Giddins' modest strengths as a writer on jazz include his eclectic
taste, his sense of music history, and his avoidance of an
aggressively hip tone - so this collection of reviews, essays, and
interviews (published in the Village Voice since 1973) is more
welcome than some such gatherings. True, many of the reviews here
are too much about one specific performance to stand up well to
hard-cover compilation; too many of the retrospectives lapse into
mere annotated discographies; and Giddins brings little that's
fresh to pieces on such familiar figures as Sinatra (the
contradictory "embodiment of good taste, garrulous vulgarity, and
bourgeois mush"), Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Ethel Waters, or
Bing Crosby. But there's value in his close-up appreciation of Duke
Ellington's late works, his review of Irving Berlin's vast
achievement (acknowledging Alec Wilder's definitive essay in
American Popular Song), his analysis of Sarah Vaughan's erratic
performances, and his enthusiasm for Sonny Rollins ("for me no
other living musician operates on Armstrong's pinnacle"). Also
distinctive are looks at lesser-known careers - like those of
stride-pianist Donald Lambert (1904-1962), idiosyncratic singer
Professor Longhair, trumpeter Red Rodney (an episodic little
biography - through drug addiction, ups and downs), or Dutch
saxophonist-composer Willem Breuker. And Giddins also keeps an eye
on some key jazz-world issues: the matter of white artists lifting
from blacks ("Economically and socially, minstrelsy is more often
than not unjust; aesthetically, it is the key with which some of
our more intelligent white performers unlocked the doors to their
own individualities"); the exploitation of artists by producers (a
Wes Montgomery profile); and the question of sellingout - as
personified by that most tasteful of sell-outs, George Benson.
There's little stylishness here, and when Giddins strains for
eloquence he is usually embarrassing (Charlie Parker "is a knife
blade, a beautiful and terrible Daedalus, flying straight for the
sun's eye"). But, for jazz enthusiasts - a solid,
middle-of-the-road viewpoint that's good to have around. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Gary Giddins, winner of the 1998 National Book Critics Circle
Award, has a following that includes not only jazz enthusiasts but
also pop music fans of every stripe. Writing here in a lyrical and
celebratory style all his own, Giddins dazzlingly shows us--among
many other things--how performers originally perceived as radical
(Bing Crosby, Count Basie, Elvis Presley) became conservative
institutions ... how Charlie Parker created a masterpiece from the
strain of an inane ditty ... how the Dominoes helped combine church
ritual with pop music ... and how Irving Berlin translated a
chiaroscuro of Lower East Side minorities into imperishable songs.
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