The thrill of sitting in a club or concert hall hearing jazz being made is familiar to most fans. But what if you could immerse yourself in the world of the musician, where creating and performing is a profound task, and yet as routine as breathing? When writer Carl Vigeland was invited to tour with Wynton Marsalis and his septet, he was able to do just that. Vigeland's acute observations sweep us into their world as he becomes virtually part of the band. At the same time, Marsalis offers intimate meditations on home, family, creation, and performance- written in the cadence of his inimitable voice. Set on the stage, in the studio, and in great cities and small towns around the world, this richly textured narrative explores how the music is made in America today.

From its beginning, jazz has presented a contradictory social world: jazz musicians have worked diligently to erase old boundaries, but they have just as resolutely constructed new ones. David Ake's vibrant and original book considers the diverse musics and related identities that jazz communities have shaped over the course of the twentieth century, exploring the many ways in which jazz musicians and audiences experience and understand themselves, their music, their communities, and the world at large.
Writing as a professional pianist and composer, the author looks at evolving meanings, values, and ideals--as well as the sounds--that musicians, audiences, and critics carry to and from the various activities they call jazz. Among the compelling topics he discusses is the "visuality" of music: the relationship between performance demeanor and musical meaning. Focusing on pianists Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, Ake investigates the ways in which musicians' postures and attitudes influence perceptions of them as profound and serious artists. In another essay, Ake examines the musical values and ideals promulgated by college jazz education programs through a consideration of saxophonist John Coltrane. He also discusses the concept of the jazz "standard" in the 1990s and the differing sense of tradition implied in recent recordings by Wynton Marsalis and Bill Frisell.
"Jazz Cultures" shows how jazz history has not consisted simply of a smoothly evolving series of musical styles, but rather an array of individuals and communities engaging with disparate--and oftentimes conflicting--actions, ideals, and attitudes.

A legend on both the clarinet and the soprano saxophone, one of the most brilliant exponents of New Orleans jazz, Sidney Bechet (1897-1959) played with such fellow jazz legends as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Jelly Roll Morton. Here is his vivid story written in his own words. Expressive, frank, and hilarious, this classic in jazz literature re-creates a man, a music, and an era.

Ever since it was originally released in 1959, Miles Davis's Kind of Blue has been hailed as a jazz masterpiece. To this day, it remains the bestselling jazz album of all time, selling an incredible 5,000 copies per week. Kind of Blue is a modern-day classic, an album that has long been embraced by students and scholars (and knowing fans) of all musical genres. The album also represents a watershed moment in jazz history, for it helped trigger the first great revolution the music had faced since bebop: modal jazz.

The Making of Kind of Blue is an exhaustively researched examination of how this masterpiece was born. Recorded with (among others) pianist Bill Evans, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, composer/theorists George Russell and Gil Evans, alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, and Miles himself playing trumpet, the album was seen then, and is still seen today, as a fortuitous conflation of some of the real giants of the jazz world. Together these giants produced a recording that would forever change the face of American music.

Drawing on extensive interviews, a vast command of both the history and character of jazz music, and access to rare recordings, Nisenson has pieced together the whole story of this miraculous recording session. His book functions as an in-depth study of the genius of Miles Davis, as well as the genius of Kind of Blue's other musicians and, indeed, the genius of jazz itself.

From the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech, and civil rights to jazz, blues and country music, Nat Hentoff has written about American life for decades, in the "Atlantic Monthly," the "New Yorker," the "Village Voice," the "Wall Street Journal," and "JazzTimes, " among countless other publications. The "New York Times" has hailed Hentoff's work as "an invigorating and entertaining reminder of why freedom of expression matters." The "Washington Post Book World" has called Hentoff "an old-fashioned music lover who likes, as Charlie Parker once put it, 'to listen to the stories' that good music tells." Nat Hentoff is a legend.And now, for the first time, here are his most important writings of the past twenty years--the quintessential Hentoff on everything from Cardinal John O'Connor to Merle Haggard, racism and political correctness in the classroom to Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie to the censorship of Huckleberry Finn. Controversial? You bet. Whatever the topic, "The Nat Hentoff Reader" shows a man of passion and insight, of streetwise wit and polished eloquence-a true American original.

