BY MICHAEL BAUMANN
Frank Kofsky, author and lecturer on jazz, died at his home
in Benicia, California, November 19. He was 62 years old.
Kofsky, who spoke frequently on the history of jazz, was a
biting critic of an economic system that allowed recording
companies, club owners, and festival promoters to make millions
from the works of jazz artists, while paying the creators of
the music a pittance.
Kofsky was the author of the Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music, which will soon be reissued by Pathfinder Press in a new, expanded edition as John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s, along with a new work, Black Music, White Business: Illuminating the Political Economy of Jazz.
A professor of history at California State University at Sacramento since 1969, Kofsky was an active partisan of the movements for civil rights and to end the U.S. war against Vietnam.
He spent the better part of the 1970s fighting to hold on to his teaching job. As Kofsky related in the preface to the forthcoming John Coltrane, among the stated reasons that the university sought to deny him tenure and fire him was the charge that he was "unduly pro-black" in "behavior and grading."
After local Black leaders and musicians rallied to his support, "the History Department personnel committee beat a rapid retreat" and he held on to his teaching post.
Other works by Frank Kofsky include an assessment of the Cold War entitled Harry Truman and the War Scare of 1948; the study Lenny Bruce: The Comedian as Social Critic and Secular Moralist; and numerous op-ed articles for the San Francisco Examiner over the last few years.