Ted Gioia (Palo Alto, October 21, 1957) is a noted jazz critic and American music historian, recognized by the books The History of Jazz and Delta Blues, both selected as notable books of the year by the New York Times. He is also a jazz musician and founder of the jazz studies program at Stanford University. He has written other books about music such as West Coast Jazz (1992), Healing Songs (2006) and Work Songs (2006). Three of his books have been awarded the Deems Taylor Prize by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. In 2006, Gioia was the first to reveal, in an article for the Los Angeles Times, the FBI files on the author and folklorist Alan Lomax. He currently participates in the portal jazz.com and also publishes reviews on contemporary fiction. Gioia is a pianist and composer whose works include The End of the Open Road "(1988), Tango Cool (1990) and The City is a Chinese Vase (1998). He holds degrees from the universities of Stanford and Oxford and owns one of the largest collections of research material on jazz and ethnic music in the United States.