The Buzz: The JJA Podcast

Zan Stewart, JJA Lifetime Achievement Honoree: A Real Jazz Advocate

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For this episode ofThe Buzz, JJA President Emeritus Howard Mandel speaks with Zan Stewart, the JJA's 2026 Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism honoree.

Zan Stewart spent thirty-five years covering jazz as a beat reporter writing weekly features, overnight reviews, and club listings through long-term runs at the Los Angeles Times and the Newark Star-Ledger. His liner notes to Eric Dolphy: The Complete Prestige Recordings earned an ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award. He is also a working tenor saxophonist, and the two roles were always intertwined: Stewart came to jazz journalism as an advocate with a reporter's eye and a player's ear. In this conversation, he retraces his path from a hi-fi in Ojai to the clubs of San Francisco, with a lot of music in between.

They cover his early formation in the music (his father was at the Palomar Ballroom in 1935 the night Benny Goodman kicked off the swing era), two decades at the LA Times under Leonard Feather, his move to the Star-Ledger in Newark, his 2014 debut recording The Street Is Making Music, and his current work writing liner notes after a medical battle with oral cancer and osteonecrosis that has sidelined his playing. He also describes the box of cassette tapes in his possession containing unarchived conversations with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins, and McCoy Tyner, that he hopes to get out into the world.

(The musical excerpts heard in this episode are "Hampton's Pulpit" from the Hampton Hawes Quartet's 1991 reissue All Night Session and "The Street Is Making Music" from Zan Stewart's 2014 album of the same name.)

Buzzworthy Notes 

Guest & Host

Discussed

The 2026 JJA Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism Award

  • Other nominees: Dan Ouellette, Nate Chinen, and Ben Ratliff
  • Learn more about JJA Awards

Support for The JJA comes in part from the Jazz Foundation of America, providing emergency assistance, healthcare, and performance opportunities to performers, composers and others in need. Visit jazzfoundation.org.

This podcast is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.

Zan Stewart spent thirty-five years covering jazz as a beat reporter writing weekly features, overnight reviews, and club listings during long-term runs at the Los Angeles Times and the Newark Star-Ledger. His liner notes to Eric Dolphy: The Complete Prestige Recordings earned an ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award. He is also a working tenor saxophonist, and the two things were always related: he came to jazz journalism as an advocate, not a critic, with a reporter's eye and a player's ear. Stewart is the JJA's 2026 Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism honoree. In this episode of The Buzz, he speaks with JJA President Emeritus Howard Mandel to recount a career from a hi-fi in Ojai to the clubs of San Francisco, with a lot of music in between.

Zan Stewart: I'm deeply honored to receive this award. This is very kind. I have put in a lot of work, and it's nice to be recognized.

Howard: I'm glad we were able to focus on your work, and I think we'll try to do that in the next few minutes and talk a little bit about your career. You've had a bifurcated career. You're both a musician and a journalist, and that's pretty interesting in itself. But let's start with how you got interested in music at all.

Zan: I was born into a musical household. My father was a jazz devotee who was at the Palomar Ballroom in 1935 when Benny Goodman kicked off the swing era. Anyway, my dad had — I've still got my dad's records. A lot of Charlie Parker, a lot of Duke Ellington. Some of the earliest records, like the first Dizzy Gillespie and Coleman Hawkins record for RCA — he's got those. So I grew up that way.

Howard: Do you listen to those 78s now?

Zan: No, man. I still have not. I've got a stylus — I just need to do it. I got a turntable, but I'm going to do it. It's just, they're so phenomenal to see, all these records.

Howard: So when did you pick up music to start playing it?

Zan: At five I started on piano for a while, and that didn't go anywhere. But at six I started clarinet. And I found out when I was doing those liner notes for the complete Eric Dolphy Prestige records that his clarinet teacher was my clarinet teacher — which was really surprising. A woman named Ola Ebinger, who was very tough on me. She didn't make it much fun, and I didn't do well at first, but I kept playing. I played until I was about ten, and then I stopped for five years. I was frustrated, and anyway.

Howard: Did you pick up writing then? Out of frustration?

Zan: No, I picked up tennis, as it turned out. But I had — I was telling someone this — I had the fortune of living in Ojai, a small community in Ventura County, well known for its music festivals, famous festivals. It was very hard to hear music on the radio at that time. We did not have FM, and there were no jazz stations. There was one jazz program — Hunter Hancock had a program on KGFT, I think it was, on Sunday, but we couldn't always get it. This young guy lived next door who had a collection of New Orleans R&B, and so I got into New Orleans R&B. Then, eventually, when I was about fourteen, my dad bought a hi-fi and he used to subscribe to DownBeat, and that's when I started listening to jazz pretty much full time.

