I am thrilled to pass along this groundbreaking piece of scholarship about one of my heroes, trumpeter Frankie Newton, written by my gifted friend Matthew Rivera and published today by the New York Review of Books. I am proud to have played a small but consequential role in its development.
Here's the backstory: A few years ago, Matthew, a young scholar and archivist whom I had never met, reached out to me after he read the long interview I did with Ethan Iverson in which I talk about my curious childhood interest in Newton, a sui generis trumpeter and political and social progressive. I corresponded with Newton's widow, Ethel, while in high school and later interviewed her in 1985 for a paper I wrote about Newton in a jazz history seminar taught by the sainted Larry Gushee at the University of Illinois. Matthew, a longtime Newton obsessive, asked if I still had the tape.
It took me a minute, but I located it. After 40 years, I had forgotten most of the details, but it turned out be a goldmine of information about Newton (whose biography is notably elusive), including his thoughts about music and his life with Ethel as an interracial couple.
Matthew has drawn on that interview in his brilliant work here, and there's additional valuable information he'll be able to report as his research expands. He has also dug up an extraordinary treasure trove of newly discovered newspaper writing by Newton himself -- a MAJOR find. Ultimately, that's what this story is about -- the way scholarship expands, how jazz history is being written and revised in real time, and how you never know where bits and pieces of the historical record might be found.
https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/03/19/frankie-newton-lost-and-found/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2mcS9rEILTzcXYVFckDkJuvwdehv89ntUBlujrEtUKhFK3UOz5W3T8jFg_aem_1GsAmCCPZJfRZz-ERSjLTQ