“One night in 1949 or so,” he added, “a friend of mine and our dates were closing Jimmy Ryan's; the clubs were all open until 3 or 4 in the morning back then.” The great New Orleans clarinetist and soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet was leading a quartet that night, he recalled, “and at one point Sidney sat down, pulled up a chair and put his feet up so he could stretch his legs. He closed his eyes and played a slow blues for about 15 minutes. It was so great.”
Dan Michael Morgenstern was born in Munich on October 24, 1929, the son of Soma Morgenstern, a prolific novelist, journalist, and playwright, and Ingeborg (von Klenau) Morgenstern, the daughter of the Danish composer and conductor Paul von Klenau. He grew up in Vienna, where his father, the son of Hasidic Jews from what is now Ukraine, had settled after serving in World War I.
After the Anschluss, Mr. Morgenstern's father escaped from Austria on one of the last trains, bound for France, while Mr. Morgenstern and his mother fled to Denmark. When the Nazis reached Copenhagen, mother and son were smuggled out of Denmark by the Danish resistance, arriving in Sweden in mid-October 1943. They remained there until the end of the war, then returned to Copenhagen, where Mr. Morgenstern later recalled, “I really started to like jazz.”
Mr. Morgenstern's father had moved from France to New York City, where the family was finally reunited in April 1947. It had been eight years since Dan, now 17, had seen his father. “It must have been quite strange for him to be confronted with this person,” Mr. Morgenstern later said, “doubting whether we should speak English or German.”
With his father's help, Mr. Morgenstern got a job as an intern in the mailroom at Time-Life and then worked for a time as a copyboy at DailyExpertNews before being drafted in February 1951 and, improbably, returning to Munich for his tour of duty. After his discharge, Mr. Morgenstern attended Brandeis University on the GI Bill; joined the student newspaper, The Justice (which he would eventually edit); and discovered the hugely active Boston jazz scene, which he immersed himself in.
