12 Facts About Marshall Stearns

Marshall Winslow Stearns was an American jazz critic and musicologist.

Marshall Stearns was the founder of the Institute of Jazz Studies.

Marshall Stearns's father was a Harvard University graduate and an attorney.

Marshall Stearns played drums in his teens, and attended Harvard University, where, in 1931, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Marshall Stearns attended Harvard Law School from 1932 to 1934, but did not graduate.

Marshall Stearns went on to study medieval English at Yale University, where, in 1942, he earned a PhD.

Marshall Stearns served in a series of academic appointments on the English faculties of the University of Hawaii, Indiana University, and Cornell University.

In 1950, Marshall Stearns was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and he used the proceeds to finish his 1956 work The Story of Jazz, which became a widely used text, as well as a popular introduction to jazz.

Marshall Stearns taught at the New School for Social Research and the School of Jazz in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Marshall Stearns died on December 18,1966, in Key West, Florida.

Marshall Stearns was first married on October 18,1931, in Yonkers, New York, to Betty Stearns, whose father, Joseph Moore Dixon, was, from 1921 to 1925, the seventh Governor of Montana.

Marshall Stearns's mother, Helen Barnett, was a music teacher in White Hall.