Adrian Rollini (1903-1956), an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, played the bass saxophone, piano, vibraphone, and an array of other instruments. He even introduced some, such as the harmonica-like cuesnophone, called Goofus, never before wielded in jazz. Adrian Rollini: The Life and Music of a Jazz Rambler draws on oral history, countless vintage articles, and family archives to trace Rollini's life, from his family's arrival in the US to his development and career as a musician and to his retirement and death. A child prodigy, Rollini was playing the piano in public at the age of five. At sixteen in New York he was recording pianola rolls when his peers recognized his talent and asked him to play xylophone and piano in a new band, the California Ramblers. When he decided to play a relatively new instrument, the bass saxophone, the Ramblers made their mark on jazz forever. Rollini became the man who gave this instrument its place. Yet he did not limit himself to playing bass parts-he became the California Ramblers' major soloist and created the studio and public sound of the band. In 1927 Rollini led a new band that included such jazz greats as Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer. During the Depression years, he was back in New York playing with several bands including his own New California Ramblers. In the 1940s, Rollini purchased a property on Key Largo. He rarely performed again for the public but hosted rollicking jam sessions at his fishing lodge with some of the best nationally known and local players. After a car wreck and an unfortunate hospitalization, Rollini passed away at age fifty-three.

"The Fierce Urgency of Now" links musical improvisation to struggles for social change, focusing on the connections between the improvisation associated with jazz and the dynamics of human rights struggles and discourses. The authors acknowledge that at first glance improvisation and rights seem to belong to incommensurable areas of human endeavor. Improvisation connotes practices that are spontaneous, personal, local, immediate, expressive, ephemeral, and even accidental, while rights refer to formal standards of acceptable human conduct, rules that are permanent, impersonal, universal, abstract, and inflexible. Yet the authors not only suggest that improvisation and rights "can "be connected; they insist that they "must" be connected.

Improvisation is the creation and development of new, unexpected, and productive cocreative relations among people. It cultivates the capacity to discern elements of possibility, potential, hope, and promise where none are readily apparent. Improvisers work with the tools they have in the arenas that are open to them. Proceeding without a written score or script, they collaborate to envision and enact something new, to enrich their experience in the world by acting on it and changing it. By analyzing the dynamics of particular artistic improvisations, mostly by contemporary American jazz musicians, the authors reveal improvisation as a viable and urgently needed model for social change. In the process, they rethink politics, music, and the connections between them.

New Orleans is a kind of Mecca for jazz pilgrims, as Whitney Balliett once wrote. This memoir tells the story of one aspiring pilgrim, Clive Wilson, who fell in love with New Orleans jazz in his early teens while in boarding school in his native England. It is also his story of gradually becoming disenchanted with his family and English environment and, ultimately, finding acceptance and a new home in New Orleans. The timing of his arrival, at age twenty-two, just a few weeks after the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the end of legal segregation, placed him in a unique position with the mostly African American musicians in New Orleans. They showed him around, brought him into their lives, gave him music lessons, and even hired him to play trumpet in brass bands. In short, Wilson became more than a pilgrim; he became an apprentice, and for the first time, legally, in New Orleans, he could make that leap. Time of My Life: A Jazz Journey from London to New Orleans tells the story of Wilson's journey as he discovers the contrast between his imagined New Orleans and its reality. Throughout, he delivers his impressions and interactions with such local musicians as "Fat Man" Williams, Manuel Manetta, Punch Miller, and Billie and DeDe Pierce. As his playing improves, invitations to play in local bands increase. Eventually, he joins in the jam and, by doing so, integrates the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band, which had been in continuous existence since 1911. Except for a brief epilogue, this memoir ends in 1979, when Wilson assembles his own band for the first time, the Original Camellia Jazz Band, with musicians who had been among his heroes when he first arrived in New Orleans.

This year marks the golden anniversary of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the flagship band of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Formed in 1966 and flourishing until 2010, the Art Ensemble distinguished itself by its unique performance practices--members played hundreds of instruments on stage, recited poetry, performed theatrical sketches, and wore face paint, masks, lab coats, and traditional African and Asian dress. The group, which built a global audience and toured across six continents, presented their work as experimental performance art, in opposition to the jazz industry's traditionalist aesthetics. In Message to Our Folks, Paul Steinbeck combines musical analysis and historical inquiry to give us the definitive study of the Art Ensemble. In the book, he proposes a new theory of group improvisation that explains how the band members were able to improvise together in so many different styles while also drawing on an extensive repertoire of notated compositions. Steinbeck examines the multimedia dimensions of the Art Ensemble's performances and the ways in which their distinctive model of social relations kept the group performing together for four decades. Message to Our Folks is a striking and valuable contribution to our understanding of one of the world's premier musical groups.