Howard: I see. And you were reading DownBeat?

Zan: Yeah, I used to read it cover to cover, man. I read everything. I read every word. Loved it.

Howard: Did you find other sources for reading about the music also?

Zan: My dad also subscribed to Metronome, so we had Metronome. At some point my dad bought this wonderful book called Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya. Are you familiar with that?

Howard: Sure am.

Zan: Nat Hentoff. And I don't know when I started reading that, but that was another one I read cover to cover. That was simply fascinating — from the mouths of the musicians about what was going on.

Howard: Hentoff had been editing DownBeat for a while, and he excerpted great stories from the classic jazz musicians and laid it out so that it really told a whole kind of history. Yes, Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya. I use that in teaching all the time. I taught at NYU for twenty-seven years. I just think it's wonderful. It's a wonderful document.

Zan: It's fabulous. There are so many wonderful stories in there, and so many points of view. It's fabulous, man.

Howard: So doesn't that make you want to go out and talk to jazz musicians when you read that book and bring their stories back to other people?

Zan: Yeah. That's what I — that was my point of view as a writer. I fell in love with this music. And when I started, I reviewed the Monterey Jazz Festival, I think in 1960. That would have been my first. But I don't think I wrote anything until 1975 for this local free paper in Santa Barbara. And my first story was basically how to go out and find jazz — at nightclubs, at clubs, go to the library. Just basically, "Hey, you guys have to check this out. This is really going to do you some good." And sitting down and talking with you about this brings up what I bring up all the time: what a blessing it is to be involved in this music. It's just remarkable, man. It makes you feel so good. There's a lot of great other music, but to me this is the best. For me there's a period, really — it's like the '30s to the '60s. That's my golden age, and that's really what I love.

Howard: So that goes from the '30s to the '60s — you could say from "King Porter Stomp" through Dolphy.

Zan: Yeah. But I heard something the other day — I was amazed. I hadn't heard it for a long time. "Ralph's New Blues." It's from an Oliver Nelson album called Straight Ahead on Prestige. And Eric Dolphy plays this amazing bass clarinet solo. There's all that free stuff that he's known for. But every now and then there's a little Charlie Parker — just a little tiny snippet. We forget about that about Eric: he knew a lot of music.

Howard: You bring that up in your liner notes to the complete Eric Dolphy set. Did you get a Grammy for that, or a Deems Taylor Award?

Zan: Deems Taylor. That was very kind of them. Yeah, that was nice.

Howard: Yeah, from ASCAP. It's a very touching biographical sketch, and you did a lot of interviewing for it. You talked to four or five musicians who had known him — Buddy Collette, Freddie Hubbard. Did you talk to Art Davis, the bass player?

Zan: I talked to Richard Davis. And he gave me the subtitle — "The Angelic Passion of Eric Dolphy." So I recall the title was Out There: The Angelic Passion of Eric Dolphy. That came from Richard Davis. He said Eric had an angelic passion. Of course, the sadness that comes from researching that work is I learned the story of how he died, and it was very sad. He was in Germany, a diabetic living on honey with no treatment. He finally went into a coma. It turns out — this was Hale Smith, a friend who was a composer, who told me — that Eric was living in an apartment with no heat and broken windows. John Coltrane was the only one to hire him. It was just — ah, anyway.

Howard: Someone asked me not too long ago: if there was one musician you really needed to hear in your life, who would that be? And I said immediately, Eric Dolphy. But let me ask you — you say your first article came out in 1960, and then you didn't write anything again until 1975?

Zan: I was the high school sports editor, and I did the sports editing in the yearbook, which was cool. I went to UC Santa Barbara for a year and then flunked out, and then I went to Ventura College for a year and went back to UCSB and didn't do well again. And then I eventually ended up going to Southern California, and I enlisted in the Army in 1965 because I had no deferment possibilities at that time. It was a hairy time around 1965 — everybody was going over to Vietnam. So I enlisted for four years for the Army Security Agency. Anyway, that went on as it did. I really didn't do any writing until I went back to school. I went back to UCSB in 1972 and finished up my degree in film studies, which was a liberal arts degree, and that was what led me onward. Then there was a little story that led to my writing career. I was working in a record store, and one of the editors of the Santa Barbara News & Review — which was like a Village Voice out there — came in and asked the fellow I was working with if he would like to interview Hampton Hawes. He said he had no idea who Hampton was. I knew who Hampton Hawes was, and so I wrote a piece about him. We interviewed Hampton Hawes, which was wonderful. The piece didn't get published, but I was offered a column. So in mid-1975, I started writing.

