In this wise, stimulating, and deeply personal book, an eminent jazz chronicler writes of his encounters with four great black musicians: Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Milt Hinton, and Nat "King" Cole. Equal parts memoir, oral history, and commentary, each of the main chapters is a minibiography, weaving together conversations Gene Lees had with the musicians and their families, friends, and associates over a period of several decades.
Lees begins the book with an essay that tells of his introduction to the world of jazz and his reaction to racism in the United States when he emigrated from Canada in 1955. The underlying theme in his book is the impact racism had on the four musicians' lives and careers and their determination to overcome it. As Lees writes, "No white person can even begin to understand the black experience in the United States. . . . All of the four jazz makers] are men who had every reason to embrace bitterness--and didn't."

Nat Hentoff, renowned jazz critic, civil liberties activist, and fearless contrarian - 'I'm a Jewish atheist civil-libertarian pro-lifer' - has lived through much of jazz's history and has known many of jazz's most important figures, often as friend and confidant. Hentoff has been a tireless advocate for the neglected parts of jazz history, including forgotten sidemen and women. This volume includes his best recent work - short essays, long interviews, and personal recollections. From Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong to Ornette Coleman and Quincy Jones, Hentoff brings the jazz greats to life and traces their art to gospel, blues, and many other forms of American music. "At the Jazz Band Ball" also includes Hentoff's keen, cosmopolitan observations on a wide range of issues. The book shows how jazz and education are a vital partnership, how free expression is the essence of liberty, and how social justice issues like health care and strong civil rights and liberties keep all the arts - and all members of society - strong.

Here is Nat Hentoff's deeply felt exploration of jazz, blues, country, and gospel--and the musicians who bring the music to life. Hentoff has not only loved music all his life, he has lived it by being friends with many of the musicians he writes about in this collection. Hentoff poignantly describes the early days of Roy Eldridge and the last years of Billie Holiday and Bird. He tells amazing stories of the Count, Duke, and Dizzy. "Full of insightful behind-the-scenes encounters" ("San Francisco Chronicle"), "Listen to the Stories" covers new recordings and old legends, remarkable lives and unforgettable music.

This is a paperbound reprint of a 2003 book. Village Voice columnist Hentoff has been one of the most vociferous opponents of the Bush administration's attempts to curtail American liberty in the wake of the September 11th attacks. Here he surveys the broad-based attack on civil liberties spearheaded by Attorney General John Ashcroft, including dis

Through stories and portraits of the strong personalities around him, Nat Hentoff brings to life the political, familial, and musical forces that shaped his unique perspectives on the world.

Nat Hentoff, renowned jazz critic, civil liberties activist, and fearless contrarian - 'I'm a Jewish atheist civil-libertarian pro-lifer' - has lived through much of jazz's history and has known many of jazz's most important figures, often as friend and confidant. Hentoff has been a tireless advocate for the neglected parts of jazz history, including forgotten sidemen and - women. This volume includes his best recent work - short essays, long interviews, and personal recollections. From Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong to Ornette Coleman and Quincy Jones, Hentoff brings the jazz greats to life and traces their art to gospel, blues, and many other forms of American music. "At the Jazz Band Ball" also includes Hentoff's keen, cosmopolitan observations on a wide range of issues. The book shows how jazz and education are a vital partnership, how free expression is the essence of liberty, and how social justice issues like health care and strong civil rights and liberties keep all the arts - and all members of society - strong.

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.

Nat Hentoff is one of America's foremost and most passionate writers about civil liberties and civil rights. In Living the Bill of Rights, he has taken what is too often thought of as an abstract issue and enlivened it by focusing on representative individuals for whom the Constitution is a vital part of life. As the late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan told Hentoff, Americans need to know how "American liberties were won -- and what it takes to keep them alive".

With characteristic eloquence, Hentoff covers the full range of American life in these inspiring profiles and stories about public and private heroes -- Supreme Court Justices William Brennan and William O. Douglas, Dr. Kenneth O. Clark, and students, teachers, lawyers, and others who challenge assaults on the Bill of Rights -- people, as Justice Brennan says, "who are not afraid to fight to keep on being free Americans".

The last few years have witnessed an enormous resurgence in the popularity of jazz, after some lean times in the sixties when many potential jazz fans turned to rock. Now the pendulum is on the backswing, and vintage and modern jazz as well as "jazz rock" are attracting huge new audiences. One factor involved in the comeback of jazz among blacks and whites alike is the rise of black consciousness, with its search for roots in the American experience. Nat Hentoff's "The Jazz Life" explores the social, economic, and psychological elements that make up the context of modern jazz. Among the jazz greats whose lives and work are discussed are Count Basie, Charles Mingus, John Lewis, Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, and Ornette Coleman. Written with intelligence, passion, and wit, this jazz classic is of immense importance to anyone wanting a better understanding of the jazz--or indeed our American life.

The story of a woman whose work inspired one of London's greatest attractions. Born in Strasbourg, the young Marie Tussaud learned her skills from her mother's employer, Philippe Curtius. In 1780 she became tutor to King Louis XVI's sister and for eight years prior to the Revolution lived at the court in Versailles. In Paris throughout the Revolution, she was often in extreme danger. Incredibly, she was forced to make death masks from the decapitated heads of her friends who fell to the guillotine. In 1802, she opened her first exhibition at the Lyceum theatre in London. With modelled figures such as Napoleon and Josephine and other notables from the Revolution, her exhibition was very popular. She also had the guillotine blade that severed Marie Antoinette's head. For the next 26 years Madame Tussaud toured England and Scotland with her Waxwork Exhibition, until she established her base in Baker Street in 1835. She had always had a separate room, for the most gruesome of the models, which in 1846 Punch dubbed The Chamber of Horrors. The name stuck. She died in 1850 and in 1884, Tussaud's grandsons moved the exhibition to Marylebone Road, where it remains.

Thank God for Nat, who places the soul of the musician above that of his art.--Dizzy Gillespie. Writing in a passionate and streetwise style all his own, Nat Hentoff transports us into the diverse worlds of musicians that hold one thing in common: America. In over sixty pieces Hentoff has assembled a mosaic that creates a vivid picture of the music scene as it leaps into the twenty-first century. From sweeping surveys of the roots of American music to vivid assessments of individual performers (including John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Joe Williams, Doc Pomus, Duke Ellington, Willie Nelson, and many more) Hentoff demonstrates once again why he is lauded as a critic par excellence ( Publishers Weekly ). American Music Is compiles the best of his essays into a potent reader, collecting his most illuminating writing on a broad range of topics. For those who love jazz, blues, country, gospel, or folk, American Music Is provides eloquent and powerful insights. For those who love all of them, it is required reading.