Cary Ginell
Cary Ginell is a veteran radio broadcaster,
folklorist, and author of ten books on American music. He is an award-winning writer, music historian, and producer. Cary has written
6 books, penned dozens of liner notes, and is the co-owner of Origin Jazz Library.
Together with Roy Lee Brown, Cary wrote the
award-winning biography book Milton Brown & the Founding of Western Swing, the story of the often forgotten Father of Western Swing
and his innovative band the Musical Brownies.
Cary has been honored five times by the ARSC
(Association for Recorded Sound Collections) with awards for "Excellence in Historical
Recorded Sound Research" for his books, "Milton Brown & the Founding of Western Swing" (University of Illinois Press, 1994), "Discography
of Western Swing & Hot String Bands" (Greenwood Press, 2001), "Good Vibes" (Scarecrow Press, 2003) (an autobiography of jazz musician
Terry Gibbs), "Old Shep: The Recordings of Red Foley" (Bear Family Records), and "Hot Jazz for Sale: Hollywood's Jazz Man Record Shop"
(Lulu.com) The Gibbs biography also won the prestigious ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for music
journalism in December 2004.
Cary has annotated
dozens of albums for labels such as Naxos, Living Era, Texas Rose, Rambler, Bear Family, Rhino, Revenant, and Origin Jazz Library.
Cary was also the associate producer and
annotator for the Grammy-nominated anthology "Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban
Folk Boom - 1950-1970" (Rhino Records, 2001). A longtime supporter of public radio, Cary produced specials for NPR's "Jazz Profiles" on
Terry Gibbs and flutist Herbie Mann. His most recent book is "The Herbie Mann Picto-Discography."
Cary works as a theatre and concert
reviewer for The Acorn Newspapers and writes his own blog on theater arts, VC On Stage. Cary holds a master's degree in Folklore from UCLA.
Cary lives in California with his wife, Gail Ginell.
He continues to write books and articles, produce stage shows and speak at various public events. He and Gail have two sons, Adam Ginell, who
is a successful marketing and graphic design executive who has worked at both NBC and CBS; and Brian Ginell, who works for Echo Summit as a
high-end restaurant construction engineer.
"Cary Ginell has compiled exhaustive research
to set the record straight on the life and music of Milton Brown, one of the great
unsung heroes of American music; and one of the true fathers of western swing. Ginell's biography offers a wealth of new information on
Brown and his times and paints a marvelously detailed portrait of the rich Texas music scene of the Depression era."
~Charles K. Wolfe, Middle Tennessee State University