Gene Santoro
Gene Santoro was the author of several books, including Highway 61 Revisited, Myself When I Am Real: The Life and Music of Charles Mingus (finalist for the 2001 Ralph J. Gleason Awards as well as the 2001 Jazz Journalists Association Awards), Dancing in Your Head and Stir It Up.
He co-authored and edited The Guitar: The History, The Music, The Players. His essays also appeared in numerous collections, such as The Miles Davis Reader, The Show I’ll Never Forget, Best Music Writing of 2004, American Rebels, The Thelonious Monk Reader, The B.B. King Companion, The Jimi Hendrix Companion, Mass Culture and Everyday Life, and The Oxford Companion to Jazz.
He wrote about music for the New York Daily News and was a columnist at Chamber Music. He was a columnist at The Nation, 7 Days, Taxi, and Pulse!, and has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Post, New Yorker, New York, Time, People, The Village Voice, Spin, Pulse!, Rolling Stone, Down Beat, Musician, Guitar Player, Discover, and Business 2.0, among others.
His first serious gig writing about music was as Senior Editor at Guitar World, where he interviewed legendary pickers like Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy, Lonnie Mack, Ron Wood, Link Wray, Brian Setzer, and Leslie West; wrote 85% of a hugely successful special issue devoted to Jimi Hendrix; and authored "Wax Museum" columns about the music, techniques, and discographies of stellar historical pickers like Eddie Lang, Charlie Christian, James Burton, and Mickey Baker. As an editor-writer at Pulse!, he interviewed dozens of musical greats like Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, the Neville Brothers, the Rolling Stones, Keith Jarrett, Dwight Yoakam, the Blasters, Los Lobos, k.d. lang, and Astor Piazzolla.
His work was translated into German, Japanese, Brazilian, Spanish, Italian, and French. He started playing guitar when he was eight, and his career highlights included the chance to jam with childhood idols like Keith Richards.
Gene died April 27, 2022 from esophageal cancer.
A podcast interview with Gene from May 2018
77 articles
List of articles in the library
Carlos Alomar, David Bowie: Carlos Alomar: Hard Driving Anchor Man For The David Bowie Show
Profile and Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, January 1984
IMAGINE THE fairy-tale scene this way, since this is how it actually happened: It is 1973, the setting is RCA's recording studios in New York ...
Jerry Jemmott: Session Bassist — The Groovemaster: Jerry Jemmott
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar Player, May 1984
WHILE HIS name may not ring any bells, you've heard his bass before, setting the groove for Aretha Franklin, B.B. King, Wilson Pickett, Roberta Flack, ...
Chic, Nile Rodgers: Nile Rodgers of Chic: '80s Funk with 60s Roots
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar Player, November 1984
GUITARISTS SINCE Charlie Christian have spent a lot of time and effort trying to play guitar like a horn. Nile Rodgers does it differently; he ...
Jeff Beck: Twenty Years of Rock And Roll Power
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, January 1985
IT'S BEEN a long time since anybody's heard from Jeff Beck. With the exception of the ten-date ARMS tour of 1984, his last time on ...
Jimi Hendrix: Eddie Kramer: The Wizard Of Woof-Woof
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, September 1985
If Jimi wanted to hear guitar played underwater, Eddie Kramer would turn on the faucet — and get it all down on tape. As told to ...
Jimi Hendrix: Eddie Kramer: The Wizard Of Woof-Woof
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, September 1985
If Jimi wanted to hear guitar played underwater, Eddie Kramer would turn on the faucet — and get it all down on tape. As told to Gene ...
Jimi Hendrix: James Marshall Hendrix: Undisputed Master of the Electric Guitar
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, September 1985
Every guitarist today — from Coryell to Steve Stevens — has been marked by the stamp of Purple Haze genius. Sixteen axmen explain Hendrix' influence in their ...
Jimi Hendrix: Alan Douglas Builds A Castle Made of Sand
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, September 1985
The record producer had Jimi's ear just before the end. Now he's re-packaging it for the masses. As Told To Gene Santoro ...