Howard: So I think I first met you when you were on the East Coast and maybe just before you started working for the Star-Ledger, the Newark Star-Ledger.

Zan: We met in New Orleans, I believe, man. I was thinking about going to New York and Newark. It turns out I came to the East Coast in 2002, after twenty years with the Los Angeles Times.

Howard: Oh, I see. So why?

Zan: First I have to mention Leonard Feather. When I went to Los Angeles in '77 from Santa Barbara, I ended up going because I had a job at KBCA, which was the jazz station at that time. Chuck Niles was on that station, and Jim Rhodes, and a lot of famous names. Someone I knew from Santa Barbara told me about the LA Weekly and that they needed a jazz writer. And so I started writing for the LA Weekly and expanded their listings. I was basically doing listings, but I was doing some stories. I put down every jazz club I could find. And Leonard Feather, who was the LA Times jazz critic, took some of my information, put it in a Times piece, and gave me credit at the bottom — and that was the door. I was able to get on the Times that way. That was 1980. I'm always so grateful to Leonard for doing that for me, man. It really was something, because it opened up the door.

Howard: Well, Leonard was the man — really the guy who established jazz journalism as something to do. Were you working under his wing at the Times?

Zan: I was given a lot of freedom. He would suggest things, but I was able to pitch ideas, and I started writing features. I'd have to look back, but say around '81 or so, I started writing daily features for their calendar section, and that was when I really started to open up. I didn't know how to write features, as it turned out. I had to learn that you have to have a lead. You have to have a way of engrossing and enticing the reader: "Hey, this is going to be interesting."

Howard: You have to have a strong lead. And then you have to have an interesting middle.

Zan: That's right.

Howard: And then you have to have something at the end.

Zan: It was interesting the way Leonard did his stories. I eventually became his editor, which was a strange place to be. He would write an interesting two or three paragraphs and then go into the biography — that was the way he wrote his Sunday pieces for the most part. When you work for someplace strong like the Los Angeles Times and they call up and say, "Hi, this is Zan Stewart from the Los Angeles Times," the door is wide open. It's "Hey, come on in. What can we do for you?"

Howard: Yeah. So what was the scene like in LA at that time? Very active?

Zan: Pretty good, yeah. It wasn't like the '50s when it was really powerful, when you had as many East Coast players in Los Angeles as anywhere — or nearly so. It wasn't that West Coast cool sound we hear about; there was a lot of powerful playing, a lot of activity. I was able to write a feature story about somebody different every week for twenty years, man. That's how many players were out there. There were some major clubs, like Catalina's Bar and Grill, which brought in Art Blakey and Freddie Hubbard, and there were small clubs all over. There was a lot of action.

Howard: Did you go into the studios also?

Zan: Yeah. That was really interesting — to see how powerful these musicians were, being able to sight-read amazing things. Because that's what they did. They didn't do run-throughs when they were doing a soundtrack for a movie. There were no run-throughs, only takes. So they look at it and then they go. They were trying to do one take after another, no rehearsals.

Howard: So did you play all during that period also?

Zan: Yeah. I started playing seriously in Santa Barbara when I went back to school in 1972. I had been playing before that, but 1972 was the first time I really got into it. I got into the jazz band, and a year or so later I started going to jam sessions in town. Then some of the people from the jam sessions said, let's put a band together. Around '75 I had a band — a couple of bands, actually. And one of my first major experiences: I had met Albert Dailey, the great piano player, through Stan Getz. Steve Cloud — who became Keith Jarrett and Charles Lloyd's manager — put on concerts at a hotel. I heard Hank Crawford there, and Kenny Burrell, and one night it was Stan Getz with this amazing quartet: Albert Dailey on piano, Chin Suzuki on bass, and Billy Hart on drums. They were like a hurricane behind him. I went there with a friend to try and interview Stan Getz. We walk into his dressing room at intermission, and he's freaked out because this band is blowing him away. So I ended up talking to Albert Dailey, and he was very friendly, and he came into our band. He played four tunes with our band, and there are no words for that experience, Howard. That was the lesson of my life, really.

Howard: Wow. Did you feel there was any conflict between being a professional musician and being a professional writer?

Zan: Yes, because I wrote about people I liked — but that's what I always did, Howard. I was not a Times employee; I was a freelancer, so in many ways they did not have the right to tell me I couldn't play. Bob Hilburn was the pop music editor I was under — Leonard Feather was under Bob Hilburn too. He didn't like it, but there wasn't really anything he could do about it.