Bayou Jazz Lives is a collection of biographies and autobiographies of jazz and blues musicians who made a vital contribution to the development of these genres. Offering first-hand accounts from the men and women who made the music, as well as scholarly and well-researched life stories by established biographers, this series is an invaluable aid to anyone seeking more information about the conditions in which these key strands of popular music were created.

The first volume of Barker's memoirs, A Life in Jazz, followed him from New Orleans into the big bands of Cab Calloway and Benny Carter. He was working on this -- the second volume -- for some years before his death in 1994. Beginning with an extended portrait of Buddy Bolden as recalled by the likes of Jelly Roll Morton and Bunk Johnson as well as Barker himself, this book draws together a lifetime of stories and the vivid characters who populated "Storyville."

Bayou Jazz Lives is a collection of biographies and autobiographies of jazz and blues musicians who made a vital contribution to the development of these genres. Offering first-hand accounts from the men and women who made the music, as well as scholarly and well-researched life stories by established biographers, this series is an invaluable aid to anyone seeking more information about the conditions in which these key strands of popular music were created.

Marshal Royal was a core member of the Count Basie Orchestra for twenty years during its resurgence in the 1950s and 1960s. Before that, he was a pioneer of jazz on the West Coast, playing with many bands in and around Los Angeles. A child prodigy of both the violin and saxophone, Royal was literally born on the road as his musician parents made their way West.

Royal shares his experiences with Les Hite's band at Sebastian's New Cotton Club, where he worked with jazz legends such as Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller. He became a founding member and 'straw boss' of Lionel Hampton's Orchestra after a wartime career in U.S. Navy bands. After leaving Hampton, Royal made countless recordings as a freelancer before joining Basie, where he was responsible for rehearsing the Orchestra. Later, he became internationally known as a soloist while continuing his prolific recording career. His brother, Ernie, who was a star trumpeter in the bands of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton, is also profiled.

"Yellow Music" is the first history of the emergence of Chinese popular music and urban media culture in early-twentieth-century China. Andrew F. Jones focuses on the affinities between "yellow" or "pornographic" music--as critics derisively referred to the "decadent" fusion of American jazz, Hollywood film music, and Chinese folk forms--and the anticolonial mass music that challenged its commercial and ideological dominance. Jones radically revises previous understandings of race, politics, popular culture, and technology in the making of modern Chinese culture.
The personal and professional histories of three musicians are central to Jones's discussions of shifting gender roles, class inequality, the politics of national salvation, and emerging media technologies: the American jazz musician Buck Clayton; Li Jinhui, the creator of "yellow music"; and leftist Nie Er, a former student of Li's whose musical idiom grew out of virulent opposition to this Sinified jazz. As he analyzes global media cultures in the postcolonial world, Jones avoids the parochialism of media studies in the West. He teaches us to hear not only the American influence on Chinese popular music but the Chinese influence on American music as well; in so doing, he illuminates the ways in which both cultures were implicated in the unfolding of colonial modernity in the twentieth century.

Biography of the legendary pianist/composer. Based on scores of interviews with family and friends, the book gives rare insights into the elusive personality of this legendary hero of jazz.

Sonny Rollins is one of jazz's great innovators, arguably the most influential tenor saxophonist, along with John Coltrane, in the history of modern jazz. He began his musical career at the age of eleven, and within five short years he was playing with the legendary Thelonious Monk. In the late forties, before his twenty-first birthday, Rollins was in full swing, recording with jazz luminaries such as Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Art Blakey, and Miles Davis, and he was hailed as the best jazz tenor man alive in the mid-fifties. Still active today, Rollins and his compelling sound reach a whole new generation of listeners with his eagerly anticipated live appearances. Now renowned jazz writer Eric Nisenson provides a long-overdue look at one of jazz's brightest, and most enduring, stars.

