Darmstadt*
Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934–1969
recounts Rosenkrantz’s happy years in New York City, where he would
produce jazz concerts, record top musicians and bands in his
midtown apartment, organize a “dream band” for Timme Rosenkrantz
and His Barrelhouse Barons, a 1938 RCA Victor recording, (DL) live
in Harlem and run a record shop with his life companion, journalist
and singer Inez Cavanaugh....This book is a must-have for jazz
lovers. Social historians interested in the intersection of race
and the music business will find in Rosenkrantz’s memoir an
invaluable primary source on Harlem’s social scene and its musical
legacy.
*John Shelton Ivany Top 21*
Better, more intensive and above all authentic; let those memoirs
with their mixture of countless anecdotes, stories, facts,
insights, but also a lot of " jazz" of Harlem's past and its
musicians live again!
*Papier*
Harlem Jazz Adventures is about a life lived after hours, hanging
out in basement clubs, raging through long drunken nights, going
from one after-hours club to another, getting roaring drunk with a
slew of irresponsible musicians. On his second and longest stay in
the Big Apple, Rosenkrantz left taxi dancing behind and supported
himself as a jazz journalist, record producer, leader of his own
jazz band and record store owner. His story is a fascinating one
and his book (edited from an unpublished English translation of the
original Danish book by Fradley Hamilton Garner) is an important
work of social and jazz history. Rosenkrantz brings alive an
important moment in American history, a time when jazz was going
from big band swing to small group bop and beyond. Rosenkrantz's is
a book that jazz lovers, musicians and social historians will have
to read and readers of this journal are going to love it.
*Rambles.NET*
Timme Rosenkrantz is one of those people we jazz fans have heard of
all our lives, but never knew much about. Now, thanks to Fradley
Garner's wonderful edition of these memoirs, Timme comes back to
life, and I do mean life. He says he was there when the word
'jitterbug' was coined: his stories, his good humor, and all the
great personalities he knew, just never stop. This must be what the
Golden Age of Jazz was like.
*Donald Clarke, author, Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music;
Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday; The Rise
and Fall of Popular Music; and All or Nothing at all: A Life of
Frank Sinatra*
"I’m just a little layman with an ear for music and a heart that
beats for jazz" is how Timme Rosenkrantz modestly describes
himself. But his ear and his heart unerringly propelled him into
the orbits of Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter, Art Tatum, Fats
Waller, W.C. Handy, Duke Ellington, Erroll Garner, Bud Powell, and
dozens of other jazz notables. Harlem Jazz Adventures is an
insightful and delightfully witty account of jazz people and
places, written by one who experienced them firsthand.
*Michael Cogswell, Director of the Louis Armstrong House and
Archives*
Harlem Jazz Adventures drew me into a world I’ve only imagined. The
passion and joy of these memoirs is irresistible. Suddenly, all the
musicians and clubs I've heard about became three-dimensional, and
I couldn't stop reading. Each chapter is a play within a play. From
Fats Waller to Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong to Benny Carter, the
Savoy Ballroom to 52nd Street. Timme Rosenkrantz was an outsider
who fast became an insider. He takes me into the dance halls and
clubs, and what a thrill! Thanks to Mr. Garner for bringing this
most important book into the English-speaking world.
*Catherine Russell, Grammy-winning Contemporary Jazz & Blues
vocalist and recording artist*
Adapted and edited by Fradley Hamilton Garner, [Harlem Jazz
Adventures] provided me with a couple of evenings of unadulterated
joy.
*W. Royal Stokes*
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