Marc Myers

Marc Myers (born September 4, 1956, New York City) is an American journalist, author and historian and a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, where he writes on music and the arts. In 2007, he founded JazzWax, a top-ranked daily jazz blog that won the 2012 and 2015 Jazz Journalists Association's "Blog of the Year" award.

Myers was born in Manhattan and grew up in New York City and Westchester County in N.Y. According to his website, he studied journalism at Northeastern University (undergraduate) and U.S. history at Columbia University (graduate).

He began his writing career at The New York Times in the late 1970s as a college intern, joining the newspaper full-time in 1980 in the sports department. In 1985 he left to become an associate editor at Adweek, where he wrote about advertising and marketing, helping to launch Brandweek. For a time, he was business editor at Working Woman magazine, where his responsibilities included editing cover business and celebrity profiles, and was editor of Bottom Line/Personal in the 1990s. In February 1999, his essay on President Bill Clinton’s luck was published by the New York Times’ Op-Ed page. He began writing on music and the arts for The Wall Street Journal in 2010.

Since June 2010, Myers has written for The Wall Street Journal as a contributor on music and the arts, specifically rock, R&B and jazz. He has interviewed more than 500 leading musicians and celebrities for the paper.

He currently writes three regular columns. These include the weekly "House Call" column for the Mansion section and the weekly "Playlist" column for the Review section. He also writes the "Anatomy of a Song" column for the Arena section, which features oral-history interviews with the composers and recording artists of iconic R&B and rock hits.

He also has written on architecture for the Wall Street Journal: Milan’s The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Barcelona’s Palau de la Musica,Boston’s John Hancock Tower and New York's office-building lobbies of the 1950s.) As a frequent contributor to the "Arts in Review" page in the Personal Journal section. He has interviewed George Martin, Burt Bacharach, Dave Clark, Al Green, Dave Brubeck, Ginger Baker, Helen Shapiro, Hal Blaine, Graham Nash, Ron Isley, Wanda Jackson, Dr. John, B.B. King, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis among others.

Since JazzWax's launch in August 2007, Myers has posted daily, six days a week and has conducted more than 300 multi-part interviews with notable jazz, rock and R&B musicians and has posted commentary on rare and contemporary jazz recordings.

Myers has written the following books:

• Anatomy of a Song: The Oral History of 45 Iconic Hits That Changed Rock, R&B and Pop (2016), Grove Press, ISBN 080212559X. A book based on his Wall Street Journal column. According to Grove's Fall 2016 catalog, "Through an absorbing song-by-song analysis of the most memorable hits from 1952 to 1991, Anatomy of a Song provides a sweeping look at the evolution of pop music. This book will change how you see music history and the artists who created it."
• Why Jazz Happened (2013), University of California Press, ISBN 0520268784. In its Fall '12 catalog, the publisher called the book "the first comprehensive social history of jazz." In its review, The Wall Street Journal said, "If you want to know why jazz changed so often between 1942 and 1972, Why Jazz Happened is a good place to start. Marc Myers has made a serious contribution to the discussion about how jazz went from a practical art entertaining dancers to one aimed at listeners."
• How to Make Luck: 7 Secrets Lucky People Use to Succeed (1999), Renaissance Books, ISBN 978-1-58063-058-0

His mother, Bernice Myers, is a children's book artist and illustrator. His father, Lou Myers, a commercial illustrator, cartoonist and writer, died in 2005. He is married to Alyse Myers, author of Who Do You Think You Are? A Memoir (Simon & Schuster).

Myers has written the liner notes for the following CD releases:

• Harry Allen: The Candy Men (Arbors)
• Bill Evans: Some Other Time: The Lost Session from the Black Forest (Resonance)
• Getz/Gilberto 50th Anniversary (UMe/Verve)
• Joe Alterman: Georgia Sunset (CD Baby)
• Miles Davis: The Original Mono Recordings (Sony/Legacy)
• Wes Montgomery: Movin': The Complete Verve Recordings (UMe/Verve)
• Ella Fitzgerald in Japan (UMG/Verve)
• Johnny Mandel: The Man and His Music (Arbors)
• Dinah Washington: The Fabulous Miss D! (UMG/Verve)
• Ayako Shirasaki: Falling Leaves (Jan Matthies)
• Sonny Rollins: Way Out West (Concord)
• Joe Alterman: Piano Tracks (Vol. 1)
• Carol Sloane: We'll Meet Again (Arbors)
• Brooks Tegler: Small Groups
• The Best of Benny Golson (Concord)
• Grant Stewart: Young at Heart (Sharp Nine)

• "ella in japan". ellafitzgeraldfoundation.org. Retrieved October 25, 2011.