Nat Hentoff
Born	Nathan Irving Hentoff (1925-06-10)June 10, 1925 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	January 7, 2017(2017-01-07) (aged 91) New York City, U.S.
Alma mater	Northeastern University Harvard University Sorbonne University
Occupations	Columnist historian novelist music critic
Spouses	Miriam Sargent ​ ​ (m. 1950; div. 1950)​ Trudi Bernstein ​ ​ (m. 1954; div. 1959)​ Margot Goodman ​ (m. 1959)​
Children	4

Nathan Irving Hentoff (June 10, 1925 – January 7, 2017) was an American historian, novelist,jazz andcountry music critic, andsyndicated columnist forUnited Media. Hentoff was a columnist forThe Village Voice from 1958 to 2009.^[1] Following his departure fromThe Village Voice, Hentoff became a senior fellow at theCato Institute and continued writing his music column forThe Wall Street Journal, which published his works until his death. He often wrote onFirst Amendment issues, vigorously defending the freedom of the press.

Hentoff was formerly a columnist for:Down Beat,JazzTimes,Legal Times,The Washington Post,The Washington Times,The Progressive,Editor & Publisher andFree Inquiry. He was astaff writer forThe New Yorker, and his writings were also published in:The New York Times,Jewish World Review,The Atlantic,The New Republic,Commonweal, andEnciclopedia dello Spettacolo.

Hentoff was born on June 10, 1925, inBoston,Massachusetts,^[2][3] thefirstborn child of Simon, a traveling salesman, and Lena (née Katzenberg).^[4][5] His parents were Jewish Russian immigrants.^[6] As a teen, Hentoff attendedBoston Latin School^[3][7] and worked forFrances Sweeney on theBoston City Reporter, investigatingantisemitic hate groups. Sweeney was a major influence on Hentoff; his memoir,Boston Boy, is dedicated to her.^[8][9] He played soprano saxophone and clarinet as a youth, and became interested in jazz after listening toArtie Shaw play.^[10] He received hisBachelor of Arts degree with highest honors, in 1946 fromNortheastern University.^[11][12][13] That same year he enrolled for graduate study atHarvard University.^[11][13] In 1950, he attendedSorbonne University inParis, France, on aFulbright Scholarship.^[14]

Hentoff began his career in broadcast journalism while hosting a weekly jazz program on Boston radio stationWMEX.^[15] In the 1940s, he hosted two radio shows on WMEX:JazzAlbum andFrom Bach to Bartók.^{[citation needed]} In the early 1950s he continued to present a jazz program on WMEX, and as a Staff Announcer for WMEX, he regularly hosted remote broadcasts^[16][17] from theSavoy, andStoryville, two Boston clubs run byGeorge Wein, and during that period was an announcer on the programEvolution of Jazz onWGBH-FM. In 2013, theEvolution of Jazz series was contributed to theAmerican Archive of Public Broadcasting by the University of Maryland's National Public Broadcasting Archives as part of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters (NAEB) collection.^[18]

By the late 1950s, he was co-hosting the programThe Scope of Jazz onWBAI-FM in New York City.^[19] He went on to write many books on jazz and politics.^[3]

In 1952, Hentoff joinedDown Beat magazine as a columnist.^[20] The following year, he moved to New York to become the Chicago-based magazine's New York editor.^[6] He was fired in 1957, he alleged, because he attempted to hire an African-American writer.^[21]

Hentoff co-wroteHear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz by the Men Who Made It (1955) withNat Shapiro.^[3] The book includes interviews with jazz musicians such asDizzy Gillespie andDuke Ellington. Hentoff co-foundedThe Jazz Review in 1958,^[3][22] a magazine that he co-edited withMartin Williams until 1961.^[22] In 1960 he served as artists and repertoire (A&R) director for the short-lived jazz labelCandid Records, which released albums byCharles Mingus,Cecil Taylor, andMax Roach.^[22][23]

Around the same time, Hentoff began freelance writing forEsquire,Playboy,Harper's,New York Herald Tribune,Commonweal, andThe Reporter.^[3] From 1958 to 2009, he wrote weekly columns on education, civil liberties, politics, and capital punishment forThe Village Voice.^[3] He also wrote forThe New Yorker (1960–1986),The Washington Post (1984–2000), andThe Washington Times.^[3] He worked with theJazz Foundation of America to help American jazz andblues musicians in need.^{[citation needed]} He wrote many articles forThe Wall Street Journal andThe Village Voice to draw attention to the plight of America's pioneering jazz and blues musicians.^[24][25]

Hentoff also wrote many novels for young adults, includingI'm Really Dragged But Nothing Gets Me Down (1968),This School is Driving Me Crazy (1976),Blues for Charlie Darwin (1982), andThe Day They Came To Arrest The Book (1983).^[26] Writing about the latter forThe Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg commented that "One of the useful — or depressing — things about reading Hentoff’s YA polemic, which was published all the way back in 1982, is how similar the novel’s conflicts are to our present debates."^[27]