This extensively researched text concerning the life and career of Liverpool-born Black jazz musician Gordon Stretton not only contributes to the important debate concerning the transoceanic pathways of jazz during the 20th century, but also suggests to the jazz fan and scholar alike that such pathways, reaching as they also did across the Atlantic from Europe, are actually part of a largely ignored therefore partially-hidden history of 20th century jazz performance, industry and influence. The work also exists to contribute to a more complete picture of the significance of diaspora studies across the spectrum of popular music performance, and to award to those Liverpool musicians who were not contributors to the city's musical visage post-rock 'n' roll, a place in popular music history. Gordon Stretton was a jazz pioneer in several senses: he emerged from a poverty-stricken, racially marginalized upbringing in Liverpool to develop a popular music career emblematic of Black diasporan experience. He was a child dancer and singer in the Lancashire Lads (the troupe which was also part of a young Charlie Chaplin's development), a well-respected solo touring artist in the UK as 'The Natural Artistic Coon', a chorister and musical director with the Jamaican Choral Union and, having encountered syncopated music, a jazz percussionist, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist (not to mention a ground-breaking bandleader). All of these musical experiences took place through time on his own terms as he learnt his craft 'on the hoof' via many different encounters with musical genres from Liverpool to London, Paris, Brussels, Rio, and Buenos Aires. Gordon Stretton was truly a transoceanic jazz pioneer.

This biography tells the story of one of the most notorious figures in the history of popular music, Morris Levy (1927-1990). At age nineteen, he cofounded the nightclub Birdland in Hell's Kitchen, which became the home for a new musical style, bebop. Levy operated one of the first integrated clubs on Broadway and helped build the careers of Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell and most notably aided the reemergence of Count Basie. In 1957, he founded a record label, Roulette Records. Roulette featured many of the significant jazz artists who played Birdland but also scored top pop hits with acts like Buddy Knox, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, Joey Dee and the Starliters, and, in the mid-1960s, Tommy James. Stories abound of Levy threatening artists, songwriters, and producers, sometimes just for the sport, other times so he could continue to build his empire. Along the way, Levy attracted "investors" with ties to the Mafia, including Dominic Ciaffone (a.k.a. "Swats" Mulligan), Tommy Eboli, and the most notorious of them all, Vincent Gigante. Gigante allegedly owned large pieces of Levy's recording and retail businesses. Starting in the late 1950s, the FBI and IRS investigated Levy but could not make anything stick until the early 1980s, when Levy foolishly got involved in a deal to sell remaindered records to a small-time reseller, John LaMonte. With partners in the mob, Levy tried to force LaMonte to pay for four million remaindered records. When the FBI secretly wiretapped LaMonte in an unrelated investigation and agents learned about the deal, investigators successfully prosecuted Levy in the extortion scheme. Convicted in 1988, Levy did not live to serve prison time. Stricken with cancer, he died just as his last appeals were exhausted. However, even if he had lived, Levy's brand of storied high life was effectively bust. Corporate ownership of record labels doomed most independents in the business, ending the days when a savvy if ruthless hustler could blaze a path to the top.

The guitarist and composer Pat Metheny ranks among the most popular and innovative jazz musicians of all time. In Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1975-1984, Mervyn Cooke offers the first in-depth account of Metheny's early creative period, during which he recorded eleven stunningly varied albums for the pioneering European record label ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music). This impressive body of recordings encompasses both straight-ahead jazz playing with virtuosic small ensembles and the increasingly complex textures and structures of the Pat Metheny Group, a hugely successful band also notable for its creative exploration of advanced music technologies which were state-of-the-art at the time. Metheny's music in all its shapes and forms broke major new ground in its refusal to subscribe to either of the stylistic poles of bebop and jazz-rock fusion which prevailed in the late 1970s. Through a series of detailed analyses based on a substantial body of new transcriptions from the recordings, this study reveals the close interrelationship of improvisation and pre-composition which lies at the very heart of the music. Furthermore, these analyses vividly demonstrate how Metheny's music is often conditioned by a strongly linear narrative model: both its story-telling characteristics and atmospheric suggestiveness have sometimes been compared to those of film music, a genre in which the guitarist also became active during this early period. The melodic memorability for which Metheny's compositions and improvisations have long been world-renowned is shown to be just one important element in an unusually rich and flexible musical language that embraces influences as diverse as bebop, free jazz, rock, pop, country & western, Brazilian music, classical music, minimalism, and the avant-garde. These elements are melded into a uniquely distinctive soundworld which, above all, directly reflects Metheny's passionate belief in the need to refashion jazz in ways which can allow it to speak powerfully to each new generation of youthful listeners.