Howard: Was Don Heckman writing also at that time?

Zan: Our staff was Don Heckman, yours truly, Leonard, and a young fellow named Bill Kolhage.

Howard: That was a powerful writing team you had there.

Zan: Oh, it was fabulous, man.

Howard: But then you went to the East Coast.

Zan: I was there for the beginning of the downsizing of the LA Times. We had editions — there was the home edition, which went everywhere, but then there were subdivisions like the West Side Valley Edition, which went from the San Fernando Valley over to Malibu, and I was able to write a piece a week for that. I had written a column called Jazz Notes from 1988, but I ran into an editor who didn't like me, and they took away that column. And then I was told I didn't know how to review, so I basically had no work for the Times. When I heard from Don Lucoff, the publicist, that George Chancellor had left the Newark Star-Ledger, I contacted the paper. And you know something, Howard? I was really surprised. None of the heavy hitters in New York were applying for that job, man — no Bill Milkowski or any of the others. So I got the job. I was told by Wally Strover, who was my editor, that I got the job because I had the institutional experience: I'd been with a paper, I know how to write for a paper. That was great, Howard. God, that was wonderful. Everybody in jazz dreams of going to New York. One of my horn mentors, Wilbur Brown, kept talking about how you have to go to New York. And so Newark is not New York, but it's only fifteen miles away. On a good day it's a half hour, and you're in the city. I was given the opportunity to write about New York forty percent of the time and New Jersey sixty percent of the time. So I was able to be on the street in the city.

Howard: And at the time, who was writing before Ben Ratliff? Was it Peter Watrous?

Zan: Peter Watrous, of course. But those guys were not writing weekly features. I was the only one writing weekly features in the area, and multiple reviews. I was a beat reporter, just like I was at the Times. And I did not write negative reviews. I made a point of that. Because every time you write something negative, I think you're paid for it one way or another. But I liked to write positive reviews because my point was, I was a jazz advocate. I was not a jazz critic so much as a jazz advocate. I wanted people to go and hear this music — if nothing else, to buy a CD or an LP and play it at home, or listen to the radio. Be in touch with this music. I remember Ruth Price, who ran the Jazz Bakery in LA, told me that when a good review came out, the phone would ring off the hook.

Howard: You were in DownBeat from around '75?

Zan: Yeah, from '75 I was first in DownBeat.

Howard: Like you, I came through working for a daily newspaper, so I had that experience of doing overnight reviews, which was fantastic. To come back and hit a 2:00 in the morning deadline, and then see your story the next morning at 8:30. It was great. I loved it.

Zan: No, that's such a joy, man — to pick up a paper and there you are. That was a New York paper, then, doing overnight reviews like that?

Howard: Yes.

Howard: So had you put the saxophone away at that time?

Zan: Never put the saxophone away. Jim Wilson, the editor of the paper, and I had an agreement from the very first — I said, "Jim, I have to play, man." That was really part of what I was doing, Howard, in coming to the East Coast — it was like getting my master's degree in music. The deal was we put a little note at the bottom of the stories: "Zan Stewart is also a musician who plays in various clubs." I was just writing about the people out there who needed to be written about. With the Star-Ledger I had a column called Ticket, which ran every Friday — a profile, essentially. "Hey, go see this person this week." At the top of the story was a block with the artist, the venue, the dates, and a ratings figure. So that was the format.

Howard: When did you go back to the West Coast?

Zan: 2011. We were in a situation where the Star-Ledger — now it was really bad news for newspaper times. In 2008 and 2009 the paper was starting to shrink. My hours went down, my pay went down. There was one massive buyout for the newsroom — about fifty to seventy-five people were gone. You could see the writing on the wall: this is not going to last. And it hasn't. So I thought, okay, let's take a shot. Let's see what happens if I become a musician full time. Because I'd had a couple of experiences. I played in New York under my own name three times. The first time was at Smalls with a great rhythm section — Tardo Hammer on piano, Bill Moring on bass, and Tony Reedus on drums. The place was packed. When you're writing for a paper, you're not really having any time off. You have a little bit after you file something, but then you have to start figuring out what's next. I wanted to see what would happen if I was able to focus on playing. So I came out here in 2011 and started going to jam sessions and practicing more, and eventually I made a record, which is what I'd always wanted to do, Howard. I always wanted to make a record. I made The Street Is Making Music — which actually comes from a title given to me by a neighbor's child in New Jersey. There was a Jamaican family across the street from where I lived in West Orange, and when I would practice, this daughter would tell her father, "Daddy, the Struth is making music." So I thought, that's a great title, man.

