Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life [Paperback] Review

This biography of Louis Armstrong presents the rich mosaic that was the life of one of the greatest musicians and entertainers of the 20th Century.It uses his life story to describe the history of early jazz--from hischildhood on the streets of New Orleans, his move to Chicago where he madehis famous recordings with the Hot Five and Hot Seven, and on to New Yorkand Europe.I was surprized to learn that in many ways his charismaticstage persona was his real personality.But at the same time he was quitea complex character (four marriages, daily marijuana use, managers with mobconnections, laxative proselytizations).Aside from his musical genius, hewas a cultural icon--the first African American entertainer to cross overto broad popularity throughout America.The story is often told in Louis'sown words, making it easier to get to know him.I loved the story abouthis first trip back to New Orleans after he spent nearly a decade goingfrom being a local talent to an international star.When I got to the lastchapter I put the book aside for a little while--I didn't want the book orLouis's life to end.

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City Limits [Paperback] Review

I enjoyed Terry Teachout's book of autobiographical essays "City Limits". There is nothing terribly important in the book, but its tone and pace are leisurely & enjoyable and his stories reveal interesting details about an important cultural critic whose influence is rising each year through his books and articles in "Commentary", "The Wall Street Journal" and other influential conservative journals of opinion. Teachout's writing reminds me of my favorite writer, Joseph Epstein (it is probably no coincidence that you often find their pieces in the same issues of publications). Both writers are extremely culturally fluent with a lot of interesting things to say. Their writing is also very accessable to the average, educated person who is looking to learn more about literature, music, theater, art, and the good life in general.

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Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta [Paperback] Review

Palmer's love of the blues shines through in this exceptional book. He's not interested in showing off his knowledge of the form (although that knowledge is exceptional); he's interested in illuminating for the readerthe roots of a great indigenous art form and how that form developed in the20th century. In that effort, he succeeds masterfully.
A fine earlysection explores how the music that we call the blues was seeded in N.America by African music. That chapter is a mini-history lesson in itself;Palmer shows how the music of slaves from W. Africa was viewed assubversive and dangerous by whites in the new land.
The remainder of thebook is chock full of portraits of the heroes of early blues in theMississippi Delta, from Charley Patton to Son House to Robert Johnson toLittle Walter to Muddy Waters and beyond. Palmer shows how these mendeveloped a music that grew directly out of the soil of the Delta, makingdo with the instruments they had and often living itinerant lives, movingfrom tiny town to tiny town to play dances and juke joints to keep themusic alive.
The book also describes the historic migration ofAfrican-Americans from the Deep South to the industrial cities of theNorth, most importantly, of course, Chicago, where the musicianstransformed the blues again, creating the electrified sounds that exertedsuch a powerful influence on white rock musicians from London to Liverpoolto La Jolla, California.
Palmer has given us a great work with "DeepBlues," one that should be read by students of music and socialhistory alike. It deserves a prominent place on the bookshelf of anyserious lover of music.

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Stardust Melody: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael [Paperback] Review

We owe Richard Sudhalter for preserving the often-forgotten history of America's early jazz pioneers and composers. His subjects are white musicians, but he doesn't write about them with a nasty political agenda. He just doesn't want their contributions to be forgotten. Along the way, he pays warm tribute to the black musicians who led the musical revolution. Unfortunately, politically-charged reviewers refuse to see this.
I especially love this Sudhalter work. Sadly, Hoagy is becoming a forgotten genius of American song. Duke Ellington once called him America's greatest songwriter, and Sudhalter goes a long way in providing the evidence to such a claim. I especially enjoyed the focus on Hoagy's home state of Indiana, which was an amazing hotbed for jazz in the 1920s. One should take this book and drive around Bloomington, Indiana, and find all of the haunts described in rich detail by Sudhalter. Then go to Indianapolis, and Richmond, Indiana. Sudhalter really did us all a huge favor in providing such a wonderful document.

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The History of Jazz [Paperback] Review

Anyone purportedly writing a "History of Jazz" faces a daunting task: A complex history of interwoven musical strands, the linkages and evolutions (sometimes skipping a generation), the geographic spread to Europe and elsewhere, the eventual fragmentation of jazz into diverse sounds and approaches, and the opinions of knowledgeable, rabid fans.
Ted Giola succeeds magnificently: This is the best single-volume history of jazz I've seen.While not without some minor flaws (see below), this is a comprehensive, generally very well written, and intriguing story of the genesis and development of jazz. It is a compelling story, and Giola writes without mythologizing jazz, or constantly needing to remind us that this is, indeed, art. The giants of jazz-- Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Holiday, etc. are critiqued rather than lionized.
Giola proceeds through the now familiar African, American, African-American, and European roots of jazz that emanated first from New Orleans.He traces its developmental routes through Chicago and New York, the Armstrong solo evolution, and the diverse "territory bands" such as those of Bennie Moten and Count Basie.
Fortunately, Giola does not limit himself to a strictly chronological narrative.He interrupts the timeline with revealing excursions into topics such as the development of instrumental styles (e.g., piano, trumpet), and jumps ahead to show the impact of early influences on later styles (e.g., Lester Young and bebop).He also pays attention to cultural, technological, and economic context, without letting these subtexts blare over the music.Giola knows music from the "inside" as well as the outside, and his discussions of jazz technique and harmonic and rhythmic innovations are detailed and precise.His deconstruction of various solos and styles is illuminating: Charlie Parker's "Indiana" is a version "where almost every bar features one or more altered tones-an augmented fifth, a major seventh played against a minor chord, a flatted ninth leading to a sharpened ninth...a textbook example of how bop harmonic thinking revolutionized the flow of the melodic line in jazz."Yet Giola is also astute in directing our attention to the "core of simplicity" ...the "monophonic melody statements" in bop.
Giola's critiques of various musicians are generally fair and accurate, and he discusses the famous as well as the overlooked.Every jazz fan, however, will probably find some favorite musician given insufficient coverage, or will disagree with a Giola critique.There's no mention of Carmen McCrae, about half a page on Sarah Vaughan, very little mention of European jazz, not much discussion of Miles Davis' or Basie's later work ("The Atomic Mr. Basie," for example).For my tastes, there is not enough on Mingus' sidemen (other than Eric Dolphy and Rahsaan Roland Kirk) and he describes the Mingus Town Hall Concert as a fiasco. (Organizationally it was a disaster, but musically it succeeded.)Giola's statement that "Mingus was the closest jazz has come to having its own Ezra Pound," is baffling.To a large degree, however, these are editorial(the book is only 395 pages long), as well as critical decisions.Not everyone would agree, as I do, with Giola's dismissive statement that Kenny G. "sold over $20 million of emaciated pseudo-jazz to a devoted audience.A critic cannot and should not please everyone.
Giola commands our respect because of his thorough knowledge of jazz and its web-like variations and influences.He knows his material well, whether it's the origins of jazz or the "Third Stream" and "Free Jazz" movements of relatively recent years.I recommend this book very highly to both musician and non-musician alike, jazz aficionado and novice.You may read the book as an introduction to jazz, or to achieve a greater synthesis of what you already know.It may also serve as a springboard to more narrowly focused jazz writing, such as Rosenthal's "Hard Bop" or Lees' "Meet Me at Jim and Andy's."There is a general index, an index of songs and albums, 15 pages on recommended listening, eight black and white photos, some notes on sources, as well as suggestions for further reading. This book, and perhaps a copy of the "Penguin Guide to Jazz," could easily serve as the core of a jazz lover's bookshelf.

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