"She made you think that she knew who you were, that she was singing only to you..." Miss Peggy Lee cast a spell when she sang. She purred so intimately in nightclubs that couples clasped hands and huddled closer. She hypnotized, even on television. Lee epitomized cool, but her trademark song, "Fever"-covered by Beyonce and Madonna-is the essence of sizzling sexual heat. Her jazz sense dazzled Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong. She was the voice of swing, the voice of blues, and she provided four of the voices for Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp, whose score she co-wrote. But who was the woman behind the Mona Lisa smile? With elegant writing and impeccable research, including interviews with hundreds who knew Lee, acclaimed music journalist James Gavin offers the most revealing look yet at an artist of infinite contradictions and layers. Lee was a North Dakota prairie girl who became a temptress of enduring mystique. She was a singer-songwriter before the term existed. Lee "had incredible confidence onstage," observed the Godfather of Punk, Iggy Pop; yet inner turmoil wracked her. She spun a romantic nirvana in her songs, but couldn't sustain one in reality. As she passed middle age, Lee dwelled increasingly in a bizarre dreamland. She died in 2002 at the age of eighty-one, but Lee's fascination has only grown since. This masterful account of Peggy Lee's strange and enchanting life is a long overdue portrait of an artist who redefined popular singing.

What is jazz? What is gained - and what is lost - when various communities close ranks around a particular definition of this quintessentially American music? "Jazz/Not Jazz" explores some of the musicians, concepts, places, and practices which, while deeply connected to established jazz institutions and aesthetics, have rarely appeared in traditional histories of the form. David Ake, Charles Hiroshi Garrett, and Daniel Goldmark have assembled a stellar group of writers to look beyond the canon of acknowledged jazz greats and address some of the big questions facing jazz today. More than just a history of jazz and its performers, this collections seeks out those people and pieces missing from the established narratives to explore what they can tell us about the way jazz has been defined and its history has been told.

Born in the late 19th century, jazz gained mainstream popularity during a volatile period of racial segregation and gender inequality. It was in these adverse conditions that jazz performers discovered the power of dress as a visual tool used to defy mainstream societal constructs, shaping a new fashion and style aesthetic. "Fashion and Jazz" is the first study to identify the behaviours, signs and meanings that defined this newly evolving subcultural style. Drawing on fashion studies and cultural theory, the book provides an in-depth analysis of the social and political entanglements of jazz and dress, with individual chapters exploring key themes such as race, class and gender. Including a wide variety of case studies, ranging from Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald to Louis Armstrong and Chet Baker, it presents a critical and cultural analysis of jazz performers as modern icons of fashion and popular style. Addressing a number of previously underexplored areas of jazz culture, such as modern dandyism and the link between drug use and glamorous dress, " Fashion and Jazz" provides a fascinating history of fashion's dialogue with African-American art and style. It is essential reading for students of fashion, cultural studies, African-American studies and history.

Saxophone virtuoso Charlie "Bird" Parker began playing professionally in his early teens, became a heroin addict at 16, changed the course of music, and then died when only 34 years old. His friend Robert Reisner observed, "Parker, in the brief span of his life, crowded more living into it than any other human being." Like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane, he was a transitional composer and improviser who ushered in a new era of jazz by pioneering bebop and influenced subsequent generations of musicians. Meticulously researched and written, Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker tells the story of his life, music, and career. This new biography artfully weaves together firsthand accounts from those who knew him with new information about his life and career to create a compelling narrative portrait of a tragic genius. While other books about Parker have focused primarily on his music and recordings, this portrait reveals the troubled man behind the music, illustrating how his addictions and struggles with mental health affected his life and career. He was alternatively generous and miserly; a loving husband and father at home but an incorrigible philanderer on the road; and a chronic addict who lectured younger musicians about the dangers of drugs. Above all he was a musician, who overcame humiliation, disappointment, and a life-threatening car wreck to take wing as Bird, a brilliant improviser and composer. With in-depth research into previously overlooked sources and illustrated with several never-before-seen images, Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker corrects much of the misinformation and myth about one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century.

