I was born 1935 in the Bronx, but by the time I was five my Kansan father and Parisian mother had moved to the suburbs of New Jersey’s capital city, Trenton. Although neither parent was musically sophisticated, my mother loved popular music, both French and American, so that during my childhood years in the 1940s I was constantly exposed to radio broadcasts by the big bands and their vocalists doing mostly “Hit Parade” material. At the same time I responded instinctively to the sounds coming off the screen when my mother took me to the movies. After eight years of piano lessons, I had learned to read music, but my teacher told me I would never go beyond competency, whereas at playing the phonograph, I was a virtuoso! So I naturally began to focus more on the music I heard over the air and on early television.

At age 14 I won a local scholarship to the Lawrenceville Preparatory School and, after taking a survey course there on the history of classical music, I realized the harmonic and rhythmic characteristics of late Romantic and early 20th-century composers paralleled those of Ellington, Goodman, and Kenton, together with the Hollywood composers, all of whom I loved. With the advent of long-play records, I began to haunt Sam Goody’s and other stores, parceling out my meager weekly allowance to acquire the music I began to unearth from the Schwann catalogue—Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel, Bartók, Prokofiev, Hindemith, Milhaud, Honegger, Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, as well as the American symphonists. Most of what I learned about this repertoire I absorbed by listening to the records and reading the liner notes.

After graduating from Princeton with a BA in English, I fulfilled my dream of moving to the Upper West Side of Manhattan to attend graduate school at Columbia. Marriage followed: our daughter has done quite well in cabaret, arts journalism, and online publishing as Raven Snook. My record collection grew exponentially as I discovered the many composers in other countries who derived from my favorite modern masters, while at the same time rediscovering the great pop artists of my earlier years.

Eventually I amassed over 20,000 LPs—which I still play and enjoy—plus some thousands of tapes and cassettes exchanged with fellow collectors throughout the world, which were ultimately donated and housed in a special archive located at Columbia University, to which I maintain lifetime access.

Meanwhile, to pay for all this, I held jobs in public relations (Queens College) and public information writing (United Nations), but my most musically significant posts were three years as classical music director for Riverside Radio (WRVR) and most of the 1970s working for my friend Will Lerner at his legendary record store, Music Masters.

After an amicable divorce, I moved into real estate and property management and ultimately ended up with the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), from which I’ll retire in 2008.

Now a grandfather, I plan to go on reviewing recordings of 20th-century music until I’m too weak to load the tray on my CD player.