Dale Kelley Fitzgerald, who co-founded New York’s prestigious Jazz Gallery in 1995 and was its Executive Director until 2009, died on March 20 at Calvary Hospital in Bronx, N.Y., after a long struggle with cancer. He was 72.
Writer Ted Panken described Dale accurately in an obituary distributed by Fitzgerald’s family:
“A strapping man with a well-trimmed goatee, Mr. Fitzgerald possessed an impeccably cool demeanor, a fiery spirit, ample amounts of personal charisma, and a pedagogical bent that emerged during pre-concert introductions that he delivered in an authoritatively resounding baritone voice.”
(That full obit, which is worth reading, can be found at the end of this post.)
I’ll write at greater length about Dale, probably in connection with what promises to be a large and moving memorial later this Spring at the Jazz Gallery. (Stay tuned: For now, in lieu of flowers or other gifts in the wake of Dale Fitzgerald’s passing, his family is asking that donations be made to his son Gabriel’s education fund, HERE.)
So I’ll just speak a bit from my heart and my archives here, with more to come.
Dale was a major force and influence in my career, on matters both very large and even very tiny. His work transformed the environment for New York City jazz during a formative period in my own jazz life, and a transitional moment in New York’s scene. During my first trip to Cuba, in the late 1990s, Dale was not only my man on the ground, but he managed to change that place a bit, too. Dale hipped me to what was what in Havana, and he ended up getting me to write the liner notes for Roy Hargrove’s Grammy-winning “Habana” album. Dale was a gentleman and a scholar, a cool cat of a type they don’t really issue anymore. So he taught me important lessons in life. Plus, he was a true basketball head. He loved a lot of things, including people who were for real. And I loved him.
Here’s some stuff from a 2013 Wall St Journal piece I wrote about Jazz Gallery:
Dale Fitzgerald, the Gallery’s executive director until 2009, leased the original spot in 1995 as a rehearsal space for trumpeter Roy Hargrove. The two ended up founding a nonprofit venue. “My idea from the start was that jazz is an international and interdisciplinary language,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. He likes that the new Jazz Gallery spot hosts church services on Sundays. “I always did feel,” he said, “like this place was built on faith.”
And here’s how I started a 1998 cover story for Jazziz magazine about Cuba, drawn from that trip I mentioned above:
“Chevrolet, 1954,” our taxi driver calls out.
“No, 1953, I think,” says Dale Fitzgerald, an American artist manager in town, as am I, for the Havana International Jazz Festival.
“Look at the taillights.”
And on it goes: “Studebaker, 1949,” “’55 Mercury,” “’49 Dodge,” they announce to each other, pointing.
All across Havana you see these vintage cars. They’re not relics; they’re a part of 21st-century life, maintained through care, ingenuity, and necessity. They make great snapshot fodder but function in daily life, too. And, inevitably, as with everything in Havana, they’re filled with music, spilling out from a car radio that is not vintage, which plays anything from traditional Cuban son to modern salsa to American jazz and rock.
As we drive down the Malecón, the avenue that runs along Havana’s rocky northern shore, we pass once-grand, century-old buildings in various states of disrepair alongside the more modern, clinical-looking structures so common in any Communist state. We can smell the spray of the water, pounding its rhythms into the island without pause, and see the clouds, like puffy purple bruises, racing across the island’s sky in parallel lines.
“Time is different here,” I say softly. Fitzgerald grins that smile I’ll see again and again during my first trip to Havana, whenever someone in the know recognizes my immersion into something I’m only beginning to comprehend.
Here is Panken’s obit:
JAZZ GALLERY FOUNDER DALE KELLEY FITZGERALD LEAVES BEHIND MASSIVE LEGACY THAT LIVES ON IN MUSIC, LIFE & THROUGH THE LOVE OF OTHERS
THE JAZZ GALLERY PLANS ARE UNDERWAY FOR A CELEBRATION IN THE SPIRIT OF DALE FITZGERALD IN COMING MONTHS
THE GABRIEL FITZGERALD EDUCATION FUND IS FORMED
Dale Kelley Fitzgerald, who co-founded New York’s prestigious Jazz Gallery in 1995 and was its Executive Director until 2009, died on March 20 at Calvary Hospital in Bronx, N.Y., after a long struggle with cancer. He was 72.
