Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty: The Autobiography of Horace Silver [Paperback] Review

The LAST thing this book does is get to the nitty-gritty.Primarily a string of recollections and anecdotes, this light-as-a-feather book hardly constitutes a proper biography for such an important (and still breathing) figure in the pantheon of jazz.

Pastras' research seems to have consisted of going over to Horace's house every Sunday for bull sessions.And that's how the book reads.There are the expected misspellings and typos (Wilt Chamberlin, Carl Burnette, et al) and multiple repetitions of events.

The ARE some interesting tidbits buried here as Horace can be quite the raconteur.His story about Dizzy Gillespie's visit to his apartment is touching and his story about being unable to sit in for Otis Spann because he couldn't play the blues in Muddy's key signature was both amusing and alarming.Horace not able to play the blues???His multiple brushes with racism, drug enforcement and police power are chilling.

But mostly the book is a name-dropper's paradise, recounting all of the famous and semi-famous celebrities our boy has met over the past 50 years.He sure has a steel-trap memory!But why he would exhibit such excitement about a chance sighting of a has-been former actress walking her dog in Central Park and then need to recount it in his autobiography 40 years later is beyond me.

The curious reader will search in vain for clues to his musical talent (other than tea kettle whistles and the like).Very few of his compositions are even mentioned much less subjected to some sort of analysis.Other than Tyrone Washington, for whom he saves some choice invective, very few of his colleagues are discussed in detail, including incredibly Art Blakey.This relationship should have occupied a full chapter.What about Joe Henderson?Woody Shaw?Bob Berg?

The reader is left with a picture of a lonely and fearful man, evidently estranged from his family.(He sees his only son "once or twice a year"!!!)He's uneducated but yearns for deeper understanding.A fine jazz craftsman, Silver contends with eruptions of artism that apparently mystify and ultimately confound him.

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