Free speech and free jazz: a documentary captures the life of civil libertarian and music critic Nat Hentoff.

• Author: Loder, Kurt
• Position: The Pleasures of Being Out of Step - Movie review

For well over 6o years, Nat Hentoff has been a one-of-a-kind public intellectual, an unrelentingly outspoken champion of both modern jazz and all of the liberties that flow from the First Amendment. In The Pleasures of Being Out of Step, a new documentary directed by David L. Lewis, we hear Hentoff explaining these twinned inspirations. "The reason we have jazz," he says, "the reason we have almost anything worthwhile, is the fact that we're a free people. And that came about because of James Madison, and those improvisers."

Lewis does a superb job of illustrating Hentoff's long career with firsthand interviews of the man himself and many of his colleagues, with classic musical performances and vintage TV footage. At one point we see the long-departed comedian Lenny Bruce, sucking on a cigarette and addressing the camera directly, saluting Hentoff as a fellow hipster. (Hentoff was one of the rare critics who was valued by trailblazing artists.)

The son of Boston Jews, Hentoff started out as a teenage radio host in his hometown--"the most anti-Semitic city in the country," he recalls unfondly. He moved on to the jazz magazine DownBeat in the early 1950s, where he became one of the country's most perceptive critics, championing the work of such now-celebrated players as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and Sonny Robins. He turned the writing of album-cover liner notes into an art, perfecting this craft for records by Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and even--in a side trip--Bob Dylan. ("He told me stuff that wasn't true," Hentoff recalls with a chuckle, "but I got the essence of him, I think.")

He also became a record producer, going into the studio with such musicians as Cecil Taylor, Coleman Hawkins, and Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln. Wherever there was jazz, it seemed, Hentoff was there. And he helped produce The Sound of Jazz--a 1957 CBS TV special that brought together Lester Young, Count Basie...