Dan Michael Morgenstern[1] (October 24, 1929 – September 7, 2024) was an American jazz historian and archivist.

[2] Born to a Jewish family in Germany, Morgenstern fled Nazi-occupied Austria with his mother and in 1947 emigrated to the United States.

He had a cultured upbringing; the family's friends included the composer Alban Berg, who gave Morgenstern a recording of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik for his sixth birthday.

[6] When the Nazis came to power, Morgenstern's father lost his job as Viennese cultural correspondent on a German newspaper and was placed on a Gestapo blacklist.

[4] Morgenstern's father escaped to Paris; eight-year-old Daniel and his mother, with Danish nationality, took refuge in Copenhagen, where he saw American jazz pianist Fats Waller in concert.

He fell in love with jazz after hearing Fats Waller and Django Reinhardt play a concert in Copenhagen.

[10] In 1976 he was made director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey,[3] where he continued the work of Marshall Stearns and made the Institute the world's largest repository of jazz documents, recordings, and memorabilia.

[12][4] Over the course of his career, Morgenstern arranged concerts and produced and hosted television and radio programs.

He married again in 1974 to Elsa "Ellie" Schochet, with whom he remained until his death; the couple had two sons, Adam and Joshua.