Rudi Blesh (January 21, 1899, Guthrie, Oklahoma - August 25, 1985, Gilmanton, New Hampshire) was an American jazz critic and enthusiast.

Blesh studied at Dartmouth College and held jobs writing jazz reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Herald Tribune in the 1940s. He was a prolific promoter of jazz concerts, particularly New Orleans jazz, and hosted a jazz radio program, This Is Jazz, in 1947. (These shows have been reissued by Jazzology Records.)

Blesh published the first major scholarly work on ragtime music, They All Played Ragtime, with Harriet Janis in 1950, which sparked a ragtime revival. He founded Circle Records in 1946, which recorded new material from aging early jazz musicians as well as the Library of Congress recordings of Jelly Roll Morton. He sparked renewed interest in the music of Joseph Lamb and Eubie Blake, among others.

Blesh held professorships at several universities later in his life, and wrote liner notes to jazz albums almost up until the time of his death. In 1976, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for his liner notes to Joplin: The Complete Works of Scott Joplin performed by Dick Hyman.

Books

Incomplete

• Shining Trumpets, 1946
• They All Played Ragtime, 1950

References

• Scott Yanow, Rudi Blesh at Allmusic

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