Stan Soocher Collection on John D. MacDonald

In his career, Stan Soocher has served as a journalist, lawyer and educator focusing on the entertainment industry. Born in Bangor, Maine, he grew up in Miami, Florida, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and Master of Arts in English from the University of Florida in the 1970s. After establishing himself as a reporter and editor in New York City on the staff of the nationally distributed rock-music magazine Circus, he became interested in the legal rights of writers and earned a Juris Doctorate degree from New York Law School in 1983.

While in law school, Stan began writing a weekly section for The National Law Journal covering recent federal appeals court decisions. He also wrote occasional articles about entertainment law for The National Law Journal and other publications, winning national journalism awards for his music law articles in The National Law Journal, Rolling Stone and Musician Magazine.

In 1984, Stan became a licensed New York lawyer. In 1985, for The National Law Journal’s publisher he founded the monthly trade publication Entertainment Law & Finance, which he continued to work on as Editor-in-Chief more than 38 years later. In addition, Stan authored the books They Fought the Law: Rock Music Goes to Court (1998) and Baby You’re a Rich Man: Suing the Beatles for Fun & Profit (2015). In 2014, he was the recipient of the State Bar of Texas Entertainment, Arts & Sports Law Section’s “Texas Star Award” for “Outstanding Contribution and Achievement in the Field of Entertainment Law.”

In 2000, Stan was appointed as a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Denver, where he initially served as Chair of the Department of Music & Entertainment Industry Studies, then as full-time faculty member in the University’s Music Business program. After earning a Full Professorship, he retired from the University as a Professor Emeritus in 2021.

Stan remembers that while growing up, the first John D. MacDonald story he read was “Elimination Race” in the short-story collection book High Gear about fast-car drivers. Later, drawn to MacDonald’s works primarily for John D.’s environmental concerns, Stan read nearly all MacDonald’s short-story compilations, novels and non-fiction books.

During the 1990s, Stan got involved in the planning of and speaking at John D. MacDonald Conferences, and was listed as an Associate Editor for the JDM Bibliophile. Articles Stan wrote for the JDM Bibliophile included Issue #52 “The Chartreuse Chanteuse” (written in the style of John D. MacDonald as an opening chapter of an imagined new Travis McGee novel); Issue #54 “John D. MacDonald Online: A Look at a JDM Computer Discussion Group”; Issue #55 “Salvage, Please: The Letters of John D. MacDonald and Marlene Dietrich,” (a somewhat different version of the article appeared in the Miami Herald’s Tropic Magazine, July 2, 1995); Issue #58 “The Long Lawyerly Look: An Examination of the Legal Profession In John D. MacDonald’s Works, From F. Lee Bailey To the Travis McGee Novels”; and Issue #60 the obituary “Walter Shine: JDM Expert ‘Par Excellence’.”

Source:

Biographical information by Stan Soocher.