A. B. Spellman

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ALFRED BENNETT (A. B.) SPELLMAN is both a founding member of the Black Arts Movement and one of the fathers of modern jazz criticism. Before beginning his thirty-year tenure at the National Endowment of the Arts, Spellman was an active poet, radio programmer, and essayist in New York, the poet-in-residence at the Morehouse College in Atlanta, and a visiting lecturer at Emory, Rutgers, and Harvard universities. He has also been a regular jazz commentator for National Public Radio and has published numerous books and articles on the arts, including The Beautiful Days, a chapbook of poems first published by the Poets Press in 1965, Four Lives in the Bebop Business, a classic in the field of jazz criticism that is now available as Four Jazz Lives, and the book of poems, Things I Must Have Known (2008). Poetry selections from Things I Must Have Known form the basis of the musical work, A Passion for Bach & Coltrane by Jeff Scott, whose work as a member of the Imani Winds ensemble is represented in the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.