Whitney Balliett (1926–2007) wrote for the New Yorker for fifty years and was its jazz critic for over forty years. He is author of many books, including American Musicians II: Seventy-one Portraits in Jazz, American Singers: Twenty-seven Portraits in Song, and Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954–2001. He received an award for excellence in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and three of his books on jazz have won awards from ASCAP.
