Bill Milkowski

Bill Milkowski
Bill Milkowski
	Milkowski is presented the 2015 Bruce Lundvall Award by Montreal Jazz Festival's Andre Ménard
Born	September 26, 1954 (age 70); Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Occupation	Jazz Journalist
Years active	1976–present

Bill Milkowski (born September 26, 1954) is an American jazz critic, journalist and author.^[1] He is a recipient of the Jazz Journalists Association’s Helen Oakley Dance-Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Magazine Writing in 2004 and the JJA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, he received the Montreal International Jazz Festival’s prestigious Bruce Lundvall Award in 2015. He is the author of seven books, including an biography on the legendary bassist-composer and former Weather Report member Jaco Pastorius.

He has also written 1,000 sets of liner notes and 5,000 stories for numerous publications including Down Beat, Jazz Times, Jazziz, Absolute Sound, Paste, Germany’s Jazzthing and Italy’s Guitar Club. His writing also appeared in such magazines as Guitar Player, Guitar World, Modern Drummer, DRUM!, Bass Player, Mix, Interview and Musician. In 2015, Milkowski was on the jury for the Wes Montgomery International Guitar Competition at Merkin Hall in New York City. In 2018, he was part of a “Jazz Democracy” panel discussion at the United Nations in conjunction with International Jazz Day.

Biography

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Milkowski began playing guitar at age 12 and later worked on his school newspapers The Telegraph at Samuel Morse Junior High School. and The Gavel at John Marshall High School. He studied journalism in college, earning a bachelors degree in 1977 from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he also served as editor of the campus newspaper, The UWM Post. He combined his interests in music and journalism when he began working as freelance music critic at The Milwaukee Journal in 1977. He co-published the city’s alternative bi-weekly newspaper Cityside from December 1977 to May 1979 and later served as editor of the monthly Milwaukee Magazine from 1979 to 1980. He moved to New York in September, 1980 after accepting a position as managing editor for the Long Island-based weekly entertainment publication Good Times, where he worked for two years.

As a New York-based freelance music writer from 1983 to 1993, Milkowski contributed cover stories, interviews, record reviews and opinion pieces on jazz, rock and blues artists for numerous national magazines. In September of 1993, he moved to New Orleans, where he continued freelancing for several national music magazines while also appearing weekly as an overnight DJ (The Milkman) at radio station WWOZ. His first book, “JACO: The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius, The World’s Greatest Bass Player” (Miller-Freeman Books) was published in April, 1995, the same week as the birth of his daughter Sophia Vincenza Milkowski. It was later translated for editions in Italy, Spain, Slovakia, France, Bulgaria and Japan.

After returning to New York in 1997, Milkowski published his followup books “Rockers, Jazzbos & Visionaries” (Billboard Books, 1998) and “Swing It! An Annotated History of Jive” (Billboard Books, 2001). An updated and revised 10th Anniversary Edition of his Pastorius biography was published in 2005 by Backbeat Books. He subsequently penned “Legends of Jazz” (White Star Publishers) in 2011 and that same year co-authored “Here And Now: The Autobiography of Pat Martino" (Backbeat Books). His biography “Keith Richards: A Rock ’N’ Roll Life” (White Star Publishers) came out in 2012. Milkowski was a consultant on the 2014 documentary film “JACO,” produced by Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, and appeared on panel discussions in conjunction with its premiere screening at film festivals in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cape May, New Jersey, Montreal and Buenos Aires. As a record producer, Milkowski oversaw recordings for New Orelans guitarist Phil deGruy (Innuendo Out The Other, NYC Records, 1995), legendary jazz guitarist Pat Martino (All Sides Now, Blue Note 1998) and produced the compilation Come Together: A Guitar Tribute to The Beatles (NYC Records, 1993) as well as tracks on the compilations World Christmas (Metro Blue, 1996) and Who Loves You: A Tribute to Jaco Pastorius (JVC Records, 2001).

References

Bibliography

Bass Heroes: From the Pages of Guitar Player″ (contributor). Miller Freeman, 1993. ISBN 0-87930-274-7.
JACO: The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius (1st edition). Miller Freeman, 1995. ISBN 0-8793-0361-1.
Down Beat: 60 Years of Jazz (contributor). Hal Leonard Books, 1995. ISBN 0-7935-3491-7.
The Guitar in Jazz (contributor; edited by James Sallis). University of Nebraska Press. 1996. ISBN 0-8032-4250-6.
Guitar World Presents Stevie Ray Vaughan (contributor). Hal Leonard Books, 1991997. ISBN 0-7935-8080-3.
Rockers, Jazzbos and Visionaries. Billboard Books, 1998. ISBN 0-8230-7833-7.
The Oxford Companion to Jazz (contributor; edited by Bill Kirchner). Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-512510-X.
Swing It! An Annotated History of Jive. Watson-Guptill Publications 2001. ISBN 0-8230-7671-7.
The Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music (contributor). Watson-Guptill Publications, 2003. (ISBN) 0-8230-7869-8.
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues (contributor). Flame Tree Publishing, 2005. ISBN 1-84451-181-2.
JACO: The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius: Deluxe Edition. Backbeat Books, 2005. ISBN 0-87930-859-1.
Voices in Jazz Guitar (by Joe Barth; foreword by Bill Milkowski). Mel Bay Publications, 2006. ISBN 978-0-7866-7679-8.
Down Beat: The Great Jazz Interviews: A 75th Anniversary Anthology (contributor). Hal Leonard Books, 2009. ISBN 978-1-4234-6384-9.
Legends of Jazz [text, Bill Milkowski; foreword, Joe Lovano]. White Star Publishers, 2011. ISBN 978-88-544-0604-9.
Here And Now! The Autobiography of Pat Martino (co-author). Backbeat Books, 2011. ISBN 978-1617130274.

Biography

References

Bibliography

Further reading