Background
David Hajdu was born on March 8, 1955, Phillipsburg, New Jersey, United States to the family of Charles and Angelina Hajdu.
David Hajdu studied Journalism at New York University earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977.
David Hajdu attended Phillipsburg High School graduating in 1973.
David Hajdu's humble musical beginnings were spawned in Phillipsburg.
David Hajdu in his student years.
Hajdu and members of the Arts and Culture class of 2009 in Brooklyn.
(The sounds, styles, and lives of outstanding singers from...)
The sounds, styles, and lives of outstanding singers from the 1920s to the present, are "written about with loving expertise by two writers who can make singers and their songs live on paper," says Clive Barnes. Features revealing biographies, critical assessments, and selective discographies and videographies.
https://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Great-Singers-Classic-Pop/dp/1557040729/?tag=2022091-20
1991
(Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967) was one of the most accomplis...)
Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967) was one of the most accomplished composers in American music, the creator of such standards as "Take the 'A' Train", yet all his life he was overshadowed by his friend and collaborator, Duke Ellington. Through scrutiny of Strayhorn's private papers and more than five hundred interviews, Hajdu revives Strayhorn as one of the most complex and tragic figures in jazz history.
https://www.amazon.com/Lush-Life-Biography-Billy-Strayhorn-ebook/dp/B00CGFGRUE/?tag=2022091-20
1996
(The story of the rise and fall of those comic books has n...)
The story of the rise and fall of those comic books has never been fully told - until The Ten-Cent Plague. David Hajdu's remarkable new book vividly opens up the lost world of comic books, its creativity, irreverence, and suspicion of authority. In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created - in the pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. No sooner had this new culture emerged than it was beaten down by church groups, community bluestockings, and a McCarthyish Congress - only to resurface with a crooked smile on its face in Mad magazine. When we picture the 1950s, we hear the sound of early rock and roll.
https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Cent-Plague-Comic-Book-Changed-America-ebook/dp/B00139XT6Y/?tag=2022091-20
1999
(The story of how four young bohemians on the make - Bob D...)
The story of how four young bohemians on the make - Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mimi Baez, and Richard Farina - converged in Greenwich Village, fell into love, and invented a sound and a style that are one of the most lasting legacies of the 1960s When Bob Dylan, age twenty-five, wrecked his motorcycle on the side of a road near Woodstock in 1966 and dropped out of the public eye, he was recognized as a genius, a youth idol, and the authentic voice of the counterculture: and Greenwich Village, where he first made his mark as a protest singer with an acid wit and a barbwire throat, was unquestionably the center of youth culture.
https://www.amazon.com/Positively-4th-Street-Fari%C3%B1a-Richard-ebook/dp/B004EPYWLK/?tag=2022091-20
2011
(A personal, idiosyncratic history of popular music that a...)
A personal, idiosyncratic history of popular music that also may well be definitive, from the revered music critic From the age of song sheets in the late nineteenth-century to the contemporary era of digital streaming, pop music has been our most influential laboratory for social and aesthetic experimentation, changing the world three minutes at a time. In Love for Sale, David Hajdu - one of the most respected critics and music historians of our time - draws on a lifetime of listening, playing, and writing about music to show how pop has done much more than peddle fantasies of love and sex to teenagers.
https://www.amazon.com/Love-Sale-Pop-Music-America/dp/0374170533/?tag=2022091-20
2016
(Celebrates the most popular and accomplished musicians, a...)
Celebrates the most popular and accomplished musicians, actors, and professional celebrities of the year, and includes a best and worst list of movies, television programs, music, and books.
https://www.amazon.com/Entertainment-Weekly-Yearbook-David-Hajdu/dp/1883013127/?tag=2022091-20
1998
educator journalist writer songwriter
David Hajdu was born on March 8, 1955, Phillipsburg, New Jersey, United States to the family of Charles and Angelina Hajdu.
David Hajdu attended Phillipsburg High School graduating in 1973. He studied journalism at New York University earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977.
David Hajdu is the music critic of The Nation. In a career spanning more than 30 years, he has written on the arts for numerous publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair. As an editor and magazine writer, Hajdu has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award several times, and his articles and essays have been selected for a number of anthologies, including Best Music Writing, Best American Magazine Writing, The New York Times Arts & Culture Reader, and Best American Comics Writing. His book Lush Life was named one of "Hundred Best Nonfiction Books of All Time" by The New York Times.
Since 2010, Hajdu has been increasingly active as a songwriter and librettist for concert music. Songs with his lyrics have appeared on five albums since 2013, and have been performed by artists including Mary Foster Conklin, Hilary Kole, Jo Lawry, Kate McGarry, Marissa Mulder, Stacy Sullivan, Michael Winther, and his personal favorite among singers, Karen Oberlin. He co-conceived the 2015 concept album Dottie's Charms, with music by Jill Sobule and words by Hajdu, Jonathan Lethem, Luc Sante, and others. The first album dedicated to songs with his lyrics, Waiting for the Angel, was released by Miranda Music in 2015. It was named the Best Debut Album of the Year by the Bob Blumenfeld in the Jazz Critics Poll, described in the New York Observer as "vivid, with grim, mordant undertones."
David Hajdu is a tenured professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he co-teaches the seminar in Arts and Culture in collaboration with the program founder, Alisa Solomon. At Columbia, Hajdu is the elected representative of the Journalism School to the University Senate. He also serves on the Committee for Arts and Prizes, which confers honorary degrees. Prior to joining the full-time faculty of Columbia, Hajdu was a professor of journalism at Syracuse University. For several years before that, he was an adjunct professor in the Graduate Writing Program at the New School University. He has also taught literary nonfiction at the University of Chicago, where was the Robert Vare Nonfiction Writer in Residence.
Hajdu released an album of songs Waiting for the Angel with his lyrics on the Miranda Music label in August 2015. The music is by the composers Renee Rosnes, Fred Hersch, Jill Sobule, and Michael Leonard, with the music to two songs co-composed by Hajdu and Sobule.
(The story of how four young bohemians on the make - Bob D...)
2011(A personal, idiosyncratic history of popular music that a...)
2016(Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967) was one of the most accomplis...)
1996(The sounds, styles, and lives of outstanding singers from...)
1991(The story of the rise and fall of those comic books has n...)
1999(Celebrates the most popular and accomplished musicians, a...)
1998
David Hajdu is married to the singer Karen Oberlin. He and his family live in Manhattan. He has two children out of marriage (Victoria and Jacob Hajdu) and a son with Oberlin (Nate Hajdu).