Bob Rusch

Who is Bob Rusch?

Bob Rusch is an American jazz critic and record producer.

Rusch studied clarinet and drums in his youth. During the 1970s, Rusch played drums in workshops with Jaki Byard and Cedar Walton. He wrote for the magazines Down Beat, Jazz Journal and Jazz Forum in the 1970s before founding Cadence Magazine in 1975. He founded two noted labels, Cadence Jazz and CIMP, and produced or oversaw the release of hundreds of jazz releases; among those he has produced are Bill Dixon, Chet Baker, Glenn Spearman, Ernie Krivda, Ivo Perelman, Noah Howard, Dominic Duval, Steuart Liebig, Cecil Taylor, Fred Hess, Anthony Braxton, Bill Barron, Paul Smoker, and Steve Swell. He has run North Country Record Distribution, an independent jazz label distributor, since 1983. Rusch has donated his large, indexed collection of jazz periodicals to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.