An interview with Ted White.
Lex Berman asks Ted White about his early career as a writer for Rogue Magazine. White’s first sale there was Riot at Newport.
White also discusses his piece on the beatnik riot of Washington Square, Balladeers and Billy Clubs, and the general scene around Greenwich Village and what it was like trying to make a living as a jazz critic in the early 1960s.
Recorded with Zoom from Cambridge, MA and Falls Church, VA on 12th April, 2021.
My eyes started to burn. We were on the fringe of a cloud of tear gas that the police had laid down in the center of Newport, where all these kids were “rioting.” When we drove up to Boston, around midnight, there were roadblocks. Police were letting people out, but they weren’t letting anybody in. It was like that.
References:
Riot at Newport: Rogue (Jan 1961)
Balldeers and Billy Clubs: Rogue (Aug 1961)
Two Editors: Frank Robinson & Bruce Elliott: eI (Dec 2003)
The Rebel Festival: by Karl Ackerman in All About Jazz (12 Apr 2020)
Beatnik Riot of Washington Square 1961: Yunchtime (28 Jan 2021)
Big Sur: The Tropic of Henry Miller: by Hunter S. Thompson, Rogue (Oct 1961)
Jazz Masters of the Fifties by Joe Goldberg (1966)
Music clips:
intro - “No Coast” by John Handy, (1961). src
end - “Check Up,” Ornette Coleman (1961) src