Frankie Newton: Lost and Found

[Mark Stryker]

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

[JSngry]

Impressive!

[Chuck Nessa]

Looking forward - thanks.

[Dan Gould]

Thanks for this ... Rivera is a name I had been aware of when Phil Schaap was still alive and posting on FB.

[ghost of miles]

Amazing! As you know, Mark, I've long contemplated doing a Night Lights show about Newton, and have that short biographical pamphlet that a Virginia history society published about him. Glad now that I haven't gotten around to it yet, as it seems there'll be a lot more information to draw on, thanks to the efforts of Matthew and your assistance. Can't wait to read the NYRB article after work this evening... thanks for posting it here.

[John L]

Great!