Christiern Gunnar Albertson (October 18, 1931 – April 24, 2019) was a New York City-based jazz journalist, writer and record producer.
Early life
Albertson was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, on October 18, 1931, but his father left the family before he was a year old. Yvonne, his mother, married three more times.[1] He was educated in Iceland, Denmark and England before studying commercial art in Copenhagen.
In 1947, while living in Copenhagen, Albertson listened by chance to a Bessie Smith recording on radio; it led to an abiding interest in jazz and blues music. "We found magic in such names as Kid Ory, King Oliver, Johnny Dodds, Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey," he wrote on his Stomp Off blog in 2010.[1]
In 1957, after two years as a disc jockey for Armed Forces Radio at Keflavík Air Base, in Iceland, Albertson migrated to the United States, initially working for radio stations in Philadelphia.[1] At WCAU (a CBS affiliate) and WHAT-FM, a 24-hour jazz station, he conducted interviews, including one with Lester Young, one of only two extant with the tenor saxophonist.[2] He was naturalised as an American citizen in 1963.
In the mid-1960s, Albertson worked at NYC radio station WNEW, leaving there for Pacifica Radio's NY station WBAI, where he eventually became General Manager. In 1967, he worked for the BBC in London, advising them on how to adapt their radio programs for sale in North America.
His standard work, Bessie, a biography of Bessie Smith, first appeared in 1972, with a revised and expanded version published by Yale University Press in 2003.[14] The revised biography was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame in the Classic of Blues Literature Hall of Fame category in May 2012. In 2015, HBO premiered a biopic, Bessie, starring Queen Latifah in the title role, but Albertson's book was not credited as its basis.
Albertson wrote television documentaries, including The Story of Jazz[15] and My Castle's Rocking (a bio-documentary on Alberta Hunter),[16] as well as articles and reviews for various publications, including Saturday Review and Down Beat. He was a contributing editor for Stereo Review magazine for 28 years.
Albertson was found dead in his Manhattan apartment on April 24, 2019.[1]