Jimi Hendrix: Jimi's Army Buddy Bass Player
Retrospective and Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, September 1985
Billy Cox was the only sideman Jimi could trust. He says the world is still catching up to what Jimi played fifteen years ago. As ...
Richard Hell, Robert Quine, Lou Reed: Robert Quine: Newark's Reverent Iconoclast
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar Player, January 1986
"YOU'VE GOT to hear this," insists Robert Quine, as he finds what he's looking for on a wall full of shelves sprouting thousands of records. ...
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar Player, February 1986
"IF THERE'S anything worth writing about me, it's that I'm a guy like most of the people who read Guitar Player," insists G.E. Smith. "I'm ...
Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, The Yardbirds: Jimmy Page: Of Yardbirds And The Shapes of Things to Come
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, July 1986
For a short time in the late sixties, Page and Beck were in one of the most happening bands to ever come out of England. Some say ...
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, November 1986
LARRY CARLTON could sit on his laurels, coasting on his rep from countless albums and sessions. But he keeps pushing himself — and his guitar — to higher spaces. ...
Ornette Coleman: This Maverick of Modern Jazz Doesn't Like to Be Pigeonholed
Interview by Gene Santoro, Pulse!, November 1986
MOST OF THE other horn-wielding giants who shook the foundations of jazz a generation ago — Coltrane, Dolphy, Ayler — are gone now. But Ornette ...
Interview by Gene Santoro, Pulse!, February 1987
Arhoolie Records' Chris Strachwitz is Still Finding Great Music in Out-of-the-Way Places ...
Grace Jones: Inside Grace Jones
Interview by Gene Santoro, Pulse!, February 1987
A Story About Film, Fashion and Fresh New Sounds. ...
Adrian Belew: Belew's Menagerie
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, March 1987
Inside the fertile mind of ADRIAN BELEW, master of sound mixology. ...
Keith Jarrett: Exploring Inner Worlds with Keith Jarrett
Interview by Gene Santoro, Pulse!, March 1987
To This Musician/Composer, Music is a Mystical Experience ...
Joseph Spence: The King Of Sling
Discography by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, April 1987
THE VERY bedrock of an entire school of folk and rock guitar is the idiosyncratic work of Bahamanian guitar great Joseph Spence. ...
Interview by Gene Santoro, Pulse!, May 1987
SMALL RECORD labels usually concentrate on one particular musical style, or a related set of styles. Not Celluloid Records, which has sought from the beginning ...
Marcus Miller, Miles Davis: Marcus Miller: Bass For All Seasons
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, June 1987
What is it about MARCUS MILLER'S eternal thump that makes him Miles' choice bottom and the Bee Gees' top choice? ...
Miles Davis, Marcus Miller, David Sanborn: Marcus Miller: Bass for All Seasons
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, June 1987
What is it about MARCUS MILLER'S eternal thump that makes him Miles' choice bottom and the Bee Gees' top choice? ...
Prince: Sign 'O' The Times (Paisley Park 25577-1)
Review by Gene Santoro, Downbeat, July 1987
DESPITE ALL the hyped-up mystery and intrigue that the media machine swirls around him, like smoke around a Gene Kelly dance routine, the fact is ...
Albert Collins Puts The Blues On The Map
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar World, November 1987
THE MASTER of the Telecaster. The Ice Man. The Houston Twister. The Razor Blade. Those are just a sampling of the titles that have hung ...
Carlos Alomar, David Bowie: Carlos Alomar
Interview by Gene Santoro, Downbeat, November 1987
WE'RE SITTING in Bogie's, a neighborhood bar in Chelsea not far from Carlos Alomar's loft. The bartender is putting together a Long Island iced tea ...
Django Reinhardt: Djangologie/USA Vols. 1-7 (DRG/Swing Records)
Review by Gene Santoro, Spin, April 1988
GYPSY GUITARIST Django Reinhardt offers an early modern (read post-phonograph) example of how pop music travels from its native habitat, is heard through alienated ears, ...
