Steiner, John

John Franklin Steiner was born on July 21, 1908 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1929 and a Doctorate in Chemistry in 1933, both from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Steiner married Nina Davis in 1948.

Steiner's interest in music began as a young child. When he was twelve, he became the hat check person at his father's music lodge in Milwaukee. He also took piano lessons and while a student at the University of Wisconsin - Madison he took lessons from Jessie Cohen. He also attended Axel Christianson's music school. As a teenager, Steiner fixed his friends' radios and would hear a variety of music, which prompted him to spend many hours listening to music broadcasts. The interest expanded when his aunt Julianna, who worked at a music store, would bring home chipped phonographs for him to listen to, during the era when not everyone owned a phonograph player. One record that made an early impression was the Dixieland Jazz Band.

Steiner started going to music performances at venues around Milwaukee, such as Humboldt Park, where he heard military and brass bands and songs such as “Tiger Rag” and “St. Louis Blues.” He started going to clubs and concerts in Chicago around 1924, traveling by train or hitchhiking as well as sleeping outdoors in parks and alleys to save money for clubs and albums. He went to music stores as well as theatres including the Oriental, McVicker’s, Chicago, and State-Lake.

Steiner was heavily influenced early on by Chicago music, partially because of its proximity to Milwaukee; it was more difficult for New York music to make its way to the Midwest. The first record he ever bought was by Cleo Brown, the second was Louis Armstrong, and the third Louis Prima. Other early influences include Jelly Roll Morton, whom he heard play at the Alhambra Theater in Milwaukee in 1926, as well as Woody Herman, Chuck Hedges, Bunny Berigan, Gene Schroeder, and Norm Cox. He later said that Duke Ellington and Bix Beiderbecke were his top favorites.

It was in the 1930s that Steiner started visiting the South Side clubs. His first was the Grand Terrace in 1935 where he saw Earl Hines. During this time he wrote for Tempo magazine and was also a correspondent for Jazz Information. With Harry Lim and Helen Oakley Dance he helped create the Hot Club of Chicago in 1935. The club continued into the 1940s by organizing performances of musicians such as Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, Woody Herman, and Artie Shaw.

In the mid-1930s, Steiner moved to Chicago and from 1937-1952 he worked at Miner Laboratories, after which he became the Director of Chemical Research Laboratories. Miner Laboratories was on Clinton Street, located near many “joints” including the Hamilton Hotel, Clark Theatre, Terrace Garden, and Morrison Hotel.

Steiner's interest in recording was prompted mostly through the people he knew, such as his next door neighbor Paul Edward Miller, a writer for Downbeat. In 1938, Steiner met Hugh Davis, an engineer, in a record shop on Melrose Place in Chicago. Davis worked for Seeburg, the jukebox company, and had access to equipment for pressing records. Around 1939, Steiner and Davis started recording music in the clubs. By 1943 they formed S/D Records and recorded musicians such as Squirrel Ashcraft, Cassino Simpson, Jimmy McPartland, and Bud Freeman.

Initially, they ran S/D Records from Steiner's basement but eventually moved to downtown Chicago. As part of the new business, Steiner also started a "record exchange" for collectors interested in rare jazz records. Their focus was on new artists as well as reissuing records from the 1920s and 1930s, many of them from Paramount Records. In 1945, Davis sold out to Steiner and created his own company called Technical Recording Service, though Steiner continued the S/D label for another ten years. After Davis' departure, Steiner moved the headquarters to the Uptown Playhouse Theater, where he worked as their promoter and also lived. Though a fire at the theater in 1946 destroyed most of S/D Records documentation and record stock, Steiner continued to organize recording sessions as well as release reissues.

Starting in 1943, John Steiner began leasing the rights to recordings from Paramount Records, owned by the Wisconsin Chair Company, and releasing them on the S/D label. He bought all the rights to Paramount Records in 1949, which also included the rights to Broadway, Puritan, QRS, Rialto, and others. Steiner continued to reissue early Paramount recordings not just in the United States but also Australia, Japan, England, and Italy. In addition to his reissues, Steiner leased Paramount records to many producers and companies, including Frank Driggs (Biograph Records label from Columbia Records), George Buck (G.H.B. Records), Bill Grauer Productions (Riverside Records), Orrin Keepnews (Milestone Records), and Decca Records. Steiner also managed New York Recording Laboratories in 1946 and became owner in 1948.

During his time in Chicago, Steiner worked with many musicians and often hosted them at his apartment on Ashland and later at his renovated house on Greenview (formerly the Kosciuszko Public Bath) for social events and recording sessions. Some of these artists include Little Brother Montgomery, Lil Armstrong, Baby Dodds, and Austin High Gang Members Jimmy McPartland and Bud Freeman. He recorded some of these musicians for the Paramount Records label and over time he also interviewed many of them.

During the 1950s and 1960s Steiner worked with Bill Russell (American Music Corporation) and together they interviewed many of the classic jazz musicians living in Chicago, such as Natty Dominique, Baby Dodds, Preston Jackson, Jimmy Bertrand, Roy Palmer, Ikey Robinson, and Glover Compton. In 1958, Steiner met Charles Sengstock and a few years later began the massive project of going through microfilmed copies of the Chicago Defender at the Chicago Public Library to create an index of clubs, venues, performances, musicians, and all instances of jazz mentioned in the paper. Steiner also started teaching chemistry at the University of Illinois-Chicago in 1955.

In the 1970s, Steiner helped found the Chicago Jazz Institute, which started as a series of concerts at places such as the Field Museum. Later, he was a founding member of, and very active in, the Jazz Institute of Chicago. He was also involved with the Chicago Jazz Archive at the University of Chicago Library and served on the Visiting Committee to the Department of Music at the University of Chicago.

Steiner retired from his position as a chemistry professor from University of Illinois-Chicago in 1976, at which time he and Nina moved back to Milwaukee. He continued to stay involved in the Chicago jazz scene.

For nearly eighty years, Steiner collected material about jazz music, musicians, recording companies, and many other topics of interest. He was internationally known as an expert on jazz and especially Chicago jazz and often acted as a source or consultant for articles, books, dissertations and theses, documentaries, and other productions of jazz history.

John Steiner died in Milwaukee in June 3, 2000.

From the guide to the Steiner, John. Collection, 1860-2001, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)