Soon after graduating he edited several magazines and journals on music. He was editor of the journal
Metronome from 1943 to 1955 and increased its coverage of modern jazz music as well as promoting contemporary African American musicians. Ulanov was an early advocate of
bebop and the music of
Charlie Parker and
Dizzy Gillespie. In the early 1950s, as part of a
Metronome sponsored event, he ran The New Jazz Society which met at a West 54th Street club where Charlie Parker occupied the weekend residency. The jazz pianist
Lennie Tristano wrote the composition "Coolin' Off With Ulanov", a personal testament to the affinity that many jazz musicians had with Ulanov. He organized several concerts of bop stars for
WOR radio in 1947. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia in the 1950s. From 1955 to 1958, he wrote for
DownBeat, and published several biographies of jazz musicians in the 1940s and 1950s. In his autobiography
Miles Davis referred to Ulanov as the only white critic who ever understood him or Charlie Parker. He taught at
Juilliard (1946),
Princeton (1950–51), and
Barnard College (1951–1988) as well as at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary. In 1962 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Ulanov converted to
Catholicism in 1951 and was one of the sponsors at the baptism of the jazz pianist and composer
Mary Lou Williams in 1957. After his conversion, he began to write more on the subjects of
religion and
psychology. He was the president of the
Catholic Renascence Society and founder of a St. Thomas More Society; he and his wife, Joan Bel Geddes (daughter of
Norman Bel Geddes), translated many essays and books on Catholicism. He advocated the use of amplified music in church, including
rock music. He promoted the idea that the entertainment media should be more Christian in nature, taking to task the movies, music, plays, and particularly comic books (which he called the worst product of the press) in the 1950s. In the last twenty years of his life, Ulanov concentrated on explorations of religion and psychology, and published over 10 books with his second wife,
Ann Belford Ulanov, Professor of Psychiatry and Religion at
Union Theological Seminary in New York and psychoanalyst in private practice. Barry Ulanov died of colorectal cancer on April 30, 2000, aged 82. The Annual Barry Ulanov Memorial Lecture Series is held each year at the Union Theological Seminary. ==Teaching style==