Howard: Yeah, that's good.

Zan: So I had great fortune with the record. It was once at fourteen on the jazz chart and in the top fifty for one week. And I was blessed by colleagues. Sonny Rollins liked it.

Howard: That's nice.

Zan: Oh, that's really nice. Sonny Rollins is my Buddha of jazz. I'm not a Coltrane follower like so many people are — I'm a Sonny Rollins follower. And yeah, I'm going to tell you what he said: "Hi, Zan. I've got your CD. I heard it. I liked it. I didn't know you were so accomplished." I remember telling Dave Holland one time, "Man, I really loved the band. Last night I really got you." And he said, "I'll take that emotion and put it in the music, Zan." And that's what Sonny Rollins says too — you go to work, you work as hard as you can.

Howard: When did that come out?

Zan: 2014.

Howard: 2014.

Zan: And it's still being played. I am so honored. People stream it. Cool.

Howard: That's great.

Zan: I put together a little band and started playing around. But I was the last guy in town, and there are a lot of really strong musicians in San Francisco. The club scene is not like it was in its heyday with major clubs, but there is a club called Black Cat where out-of-town people come in. There are a lot of very fine players here. So I got some work — not enough, but I got some work. And I wrote a couple of bios. I didn't get any liner notes for a long time. I didn't actually get any liner notes until last year, when the saxophonist Chris Myers, who I'd known from New York, asked me to write for his most recent record. And that's how I started writing last year. I've been meaning to start a blog, but I'm still dragging my feet on that. I'm getting closer, though. I really want to start writing again.

Howard: Please — we want to start reading you again. If you can fit it in when you're not playing saxophone.

Zan: Howard, I must tell you this: I'm a survivor of oral cancer. I was diagnosed in 2000, and I've had chemo and radiation and surgery.

Howard: Wow.

Zan: And I've had now four jaw operations because I have what's called osteonecrosis, which is the death of the bone. The radiation I received killed my taste buds, my saliva glands, and my jaw. And I don't know the jaw is dying until it just starts dying. And I can't play saxophone. I don't know if I'm ever going to play saxophone again. So I'm going to make the most of this. I've got stuff that needs to get out, Howard. I've got a box of about one hundred cassette tapes — recordings of free conversations with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock and Sonny Rollins and McCoy Tyner. These are historical documents. Forget about me — this is about these people who were alive and making the music that our listeners are going to hear. That needs to get out. And I've got stories too. Sometimes one doesn't understand how valuable the stories are until you tell them to somebody and they say, "Oh, wow, that was wonderful." I've had the great fortune — like you have, and all the members have — of being involved with this wonderful music. We're a family. We're a small, tight-knit family. There's not a lot of us — isn't that a Willie Jenkins line? There's not a lot of us, period, Black or white, writing about jazz, and really writing about it: about Louis Armstrong, about not just John Coltrane, but Duke Pearson, and so on. These stories need to be out there.

Zan: And I was focused on trying to play saxophone — that was my first love, really, and that's probably not going to happen anymore. So let's write. Last year was great. I had six sets of liner notes last year, and I've got two out right now. I've never had this happen: I wrote for Joe Magnarelli's Decidedly So and Jesse Davis's Reflections, both on Scholar Music Group out of Vancouver. They're both on the chart right now. I think last week they were side by side at nineteen and twenty. That was just cool, man. And I'm doing another set right now for a young drummer named Matthew Tsatsu from Montreal. And I did one for an alto player who ought to knock people out — a guy named Tomas Martinez from Buenos Aires. He's young, I think twenty-seven or twenty-eight. It's Charlie Parker. It's just amazing how wonderful this guy is. His record is coming out on SteepleChase next month, in June. So it's good to be back in writing. It's good to be back in writing. I found out from writing the liner notes that I really enjoyed it — I'm still okay. I still know how to write well. I may not have written for a long time, but I still know how to write well. That's really good.

Howard: I'm surprised when you said that none of us heavyweights in New York wanted that job. I don't think that any of us heavyweights in New York were prepared for that job at the Newark Star-Ledger, but you were prepared. You're the heavyweight who could handle it. So I think that's a good place to wrap up. But I want to congratulate you again, Zan Stewart, on this Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism Award from the JJA. The other nominees this year were Dan Ouellette, Nate Chinen, and Ben Ratliff. You're in good company. But we want to celebrate you and your work, and we look forward to reading more.

Zan: Thank you, brother man. I really appreciate that, Howard. Thank you.

Howard: Okay, you're welcome.