Beginning in February 2008, Hentoff was a weekly contributing columnist atWorldNetDaily. In January 2009,The Village Voice, which had published his commentary and criticism for fifty years, announced that he had been laid off.^[3][28] He then went on to write forUnited Features,Jewish World Review, andThe Wall Street Journal.^[3] He joined theCato Institute, a libertarian think tank, as a senior fellow in February 2009.^[29][30]

In 2013,The Pleasures of Being Out of Step, a biographical film about Hentoff, explored his career in jazz and as aFirst Amendment advocate. The independent documentary, produced and directed by David L. Lewis,^[31] won the Grand Jury prize in the Metropolis competition at theDOC NYC festival^[32] and played in theaters across the country.^[3]

Hentoff espoused generallyliberal views ondomestic policy and civil liberties, but in the 1980s, he began articulating moresocially conservative positions especially in regard tomedical ethics andreproductive rights. He was opposed to abortion, voluntary euthanasia, and the selective medical treatment of severely disabled infants.^[33] He believed that aconsistent life ethic should be the viewpoint of a genuine civil libertarian, arguing that allhuman rights are at risk when the rights of one group of people are diminished, that human rights are interconnected, and that people deny others' human rights at their peril.^[33]

Hentoff believedantisemitism was rampant.^[34]

Hentoff was acivil libertarian and free speech activist^[35] who opposed abortion andcapital punishment.^[7][30] TheAmerican Conservative magazine called him "the only Jewish, atheist, pro-life, libertarianhawk in America."^[7]

Although he supported theAmerican Civil Liberties Union for many years, he criticized the organization in 1999 for defending government-enforcedspeech codes in universities and the workplace.^[36] He served on the board of advisors for theFoundation for Individual Rights in Education, another civil liberties group.^[37] His bookFree Speech for Me—But Not for Thee outlined his views onfree speech and criticized those who favored censorship "in any form."^[3]

Hentoff agitated against theVietnam War andagainst the United States' participation. Although he said he was a "hardcoreanti-communist" since the age of 15, he had "no illusions about the corrupt, undemocratic government of South Vietnam."^[38] After thewar's end, Hentoff,Joan Baez, andGinetta Sagan ofAmnesty International repeatedly protested what he called "the horrifying abuses of human rights [committed] by the Vietnamese Communist regime."^[38]

Hentoff defended the existence of the state of Israel. He criticized Israeli policies such as the absence ofdue process forPalestinians^[39] and the1982 invasion of Lebanon. His opposition to Israel's invasion of Lebanon led three rabbis symbolically to "excommunicate" him from Judaism.^[40] He commented, "I would have told them about my life as a heretic, a tradition I keep precisely because I am a Jew."^[40] He supported the2003 invasion of Iraq.^[7][28]

Hentoff criticized theClinton administration for theAntiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.^[41] He also criticized theBush administration for "authoritarian" policies such as thePatriot Act and other civil liberties restrictions legislated through invoking the ostensible need forhomeland security.

An ardent critic of the G. W. Bush administration's expansion of presidential power, in 2008 Hentoff called for the new president to deal with the "noxious residue of the Bush-Cheneywar against terrorism". According to Hentoff, among the casualties of that war have been "survivors, if they can be found, of CIA secret prisons ('black sites'), victims of CIA kidnapping renditions, and American citizens locked up indefinitely as 'unlawful enemy combatants'".^[42] He wanted lawyerJohn Yoo to be prosecuted forwar crimes.^[43]

Hentoff stated that while he had been prepared to supportBarack Obama enthusiastically in the2008 U.S. presidential election, his view changed after looking into Obama's voting record on abortion. During President Obama's first year, Hentoff praised him for ending policies of CIArenditions, but criticized him for failing to end George W. Bush's practice of "state torture" of prisoners.^[44]

Hentoff was named aGuggenheim Fellow in 1972.^[45] He won theAmerican Bar Association'sSilver Gavel Award in 1980 for his columns on law andcriminal justice.^[46] In 1983, he was awarded theAmerican Library Association's Imroth Award for Intellectual Freedom.^[46] In 1985, he received anhonoraryDoctorate of Laws from the Northeastern University.^[11][30] In 1995, he was honored with theNational Press Foundation's Award in recognition of his lifetime distinguished contributions to journalism.^[3][47][46] In 2004, Hentoff was named one of sixNEA Jazz Masters by the U.S.National Endowment for the Arts, thus becoming the first nonmusician in history to win this award.^[3] That same year, theBoston Latin School honored him asalumnus of the year.^[48][49] In 2005, he was one of the first recipients of the Human Life Foundation's "Great Defender of Life" award.^[50]

Hentoff grew up attending anOrthodoxsynagogue in Boston. He recalled that as a youth, he would travel around the city with his father during theHigh Holidays to listen to variouscantors and compare notes on their performances. He said cantors made "sacred texts compellingly clear to the heart," and he collected their recordings.^[51] In later life, Hentoff was anatheist,^[52][35] and sardonically described himself as "a member of the Proud and Ancient Order of Stiff-NeckedJewish Atheists".^[28][53] He expressed sympathy for Israel'sPeace Now movement.^[54]