Henry Threadgill: Into another world
Interview by Gene Santoro, Pulse!, April 1988
Reedman/composer Henry Threadgill rips down the barriers of jazz with uncompromising, challenging music. ...
John Zorn: Quick-Change Artist Makes Good
Interview by Gene Santoro, Downbeat, April 1988
"WHAT'S COMING out of this scene down here is definitely hybrid music: it's the result of people growing up through the '60s and '70s, listening ...
Bill Frisell Quartet: Look Out For Hope (ECM)
Review by Gene Santoro, Spin, May 1988
BILL FRISELL IS the Clark Kent of the electric guitar. Soft-spoken and self-effacing in conversation, he apparently breathes in lungfuls of raw fire when he ...
Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers: Any Other Way to Go?/Live at the Crystal Skate (Rhythm Attack)
Review by Gene Santoro, Spin, June 1988
LIKE ITS cousin hip hop, go go is a recent product of a tangled international genealogy. When U.S. R&B and soul music rode radiowaves to ...
Cecil Taylor: Blue Light Special
Profile by Gene Santoro, Spin, May 1990
FOR THE uninitiated, a Cecil Taylor performance can be like sitting in the middle of a breaking tidal wave on a leaky rubber raft. He ...
Live Review by Gene Santoro, Musician, November 1990
Still Ethnic After All These Years ...
Danny Gatton: Picking Danny Gatton's Brain
Interview by Gene Santoro, Musician, February 1991
Some of the tricks that make the world's greatest unknown guitarist great ...
James Brown, Bootsy Collins, Funkadelic: Bootsy Collins Effects the Funk
Interview by Gene Santoro, Musician, May 1991
Scouting bass hyperspace, speaking without words ...
Hal Willner: Alone in the Dark
Interview by Gene Santoro, Musician, October 1992
SIXTY YEARS ago the Marx Brothers shot Animal Crackers in Astoria, at Paramount's East Coast studios. Last spring, Master Sound Studio, part of that now-refurbished ...
The Firesign Theatre: Sixties Laugh-In: The Firesign Theatre
Retrospective by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 21 January 1999
"THEY'VE COME TO steal my dreams," whimpers a female voice. A series of male voices drifts past: "Get up, lady." "It's the trade of the ...
Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 18 February 1999
FOR THE PAST year and a half, I've been spending most of my time between 1922 and 1979 – the years of Charles Mingus's birth ...
Tom Waits: Guthrie's Heir?: Tom Waits' Mule Variations
Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 6 May 1999
TOM WAITS IS an imaginary hobo. He cruises the oddball corners of American pop culture, collecting the deft and moving and loopy short takes he ...
Charles Mingus: Growing Up Absurd
Book Excerpt by Gene Santoro, 'Myself When I Am Real' (Oxford University Press), 2000
THE BABY, barely three months old and pudgy but with bright eyes and an inquiring air, was the center of attention as he fussed on ...
Don Byron: Of Romance and History
Essay by Gene Santoro, Chamber Music, February 2000
PUT ON Romance With The Unseen (Blue Note 7243 4 99545 2 6), the latest CD by clarinetist Don Byron, and you're stepping into dialogues ...
Comment by Gene Santoro, Chamber Music, April 2000
FOR THE LAST TWO columns, we've ridden in the Wayback Machine to peer into how jazz has in practice been a kind of chamber music ...
Greg Osby: Musical Archaeology: Greg Osby's Performances/Recordings from Duke to Monk and beyond
Review by Gene Santoro, Chamber Music, June 2000
NEW JAZZ FANS often have well-intentioned questions I dread, like, "What records should I listen to?" One of my stock answers: "Thelonious Monk Plays Duke ...
Charles Mingus: Town Hall Train Wreck
Retrospective by Gene Santoro, The Village Voice, 6 June 2000
IN MID-1962, Charles Mingus made a deal with United Artists. He wanted to lead a big band, but he wanted to record it live, before ...
Emmylou Harris: Born to Run: Emmylou Harris' Red Dirt Girl
Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 12 October 2000
THE SOUND OF Wrecking Ball (Elektra), Emmylou Harris's 1995 album produced by former Brian Eno/Neville Brothers associate Daniel Lanois, drew me back toward her. ...