Co-authored by three prominent philosophers of art, Jazz and the Philosophy of Art is the first book in English to be exclusively devoted to philosophical issues in jazz. It covers such diverse topics as minstrelsy, bebop, Voodoo, social and tap dancing, parades, phonography, musical forgeries, and jazz singing, as well as Goodman's allographic/autographic distinction, Adorno's critique of popular music, and what improvisation is and is not. The book is organized into three parts. Drawing on innovative strategies adopted to address challenges that arise for the project of defining art, Part I shows how historical definitions of art provide a blueprint for a historical definition of jazz. Part II extends the book's commitment to social-historical contextualism by exploring distinctive ways that jazz has shaped, and been shaped by, American culture. It uses the lens of jazz vocals to provide perspective on racial issues previously unaddressed in the work. It then examines the broader premise that jazz was a socially progressive force in American popular culture. Part III concentrates on a topic that has entered into the arguments of each of the previous chapters: what is jazz improvisation? It outlines a pluralistic framework in which distinctive performance intentions distinguish distinctive kinds of jazz improvisation. This book is a comprehensive and valuable resource for any reader interested in the intersections between jazz and philosophy.

This is the first biography of jazz trumpeter and singer, Henry 'Red' Allen, long regarded as Louis Armstrong's chief rival. Both men were born in New Orleans and shared an African-American heritage, but their social backgrounds were quite different. Whereas Armstrong made many best-selling records, Allen never achieved hit parade success but gradually built up a durable international following today, dozens of his CDs are widely available. As a close friend, Chilton reveals Allen's personality, as well as analyzing his magnificent recordings. The intriguing contrast between Allen's spectacular performance showmanship and his off-stage reticence is dealt with, and fascinating details of Allen's early life in New Orleans and on the Mississippi riverboats are brought to life. Allen's popularity has increased each year since his death in 1967; his latter day tours of Europe are still regarded as being among the most successful by any visiting jazz musician. The background details of all the periods of Allen's varied career are dealt with, including his work with King Oliver, Luis Russell, Fletcher Henderson, Kid Ory, and Louis Armstrong. The book also contains a selected discography.

The richest place in America's musical landscape is that fertile ground occupied by jazz. Scott DeVeaux takes a central chapter in the history of jazz - the birth of bebop - and shows how our contemporary ideas of this uniquely American art form flow from that pivotal moment. At the same time, he provides an extraordinary view of the United States in the decades just prior to the civil rights movement. DeVeaux begins with an examination of the Swing Era, focusing particularly on the position of African American musicians. He highlights the role played by tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, a 'progressive' committed to a vision in which black jazz musicians would find a place in the world commensurate with their skills. He then looks at the young musicians of the early 1940s, including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk, and links issues within the jazz world to other developments on the American scene, including the turmoil during World War II and the pervasive racism of the period. Throughout, DeVeaux places musicians within the context of their professional world, paying close attention to the challenges of making a living as well as of making good music. He shows that bebop was simultaneously an artistic movement, an ideological statement, and a commercial phenomenon. In drawing from the rich oral histories that a living tradition provides, DeVeaux's book resonates with the narratives of individual lives. While "The Birth of Bebop" is a study in American cultural history and a critical musical inquiry, it is also a fitting homage to bebop and to those who made it possible.

The jazz pianist Billy Tipton was born in Oklahoma City as Dorothy Tipton, but almost nobody knew the truth until the day he died, in Spokane in 1989. Over a fifty-year performing career, Billy Tipton fooled nearly everyone, including Duke Ellington and Norma Teagarden, five successive "wives" with whom Billy lived as a man, and three children who he "fathered." As Billy Tipton herself said, "Some people might think I'm a freak or a hermaphrodite. I'm not. I'm a normal person. This has been my choice." This jazz-era biography evokes the rich popular-music history of the Great Depression and reads like a detective story.

My Life in E-flat is the memoir of a woman who witnessed some of the most important movements in the history of jazz. Through her autobiography, Chan Parker provides intimate insights into the music and into life with Charlie Parker, the key figure in the development of bebop and one of the most important of all jazz musicians. Chan Parker was born Beverly Dolores Berg in New York City at the height of the Jazz Age. Her father was a producer of vaudeville shows and her mother was a dancer in Florenz Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic. Parker became part of the jazz culture as a nightclub dancer and later as the wife of jazz saxophonists Charlie Parker and then Phil Woods. In a moving and candid portrait of Charlie Parker, the author describes in harrowing detail a man of incredible talent besieged with addictions and self-destructiveness. She painfully recounts his death at the age of 35 while married to her and its effect on her life as well as on the musical world. Parker's honest portrait of one of the most gifted musicians in jazz provides unique insight into the history of the music and the difficulties faced by African American performers during the 1940s. Parker also reflects on her struggle to find her own voice and on her work with Clint Eastwood on the film biography of Charlie Parker, Bird (1988).