Hentoff married three times, first to Miriam Sargent in 1950; the marriage was childless and the couple divorced that same year.^[55] His second wife was Trudi Bernstein, whom he married on September 2, 1954, and with whom he had two children, Miranda and Jessica.^[55] (Jessica Hentoff is the founder of Circus Harmony, a non-profit social circus and circus school in St. Louis, Missouri.^[56]) He divorced his second wife in August 1959.^[55] On August 15, 1959, he married his third wife, Margot Goodman, with whom he had two children: Nicholas and Thomas.^[55] The couple remained together until he died of natural causes at his Manhattan apartment on January 7, 2017, aged 91.^[7][57]

This list isincomplete; you can help byadding missing items.(August 2024)

Non-fiction

• Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men who Made it, withNat Shapiro.ISBN 978-0-486-21726-0 (1955)
• The Jazz Makers, with Nat Shapiro.ISBN 0-8371-7098-2 (1957)
• The Jazz Life.ISBN 0-306-80088-8 (1961)
• Peace Agitator: The Story ofA. J. Muste.ISBN 0-9608096-0-0 (1963)
• The New Equality.ISBN 978-0-670-00185-9 (1964)
• Our Children Are Dying (with John Holt).ISBN 978-0-939266-43-2 (1967)
• A Doctor Among the Addicts: The Story ofMarie Nyswander.ISBN 978-0-528-81946-9 (1968)
• Baldwin, James; Nat, Hentoff (1969).Black anti-Semitism and Jewish racism (reprint ed.). R. W. Baron.
• A Political Life: The Education ofJohn V. Lindsay (1969)
• Journey into Jazz.ISBN 978-0-698-30206-8 (1971)
• Hentoff, Nat; McCarthy, Albert J. (1975).Jazz: New Perspectives on the History of Jazz by Twelve of the World's Foremost Jazz Critics and Scholars (illustrated, reprint ed.). Perseus Books Group.ISBN 978-0-306-80002-3.
• Jazz Is.ISBN 978-0-7567-5045-9 (1976)
• Does Anybody Give a Damn?: Nat Hentoff on Education.ISBN 978-0-394-40933-7 (Random House; 1977)
• The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America.ISBN 978-0-385-29643-4 (1980)
• Hentoff, Nat (1987).American Heroes: In and Out of School. Delacorte Press.ISBN 978-0-385-29565-9.
• John Cardinal O'Connor: At the Storm Center of a Changing American Catholic Church.ISBN 0-684-18944-5 (1988)
• Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other.ISBN 0-06-099510-6 (1993)
• Listen to the Stories: Nat Hentoff on Jazz and Country Music.ISBN 0-06-019047-7 (1995)
• Living the Bill of Rights: How to Be an Authentic American.ISBN 0-520-21981-3 (1999)
• Hentoff, Nat (2001).The Nat Hentoff Reader. Da Capo Press.ISBN 978-0-306-81084-8.
• Hentoff, Nat (2004).The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance (illustrated, reprint ed.). Seven Stories Press.ISBN 978-1-58322-658-2.
• Hentoff, Nat (2004).American Music is (reprint ed.). Da Capo Press.ISBN 978-0-306-81351-1.

Memoirs

External videos
Booknotes interview with Hentoff onSpeaking Freely, October 19, 1997,C-SPAN

• Boston Boy: Growing Up With Jazz and Other Rebellious Passions.ISBN 0-9679675-2-X (1986)
• Speaking Freely: A Memoir.ISBN 978-0-679-43647-8 (1997)
• Hentoff, Nat (2010).At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene. University of California Press.ISBN 9780520945883.

Novels

• Jazz Country.ISBN 978-0-440-94203-0 (1965)
• Call the Keeper.ISBN 978-0-670-20014-6 (1966)
• Hentoff, Nat (1968).Onwards!: a novel. Simon and Schuster.
• Hentoff, Nat (1968).I'm really dragged but nothing gets me down. Simon & Schuster.
• In the Country of Ourselves (1971)
• This School Is Driving Me Crazy.ISBN 978-0-440-98702-4 (1976)
• Does This School Have Capital Punishment?ISBN 0-435-12329-7 (1982)
• Blues for Charlie Darwin.ISBN 978-0-68801-260-1 (1982)
• The Day They Came to Arrest the Book.ISBN 978-0-440-91814-1 (1983)
• The Man from Internal Affairs.ISBN 978-0-89296-141-2 (1985)

• Hentoff, Nat (August 29, 2022)."Crackin', shakin', breakin' sounds : how the young Bob Dylan transcended 'finger-pointing' folk songs and found a new, incisive voice". Profiles. October 24, 1964.The New Yorker.98 (26):48–55.^[a][b]

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Bibliography notes

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