Film/DVD/TV Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 12 January 2001
LET'S CUT TO the chase on Ken Burns's Jazz, which rolled out on PBS January 8, by invoking Wallace Stevens. ...
Review by Gene Santoro, Chamber Music, April 2001
THE GUITAR is arguably the most eclectic and democratic of instruments. Some form of it appears in nearly every society. Anyone can learn to play ...
Bill Frisell: Blues Dream (Nonesuch)
Review by Gene Santoro, Chamber Music, June 2001
WITH BLUES DREAM (Nonesuch), an album that interprets the blues as the foundation for jazz, bluegrass, Thelonious Monk, soul, Western Swing, heavy metal, and other ...
Buffalo Springfield: American Buffalo
Retrospective by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 9 August 2001
UNSTABLE CHEMISTRY can cause spectacular effects – that's one way to think of Buffalo Springfield. Another is to consider the band an American musical smorgasbord ...
Dave Holland: Bass Is the Place: Dave Holland and the Jazz Bass
Retrospective by Gene Santoro, Chamber Music, December 2001
NOT FOR NOTHIN' (ECM) is bassist Dave Holland's latest CD, and the laconic title could sum up the man himself, his instrument's history, and the ...
Roy Haynes: Birds of a Feather (Disques Dreyfus)
Review by Gene Santoro, Chamber Music, 2002
WITH BIRDS OF A FEATHER (Disques Dreyfus), 75-year-old drummer Roy Haynes has forged a scintillating tribute album to bebop icon Charlie "Bird" Parker. His quintet ...
Dave Van Ronk: Folk's Missing Link
Retrospective by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 4 April 2002
I WAS IN HIGH school in the 1960s when I first saw Dave Van Ronk at the Gaslight, one of those little cellar clubs that ...
Retrospective by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 16 May 2002
WHEN I FIRST saw The Last Waltz in 1978, I almost walked out, although I was a fan of both director Martin Scorsese and The ...
Chet Baker: James Gavin: Deep in a Dream – The Long Night of Chet Baker
Book Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 27 June 2002
IT'S EASY TO rephrase Tolstoy's opening to Anna Karenina so it describes junkies, who all share an essential plot line: Who and how to hustle ...
Oscar Peterson: A Jazz Odyssey: The Life of Oscar Peterson
Book Review by Gene Santoro, The New York Times Book Review, 14 July 2002
SINCE SEPTEMBER 1949, when he made his debut at Carnegie Hall as a member of the all-star troupe called Jazz at the Philharmonic, the pianist ...
Bob Dylan: Scene of the Crime: Bob Dylan at Newport
Essay by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 15 August 2002
EVERYONE KNOWS what happened thirty-seven years ago when Bob Dylan fronted an electric band at the Newport Folk Festival, which is why August 3 saw ...
Bruce Springsteen: Hey, He's Bruce
Essay by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 29 August 2002
WHEN BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN and the E Street Band, reunited to tour behind The Rising, came to Madison Square Garden on August 12, they juxtaposed '41 ...
Ani DiFranco: Blowin' in a New Wind
Essay by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 26 November 2002
AS THE 2002 election results came in, I surfed through 100 cable channels with nothing on and hit an infomercial hosted by John Sebastian for ...
Review by Gene Santoro, Chamber Music, December 2002
HERE AT THE beginnings of the 21st century, jazz faces several dilemmas, some creative, some commercial. After an often vitriolic and demoralizing period of consolidation ...
Sweet Soul Music: Gerald Posner's Motown – Music, Money, Sex, and Power
Essay by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 23 December 2002
As Trent Lott struggled to "repudiate" segregation fifty years after it was outlawed, about the only point he left out of his incoherent counterattack is ...
Book Review by Gene Santoro, The New York Times Book Review, 16 February 2003
THE ''GOSPEL HIGHWAY,'' the church-based circuit toured by black preachers and religious entertainers, was paved largely by segregation, but it also meant to bypass the ...
