Alyn Shipton

Alyn Shipton has worked in music for many years as a writer, editor, and player. He was the publisher of the New Grove Dictionary series in the 1980s working on musical instruments, American music, jazz, and opera, in addition to commissioning the Grove handbooks in musicology. His own books include numerous biographies, mainly of jazz musicians, including Fats Waller, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Ian Carr, and Cab Calloway, as well as the songwriter Jimmy McHugh. His other books include the award-winning life of singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson, and a study of the relationship between visual arts and jazz. He has edited six volumes of oral history, including the memoirs of pianist George Shearing and of the New Orleans musician Danny Barker. His “New History of Jazz” (2001, revised 2007) won awards on both sides of the Atlantic and is now well established as one of the standard works on the subject. Since 1989 he has presented and produced programmes on music and history for BBC Radio. As a double bassist, he has played with many leading British jazz groups, and he currently co-leads the Buck Clayton Legacy Band.