A strapping man with a well-trimmed goatee, Mr. Fitzgerald possessed an impeccably cool demeanor, a fiery spirit, ample amounts of personal charisma, and a pedagogical bent that emerged during pre-concert introductions that he delivered in an authoritatively resounding baritone voice. He earned a Ph.D in anthropology in 1976 at the University of California, Berkeley (his thesis was titled Spirit Mediumship and Seance Performance Among the Ga of Southern Ghana), and taught Cultural Anthropology at Brown University, the New School For Social Research and Lehman College.
After leaving academia and hoping to immerse himself as deeply in the world of jazz as he had immersed himself in the culture of Ga people with whom he lived in 1968 and 1969 while researching his thesis, Mr. Fitzgerald took a job washing dishes at the Village Vanguard, the iconic Manhattan jazz club.
He started a business moving fine art and antiques, and managed several musicians, including the tenor saxophonists Pharaoh Sanders and Nick “Big Nick” Nicholas. In 1988, he began what would be a 26-year business relationship with jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove as his business manager, along with business partner Larry Clothier. In 1992, he leased a practice and rehearsal space for Mr. Hargrove at 290 Hudson Street in the southwest corner of Greenwich Village. Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Hargrove and Lezlie Harrison discussed using it as a venue where the intersection of experimental jazz and jazz-influenced visual artwork could be explored. The result was the not-for-profit Jazz Gallery, an ideal vehicle for Fitzgerald to deploy his academic and business skill sets.
Towards this end, Mr. Fitzgerald, Ms. Harrison and artistic director Rio Sakairi would host a multi-ethnic array of New York’s finest young jazz musicians at a stage of their career when they did not yet have access to major club stages, providing artist-in-residence opportunities, composition commissions, mentorship programs and inexpensive rehearsal facilities. Mr. Fitzgerald presented the first New York performance by the iconic Cuban jazz pianist-composer Chucho Valdés in 1996, foreshadowing a “Jazz Cubano” series that featured original music by a cohort of recent arrivals from Cuba—and from other Caribbean and Central American nations—who have since made their mark on the international jazz playing field. One was Dafnis Prieto, who would earn a MacArthur “genius grant,” as did Vijay Iyer, Jason Moran, and Miguel Zenon after performing at The Jazz Gallery during their formative years. Eleven subsequent recipients of Doris Duke Foundation awards considered The Jazz Gallery home. So did dozens of emerging young musicians whose names now are familiar to all devotees of 21st century jazz. As one of them stated in a Facebook eulogy, during his 14-year stewardship, Mr. Fitzgerald “touched the lives of all us with knowledge and kindness.”
Mr. Fitzgerald’s multi-faceted approach to the arts came through as well in performances by poets Jayne Cortez and Carl Hancock Rux, and various photography and painting exhibitions, most notably the Smithsonian Institution’s Seeing Jazz show in 1998.
Dale Kelley Fitzgerald was born on December 23, 1942 in Wakefield, Rhode Island, to Zella and Paul Fitzgerald, who ran Point Jude Boats in Wakefield. He received his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University.
Besides his wife, Flor Urrutia Fitzgerald, and their son, Gabriel, of New York City, Mr. Fitzgerald is survived by a daughter, Shenna Fitzgerald, of Nederland, Colorado; by stepdaughters Brenda Hill of Buffalo, NY, and Dawn Spears, and her husband, Cassius Spears, of Ashway, Rhode Island; by stepson Kevin Fayerweather of Atlanta, Georgia; by a sister, Kathy Fitzgerald, and her husband Bill Rounseville, of Boston, Massachusetts; and by a grandson, Quinn Kingsbury and six nieces and nephews.
In a Facebook entry last April 24th, Mr. Fitzgerald penned what might be construed as his own eulogy: “Those of you who have known me well over the years know that my work on behalf of The Jazz Gallery has always been a labor of love, propelled by a deep passion for the music and those who play it. A perceptive friend of mine in speaking to me about his understanding of my role in the founding of The Jazz Gallery, commented that I did what I did not because it was something that I wanted to do, but rather something that I had to do. This is where the depth of passion will lead you.” (Ted Panken)
In lieu of flowers or other gifts in the wake of Dale Fitzgerald’s passing, his family is asking that donations be made to his son Gabriel’s education fund, HERE.
*Stay tuned* in the coming months, we will be announcing THE JAZZ GALLERY date for a BIG celebration in the spirit of Dale Fitzgerald at the space, more details soon