George Wein: Myself Among Others – A Life in Music
Book Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 26 June 2003
NOT MANY PEOPLE can say they changed the world and make it stick. In Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, George Wein does. Without ...
Book Excerpt by Gene Santoro, 'Highway 61 Revisited...', 2004
IT'S EASY TO rephrase Tolstoy's opening to Anna Karenina so it describes junkies, who all share an essential plotline: Who and how to hustle in ...
Book Excerpt by Gene Santoro, 'Highway 61 Revisited', 2004
THE SCENE: MIAMI in 1951. A 25-year-old strip show emcee initiates his first public demonstration of what would, decades later, be called performance art. It ...
Mary Lou Williams: Linda Dahl: Morning Glory – A Biography of Mary Lou Williams
Book Excerpt by Gene Santoro, 'Highway 61 Revisited...', 2004
MARY LOU WILLIAMS was the first girl who really made it into the boys' club that was (and mostly still is) jazz. Sure, girl singers ...
Book Excerpt by Gene Santoro, 'Highway 61 Revisited...', 2004
FROM 1925 TO 1928, Louis Armstrong made an astonishing series of recordings, the jazz-creating legacy of his Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, a succession of ...
Book Excerpt by Gene Santoro, 'Highway 61 Revisited...', 2004
IN THE LATE 1960s, millions of us walked around with alternate visions of reality dancing in our heads. No, it wasn't just drugs and the ...
Grateful Dead: The Grateful Dead
Book Excerpt by Gene Santoro, 'Highway 61 Revisited...', 2004
"Frenesi took her hand away from Flash's and they all got back to business, the past, a skip tracer with an obsessional gleam in its ...
Book Excerpt by Gene Santoro, 'Highway 61 Revisited...', 2004
ON APRIL 30, 2003, Willie Nelson turned 70, and celebrated with the release of his latest Greatest Hits collection. The Essential Willie Nelson (Columbia/Legacy), a ...
Book Excerpt by Gene Santoro, 'Highway 61 Revisited...', 2004
ON APRIL 16, 1944, a slight, wiry-haired man with a guitar and harmonica wandered into Moe Asch's little recording studio on West 46 Street off ...
Ray Charles, Robert Quine: Remembering Ray Charles and Robert Quine
Obituary by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 24 June 2004
After Ronald Reagan's death, Ray Charles's version of 'Amazing Grace', one of Reagan's favourite songs, kept popping up on radio and TV. Why not? ...
Report and Interview by Gene Santoro, New York Daily News, 2 March 2007
Solomon Burke's latest, Nashville, features guests like Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Patty Loveless and Gillian Welch. ...
Interpol on duty at Madison Square Garden tonight
Report and Interview by Gene Santoro, New York Daily News, 14 September 2007
THEY NEVER CAUGHT quite as much mainstream attention as other modern New York bands like the Strokes or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But now, Interpol ...
Animal Collective is in a "Jam"
Report and Interview by Gene Santoro, New York Daily News, 28 September 2007
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE has been called psychedelic folk, indie noise rock and experimental folk electronica. ...
Report and Interview by Gene Santoro, New York Daily News, 12 October 2007
WHEN PORCUPINE TREE started in 1987, they were a Spinal Tap-style flight of multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson's imagination. ...
The Cult: Cult returns with new CD
Report and Interview by Gene Santoro, New York Daily News, 9 November 2007
FIRST, THE GROUP tapped into punk and goth. Then they stirred in psychedelia on 1985's 'She Sells Sanctuary'. By 1987, the Rick Rubin-produced album Electric ...
Laura Marling: Folk-rock's Laura Marling, a star in U.K. at 17, hits New York Friday
Report and Interview by Gene Santoro, New York Daily News, 18 January 2008
IN 2006, LAURA Marling, a 16-year-old Brit from Hampshire, started heading to London every week, looking for clubs to play and flats to crash at ...
Report and Interview by Gene Santoro, New York Daily News, 4 April 2008
THE LEFT-FIELD success of Juno didn't end at the movie box office. The Oscar winner's soundtrack went all the way to No. 1, making its ...
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