Great Jazz Books

I"ll check out the Lewis Porter. Sounds quite musicological, but I can handle a bit of that (says he with his Grade 5 Music Theory, haw).

I have Ashley Kahn's The House That Trane Built. It's a coffee table book with lush photos of the Impulse! album art, but it's full of detailed background and analysis.

Picked up John Edward Hasse's Beyond Category: The Life And Genius of Duke Ellington recently. Heard mixed reports, but it's based on the Ellington archives, so research wise it should be solid.

Various of the Penguin Book of jazz have been better than others and its gone through quite a few volumes.

The big THelonious Monk biography that came out 5 years or so ago which is presumably the Kelley one.

I've got Billie's Blues somewhere and haven't read it through so can't really say if it is a classic but seems pretty good.

A book called something like Note For Note which is a lot of interviews conducted by an ex-player sometime around the late 60s/early 70s . I really do need to get some organisation in here cos its around somewhere.

Blue Note Cover Art which is now in several volumes.

Herman leonard's book of Jazz photography which I managed to get for 99c a couple of years back

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/oct/04/catastrophic-coltrane/

Anyone like this? Tiresome middlebrow worries, etc.

It's funny that he thought he could re-ignite a debate that was settled 40 years ago. But maybe the fact that the debate wasn't settled to his anti-new-music liking is why he tried to re-ignite it.

Various of the Penguin Book of jazz have been better than others and its gone through quite a few volumes.

The first one was a revelation -- learned about who was who in the FMP stable (and a fair amount of vinyl was still in print/reviewed), great Duke recommendations, all-around indispensable. Was never steered wrong by their five-star (or later "crown") recommendations.

Later volumes more-or-less rose or fell on what was in or out of print at the time. I gave up around the fifth volume, when they started heaping praise on mediocre also-rans.

THe book I refer to above as note for Note is actually Notes and Tones by Arthur Taylor which is based on conversations carried out between 1968 and 1972 with a lot of jazz musicians. it has a lot of people going back to bebop days, possibly further as well as some who came up in the 60s new Thing. I found it in my local 2nd hand/remainder book shop. It first came out in '77 then Da Capo republished it in '93.

It's been mentioned already but Miles' autobiography is amazing - not just a great book about music but one of the best books I ever read. His narrative voice is unique and the descriptions of 30s 40s New York are wonderfully evocative - it's also a powerful story about drug addiction and racism.

I recently read Teachout's Armstrong bio which was very informative but not very interesting as literature, then read David Hajdu's Strayhorn bio which was a well told, moving story - but still, nothing so far has come close to the Miles bio for me. I guess I'll just read that one again, but if anyone can books with somewhat similar aesthetics I'll be very pleased.

ugh @ geoff dyer. I'm apparently the only reader on earth who finds his work pointless and annoying. this coltrane review does nothing to correct that. I'll leave the analysis to wiser more musically literate heads while quoting this astonishingly vacuous and presumptious sentence as a parting shot.

But Coltrane seems to have felt compelled to add musicians in the hope that doing so would clarify the reason for having done so.

I'm apparently the only reader on earth who finds his work pointless and annoying

I posted that you know :-)

Wanted to like his Lawrence book, can't remember if I succeeded or not

xpost

well i meant outside our enlightened circle!

I want to read more about the following: John Coltrane, Tarkovsky and Lawrence.

Just not by him. xp = ah!

including of course noted jazz db and one man graham parker tribute band james redd

mystified by dyer's ratio of good reviews to wooly prose but whatever. have long considered an ILB diatribe in his honor but this will do.

Dyer's book reads as if it was written by someone who buys jazz records bcs the covers look cool. I thoroughly enjoyed Richard Williams' The Blue Moment, which uses Kind Of Blue as a starting point to explore Riley, Reich, VU, Eno, The Necks etc etc.

one man graham parker tribute band james redd
lol. Saw Steve Goulding perform last week, did not see him last night, discussed his future whereabouts including another Rumour reunion show a few minutes ago.

Yes, the Williams book is lovely. His blog, The Blue Moment, is always worth a look too: review of gigs and records, plus the odd retrospective piece.

Had a skim through Duncan Heinings Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers: British Jazz 1960-75 in the uni library the other day. A little dry and academic in style, but it's well put together and his research is excellent.

Has anyone read Ian Carr's Music Outside, which covers a similar topic/period? It's cited a lot.

RIP Nat Hentoff

https://ehsankhoshbakht.blogspot.com/2009/07/nat-hentoffs-liner-notes-part-iii.html

Former Voice blogger Tom Breihan is now tweeting about how Hentoff was the only one he ever saw stand up to New Times-era Voice honcho Lacey in person---at a really bad meeting, with Lacey having a shitfit all over several VV veterans.

I asked him just now who else was there for the treatment:
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Tom BreihanVerified account
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@0wlred I mean: Tom Robbins, Greg Tate, Christgau, Lynn Yaeger, Chuck Eddy, Joy Press, Musto, forget who all else. It was a hell of a room.
10:44 PM - 7 Jan 2017

Ilx's tylerw tweeted this pic of two Hentoff books I still need to get:
if they don't show up, they're Hear Me Talkin' To Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told By The Men Who Made It(co-edited with Nat Shapiro) and Jazz Is.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1nVEX8UQAAhPb6.jpg:large

RIP. Actually this revive would be about the Bob Porter book Phil posted about on the Rolling Jaxx thread.

Lol at typo.

60-61, on Candid, 4 CDs (if doesn't show, it's Cecil Taylor, The Nat Hentoff Sessions, with Shepp etc.)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2Bx-vSUoAQY5l-.jpg

I think that iteration of those recordings (it used to be a Mosaic set; the version in the photo is on the Solar label out of Spain, the same folks who did that amazing Sonny Rollins/Don Cherry 6CD live set last year) is out of print already - I see it going for exorbitant third-party prices now when it was originally under $25.

Is there a salty, anecdote-heavy history of jazz from 1920s to 50s that isn't too scary for a non-muso?

Miles Davis' autobio