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Barry Ulanov was an American writer, perhaps best known as a jazz critic.
Barry Ulanov was born in Manhattan, New York. Ulanov received early instruction on the violin from his father Nathan who was concertmaster for Arturo Toscanini's NBC Philharmonic Orchestra but after a car crash, in which he broke both wrists, he ceased playing the instrument. Ulanov studied at Columbia University taking his BA there in 1939. While at Columbia he wrote about jazz and also attended jazz concerts including an early performance of "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday at Café Society. Soon after graduating he edited several magazines and journals on music. He was editor of the journal Metronome from 1943 to 1955 and increased its coverage of modern jazz music as well as promoting contemporary African-American musicians.
Ulanov was an early advocate of bebop especially the music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. In the early 1950s, as part of a Metronome sponsored event, he ran The New Jazz Society which met at a West 54th Street club where Charlie Parker occupied the weekend residency. The jazz pianist Lennie Tristano wrote the composition "Coolin' Off With Ulanov", a personal testament to the affinity that many jazz musicians had with Ulanov. He organized several concerts of bop stars for WOR radio in 1947. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia in the 1950s. From 1955 to 1958 he wrote for Down Beat, and published several biographies of jazz musicians in the 1940s and 1950s. In his autobiography Miles Davis referred to Ulanov as the only white critic who ever understood him or Charlie Parker. He taught at Juilliard, Princeton, and Barnard College as well as at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary. In 1962 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
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