Chip Deffaa

Chip Deffaa is an author, jazz historian, playwright, songwriter and director. For 18 years, he wrote for the New York Post, covering jazz, cabaret and theater. He has contributed to Jazz Times, The Mississippi Rag, England's Crescendo and Entertainment Weekly. He has written eight books, including Swing Legacy, Voices of the Jazz Age, In the Mainstream, Traditionalists and Revivalists in Jazz, Jazz Veterans, F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Princeton Years (ed.),Blue Rhythms, and (with David Cassidy) C'Mon Get Happy. He has written and directed in New York such plays as George M. Cohan: In his Own Words (published by Samuel French Inc.), Yankee Doodle Boy (Drama Source), The George M. Cohan Revue (Baker's Plays), George M. Cohan & Co., (Eldridge Plays), The Seven Little Foys, The Johnny Mercer Jamboree, and Theater Boys. George M. Cohan Tonight!, which Deffaa wrote and directed Off-Broadway in New York at the Irish Repertory Theatre, was hailed by The New York Times as "brash, cocky, and endlessly euphoric" (The New York Times, March 11, 2006). All of Deffaa's plays are available for licensing. Deffaa also lectures on theater and jazz. His 2007 lectures in Korea, timed to coincide with the opening of one of his plays there, were sponsored by the U.S. State Department. Deffaa has written liner notes for many CD's, including those of such artists as Miles Davis, Benny Goodman, Ray Brown, Diane Schuur, Ruth Brown, Tito Puente, Dick Hyman, Randy Sandke, Scott Hamilton, and the Count Basie Orchestra. Deffaa has won an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award, a New Jersey Press Association Award, and an IRNE Award (Independent Reviewers of New England). Deffaa is a member of the Society of Stage Directors & Choreographers, the Dramatists Guild, ASCAP, NARAS, the Jazz Jounalists Association, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, the Drama Desk, and the American Theatre Critics Association.

References: www.GeorgeMCohan.org, Marquis' "Who's Who in the World."