In Roosevelt's Blues Guido van Rijn documents more than a hundred blues and gospel lyrics that contain direct political comment about FDR. Altogether, they convey the thought, spirit, and history of the African-American population during the Roosevelt era. Included in the book are recorded sermons by Rev. J.M. Gates and lyrics to songs recorded by such notable musicians as Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter, Big Bill Broonzy, "Champion" Jack Dupree, Sonny Boy Williamson, Josh White, the Mississippi Sheiks, and many others. Using these sources, which have been neglected by historians, van Rijn documents Roosevelt's vast popularity among blacks.

Jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, and bassoonist Garvin Bushell (1902-1991) performed with many of the twentieth century's greatest jazz musicians,from Fletcher Henderson, Fats Waller, and Cab Calloway to Eric Dolphy, Gil Evans, and John Coltrane,during his remarkable career that spanned from 1916 to the 1980s. Although best known as a jazz soloist and sideman, Bushell also played oboe and bassoon with symphony orchestras and was a highly regarded instructor of woodwinds. In Jazz from the Beginning , Bushell vividly recounts his musical experiences, featuring candid assessments of the legends with whom he performed as well as eye-opening accounts of the early days of jazz and the racism that he encountered on the road. Based on a series of interviews conducted by jazz scholar Mark Tucker, these memoirs provide a colourful account of Bushell's extraordinary life and career as well as an important record of seventy years of America's musical history.

Louis Armstrong was the founding father of jazz and one of this century's towering cultural figures, yet the full story of his extravagant life has never been told.

Born in 1901 to the sixteen-year-old daughter of a slave, he came of age among the prostitutes, pimps, and rag-and-bone merchants of New Orleans.  He married four times and enjoyed countless romantic involvements in and around his marriages.  A believer in marijuana for the head and laxatives for the bowels, he was also a prolific diarist and correspondent, a devoted friend to celebrities from Bing Crosby to Ella Fitzgerald, a perceptive social observer, and, in his later years, an international goodwill ambassador.

And, of course, he was a dazzling musician.  From the bordellos and honky-tonks of Storyville--New Orleans's red light district--to the upscale nightclubs in Chicago, New York, and Hollywood, Armstrong's stunning playing, gravelly voice, and irrepressible personality captivated audiences and critics alike.  Recognized and beloved wherever he went, he nonetheless managed to remain vigorously himself.

Now Laurence Bergreen's remarkable book brings to life the passionate, courageous, and charismatic figure who forever changed the face of American music.

Singing Jazz looks at the ups and downs of this tough profession through the eyes of legendary jazz singers, well-established performers, and some newcomers. Drawing on accounts from vocalists of yesterday and today in all major jazz styles, the book explores the musical influences of jazz singing; the learning process, whether on the road or in training; the challenges of building a repertoire, getting gigs, traveling, and performing under sometimes difficult circumstances; and the ongoing struggle for artistic recognition and financial security in the competitive world of popular music. To reveal the roots and evolution of this unique art form, authors Crother and Pinfold revisit the lives, words, and stylistic innovations of great singers in jazz history, including Carmen McRae, Dinah Washington, Mel Torme, Shirley Horn, Ethel Waters, Anita O'Day, and many more. Plus - interviewed especially for Singing Jazz - some of today's best performers illustrate the contemporary view of jazz singing. Kitty Margolis, Mark Murphy, Helen Merrill, Mark Porter, Christine Tyrrell, and many others discuss the influences and experiences that have shaped their singing careers, and share insights on how their art is still evolving today.

For nearly thirty years Frank Zappa (1940-1993) pursued an idiosyncratic but influential course in music - rock, jazz, and classical composer (releasing over fifty albums); founder of the Mothers of Invention; guitarist, conductor, and producer; as well as social satirist, sonic scientist, First Amendment champion, and all-around iconoclast. This updated edition of David Walley's cutting-edge classic includes a new foreword, a substantial chapter carrying the Zappa saga through his death from cancer, an afterword, bibliography, discography, videography, and guide to Zappa on the Internet. From 1960's Freak Out! to the posthumous Civilization Phaze III, No Commercial Potential offers converts and connoisseurs the most practical and penetrating book ever written on the musical phenomenon known as Frank Zappa.