"Joe Wilder set the table. His struggles made it easier for me and many others."--From the Foreword by Wynton Marsalis Trumpeter Joe Wilder is distinguished for his achievements in both the jazz and classical worlds. He was a founding member of the Symphony of the New World, where he played first trumpet, and he performed as lead trumpet and soloist with Lionel Hampton, Jimmy Lunceford, Dizzy Gillespie, and Count Basie. Yet Wilder is also known as a pioneer who broke down racial barriers, the first African American to hold a principal chair in a Broadway show orchestra, and one of the first African Americans to join a network studio orchestra. In Softly, with Feeling, Edward Berger tells Wilder's remarkable story-from his growing up in working-class Philadelphia to becoming one of the first 1,000 black Marines during World War II-with tremendous feeling and extensive reminiscences by Wilder and his colleagues, including renowned Philadelphia-area musicians Jimmy Heath and Buddy DeFranco. Berger also places Wilder's experiences within a broader context of American musical and social history. Wilder's modesty and ability to perform in many musical genres may have prevented him from achieving popular recognition, but in Softly, with Feeling, his legacy and contributions to music and culture are assured.

Jazz was born on the streets, grew up in the clubs, and will die--so some fear--at the university. Facing dwindling commercial demand and the gradual disappearance of venues, many aspiring jazz musicians today learn their craft, and find their careers, in one of the many academic programs that now offer jazz degrees. "School for Cool" is their story. Going inside the halls of two of the most prestigious jazz schools around--at Berklee College of Music in Boston and the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York--Eitan Y. Wilf tackles a formidable question at the heart of jazz today: can creativity survive institutionalization?
Few art forms epitomize the anti-institutional image more than jazz, but it's precisely at the academy where jazz is now flourishing. This shift has introduced numerous challenges and contradictions to the music's practitioners. Solos are transcribed, technique is standardized, and the whole endeavor is plastered with the label "high art"--a far cry from its freewheeling days. Wilf shows how students, educators, and administrators have attempted to meet these challenges with an inventive spirit and a robust drive to preserve--and foster--what they consider to be jazz's central attributes: its charisma and unexpectedness. He also highlights the unintended consequences of their efforts to do so. Ultimately, he argues, the gap between creative practice and institutionalized schooling, although real, is often the product of our efforts to close it.

Carter and Ralph Stanley--the Stanley Brothers--are comparable to Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs as important members of the earliest generation of bluegrass musicians. In this first biography of the brothers, author David W. Johnson documents that Carter (1925-1966) and Ralph (b 1927) were equally important contributors to the tradition of old-time country music. Together from 1946 to 1966, the Stanley Brothers began their careers performing in the schoolhouses of southwestern Virginia and expanded their popularity to the concert halls of Europe. In order to re-create this post-World War II journey through the changing landscape of American music, the author interviewed Ralph Stanley, the family of Carter Stanley, former members of the Clinch Mountain Boys, and dozens of musicians and friends who knew the Stanley Brothers as musicians and men. The late Mike Seeger allowed Johnson to use his invaluable 1966 interviews with the brothers. Notable old-time country and bluegrass musicians such as George Shuffler, Lester Woodie, Larry Sparks, and the late Wade Mainer shared their recollections of Carter and Ralph. Lonesome Melodies begins and ends in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. Carter and Ralph were born there and had an early publicity photograph taken at the Cumberland Gap. In December 1966, pallbearers walked up Smith Ridge to bring Carter to his final resting place. In the intervening years, the brothers performed thousands of in-person and radio shows, recorded hundreds of songs and tunes for half a dozen record labels, and tried to keep pace with changing times while remaining true to the spirit of old-time country music. As a result of their accomplishments, they have become a standard of musical authenticity.

Born on Thursday Island in 1929, Seaman Dan didn't release his debut album, 'Follow the Sun', until his 70th birthday. In the next ten years he released five albums, showcasing traditional music from the Torres Strait, as well as those revealing his love of jazz and blues. Steady, Steady: The life and music of Seaman Dan is replete with Uncle Seaman's stories of his active and sometimes dangerous life in the islands in the heyday of pearl diving and other jobs, and his later development as a professional singer/musician. The book includes many evocative and previously unknown images sourced from family and friends and will include a CD of tracks reflecting important periods in the life of this national treasure. Listen to a sample of Seaman Dan's favourite songs

Rhythm Changes in 12 Keys is Book II in the " Constructing Walking Jazz Bass Lines " series for the Double Bassist and Electric Jazz Bassist.Rhythm Changes in 12 Keys compliments Book I " The Blues in 12 Keys " by following on with an in depth study of " must know " Jazz chord progressions for the aspiring Jazz Bassist.Rhythm Changes in 12 Keys is a complete guide demonstrating how to construct walking jazz bass lines in the jazz tradition. Part 1 of the book outlines and demonstrates the various techniques used by professional Jazz Bassists to provide forward motion and a strong harmonic and rhythmic foundation into bass lines. Part 2 of the book outlines Rhythm Changes in 12 keys with over 70 choruses of professional jazz bass lines.for Beginner to Advanced students.