Bill Milkowski

Bill Milkowski is a respected veteran music journalist who has been writing for several publications over the past 50 years. He is currently a regular contributor to Down Beat, Jazziz, Guitar Player and The Absolute Sound magazines. His writing has also appeared in Jazz Times, Bass Player, Modern Drummer, Acoustic Guitar, Mojo, Swing Journal, DRUM! and Interview as well as magazines abroad such as Jazzthing (Germany), Vibrations (Switzerland), Guitar Club (Italy), Guitar (Japan) and Hudba (Slovakia). A winner of the Helen Oakley Dance-Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Newspaper, Magazine, Online Feature or Review Writing for 2004, Milkowski also received the Jazz Journalist Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 and is a recipient of the 2015 Bruce Lundvall Award, presented by the Montreal Jazz Festival.

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a bachelors degree in journalism, Milkowski began working as an intern at The Milwaukee Journal in 1976, later becoming a freelance music reviewer and feature writer there. He simultaneously served as arts editor at the Milwaukee biweekly publication, Cityside. He moved to New York City in 1980 to accept a position as managing editor at a Long Island-based arts & entertainment weekly, Good Times, where he worked for two and a half years. Milkowski has been freelancing exclusively since 1983 and has written over 7,000 articles, features and reviews for magazines all over the world as well as writing over 1,000 sets of liner notes for a variety of record labels and artists. He has also produced recordings for the Blue Note, Columbia and Concord labels.

Milkowski is the author of seven books -- JACO: The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius (Backbeat Books, 1995) and its updated and expanded Deluxe 10th Anniversary Edition (Backbeat Books, 20115), Rockers, Jazzbos & Visionaries (Billboard Books, 1998), Swing It! An Annotated History of Jive (Billboard Books, 2001), Legends of Jazz (Edizioni White Star, 2011), Keith Richards: A Rock ’N’ Roll Life(Edizioni White Star, 2012) and Here And Now: The Autobiograpy of Pat Martino (Backbeat Books, 2011). His most recently published biography is Ode to a Tenor Titan: The Life and Times and Music of Michael Brecker (Backbeat Books, published on Oct. 1, 2021). His next work, to be released in 2024, is drummer Mike Clark’s autobiography, Hit Man! Confessions of a Bad-Ass Buddhist Drummer Born to Swing.

During a three-year period (1993-1996) when he lived in New Orleans, Milkowski continued to freelance for national music magazines while also hosting an overnight show on local radio station WWOZ (“The Milkman’s Matinee”). He returned to New York City in 1997 and in 2018 moved to West Hartford, CT, where he completed his Michael Brecker biography during pandemic lockdown and married Lauren Zarambo in October of 2022.