With The Jazz Poetry Anthology, this volume offers a comprehensive exploration of the history of jazz poetry. The Second Set gathers many poets omitted from The Jazz Poetry Anthology, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Arthur Brown, Diane di Prima, Henry Dumas, Nikki Giovanni, David Henderson, Anselm Hollo, Haki Madhubuti, Michael McClure, Larry Neal, Dudley Randall, Eugene B. Redmond, Carolyn M. Rodgers, Ntozake Shange, A. B. Spellman, and Jay Wright. The Second Set fills out the history of jazz poetry with poems written before World War II, as well as those from the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, and includes contemporary writers from a range of cultural backgrounds, including Ai, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Martin Espada, Joy Harjo, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Michael Longley, Mwatabu Okantah, Charles Simic, Lorenzo Thomas, Derek Walcott, Ron Welburn, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

Embracing a wide variety of poems informed by jazz, The Second Set also includes statements of poetics by many of the poets anthologized."

Texas musicians and jazz share a history that goes all the way back to the origins of jazz in ragtime, blues, and boogie-woogie. Texans have left their mark on all of jazz's major movements, including hot jazz, swing, bebop, the birth of the cool, hard bop, and free jazz. Yet these musicians are seldom identified as Texans because their careers often took them to the leading jazz centers in New Orleans, Chicago, New York, Kansas City, and Los Angeles.

In Texan Jazz, Dave Oliphant reclaims these musicians for Texas and explores the vibrant musical culture that brought them forth. Working through the major movements of jazz, he describes the lives, careers, and recordings of such musicians as Scott Joplin, Hersal Thomas, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Sippie Wallace, Jack Teagarden, Buster Smith, Hot Lips Page, Eddie Durham, Herschel Evans, Charlie Christian, Red Garland, Kenny Dorham, Jimmy Giuffre, Ornette Coleman, John Carter, and many others.

The great strength of Texan Jazz is its record of the contributions to jazz made by African-American Texans. The first major book on this topic ever published, it will be fascinating reading for everyone who loves jazz.

It is the summer of 1976 and Salvo Ursari, a man of retirement age, is walking on a taut wire strung between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade centre, almost fourteen hundred feet above the city. Far below him in the gaping crowd stands his wife, Anna, to whom he has made a solemn promise: This wire walk will end his career. In this daring moment, Steven Galloway opens his riveting novel about Salvo Ursari, whose life begins in 1919 amid a Transylvanian boyhood inhabited by gypsy folklore and inspired by the bravery of his persecuted people. Salvo's story moves irresistibly from a tragic fire that envelops his family, to street life in Budapest, where he learns the skills of a wire walker, to the carnivals of Europe and the competitive world of the American circus. Most fulfilled when living with paradox, Salvo feels safest while performing startling feats of balance on a wire high above the dangerous world and most endangered if performing above a net. With compassion, warmth, and blazing originality, Ascension combines jaw-dropping storytelling, and fantastical symbolism with mesmerizing detail of Romany and circus culture, and an unforgettable walk with the amazing Salvo Ursari.

Hailed as a classic in music studies when it was first published in 1977, Early Downhome Blues is a detailed look at traditional country blues artists and their work. Combining musical analysis and cultural history approaches, Titon examines the origins of downhome blues in African American society. He also explores what happened to the art form when the blues were commercially recorded and became part of the larger American culture. From forty-seven musical transcriptions, Titon derives a grammar of early downhome blues melody. His book is enriched with the recollections of blues performers, audience members, and those working in the recording industry. In a new afterword, Titon reflects on the genesis of this book in the blues revival of the 1960s and the politics of tourism in the current revival under way. |Kalman examines the crucial period of 1967-1970 at Yale Law School, when the mainstream liberal faculty was challenged by left-liberal students who aimed to unlock the democratic visions of law and social change they associated with Yale's legal realists of the 1930s. Law students during this phase of the school's history included Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Clarence Thomas.