Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story [Paperback] Review

Warning!: if people are honest you might hear some things you'd rather not read. In this case however, it does mean that through Ray Charles' own words we hear about his life up till 1978 when the book came out.

His youth was hard, becoming blind around age 7, going to a special school and losing his mom when she was only in her thirties were hard. Music is of course the theme that runs through it all, though I personally would have liked to have read more about the musical side of his life than the two things that make up an important part of the book: heroin and sex.

He seems to have been addicted to both but he has always said that heroin was his own choice and that he wasn't pushed into it by other people. That makes it all very openhearted and in a way bearable. The part where he decided to stop smack is heartbreaking and genuine.

He also talks lightly about his blindness, which is great, you forget most of the time that he couldn't see a thing.

The ghostwriter himself has carefully written that Ray himself went over the pages time and time again so we can be pretty sure that everything in it is true to his heart.

We could have done with some more musical history, but it's a great book to read nonetheless

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Product Description:
Ray Charles (1930-2004) led one of the most extraordinary lives of any popular musician. In Brother Ray, he tells his story in an inimitable and unsparing voice, from the chronicle of his musical development to his heroin addiction to his tangled romantic life.Overcoming poverty, blindness, the loss of his parents, and the pervasive racism of the era, Ray Charles was acclaimed worldwide as a genius by the age of thirty-two. By combining the influences of gospel, jazz, blues, and country music, he invented, almost single-handedly, what became known as soul. And throughout a career spanning more than a half century, Ray Charles remained in complete control of his life and his music, allowing nobody to tell him what he could and couldn't do. As the Chicago Sun-Times put it, Brother Ray is "candid, explicit, sometimes embarrassing, often hilarious, always warm, touching, and deeply human-just like his music."

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Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West [Paperback] Review

Jelly Roll Morton, the self proclaimed "inventor of Jazz," remains one of the most complex figures in American music.Largely forgotten by the time of his death, Morton had pioneered the early New Orleans style jazz on record and seemed to be on the comeback trail and to be experimenting with the dominant swing style of the 1930s.Pastras provides an insight into Morton by examining his years on the West Coast(roughly the late teens to early twenties and then again in the early 1940s).The first period was among Morton's most satisfying both musically and personally, and the second seems to indicate an attempt at a comeback.Pastras sheds light on Morton's relationships with his godmother and his long time companaion Anita Gonzales and in the process examines the roles played by voodoo and "passing for white" among the Creole community.While the contributions of this book are many, one of the main thrusts is the often conflicting and, at times untrustworthy, nature of oral history as evidenced by Alan Lomax's previous oral history biography of Morton.In the end Lomax's book is more folklore than history.However this does not negate Lomax's contribution, but rather illuminates the pitfalls of not balancing oral history with other evidence if such evidence exists.It is Morton as he wished to present himself to the world. Pastras' text is not only interesting but instructive to those dealing with oral history, but the average reader may want to start with Lomax's book and then move to Pastras' more compelling investigation.

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Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954-2001 [Paperback] Review

OK, Whitney Balliett never got into Miles Davis's electric stuff. So he's a Moldy Fig. To quote Miles, "So What?" For my money, he's still the greatest observer of the modern jazz scene. What makes him great is the accuracy of his observation: No other jazz critic ("Notes and Tones" was written by Art Taylor, a drummer) has been as generous as Balliett at letting the musicians speak for themselves. Reading his reviews, you often forget he's there. That never happens with Stanley Crouch, now does it? I don't like to think about how old Balliett is, nor do I like to think about what jazz criticism will be like without him. By the way: Balliett is not an exclusionary writer. You do not need a Hip Merit Badge to read and enjoy his work. He's a national treasure. Recognize his greatness while he's still here to enjoy it!

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Visions of Jazz: The First Century [Paperback] Review

Gary Giddins has performed a remarkable feat. He has covered one hundred years of jazz history in one volume. At 700 pages it is big for sure but it is well researched and very readable. At first glance it appears thatGiddins has structured and organized the book in the worst possible way byhaving one chapter on each of the seminal figures of jazz history, and insemi chronological order.
The pitfall here is that it lends itself to abook that looks like lots of note cards strung together. This structure canalso obscure the larger picture; jazz is not just the history of a bunch ofindividuals. Giddins very skillfully avoids both of these traps. Eachchapter is well researched, filled with anecdotes about the musician orgroup, and through the chapters flows the larger background of the historicmovements and issues in the development of jazz.
Giddins also approachesjazz with a refreshing "inclusiveness" and wastes precious little energy indefining what jazz is or in dismissing various movements as"unpure" or other such nonsense. In fact he makes the point rightup front that jazz owes as much to popular music for its genesis as it doesto spirituals or black folk music. In the chapter on Irving Berlin hepoints out that Tin Pan Alley was a mixture of black, Jewish and otherethnic blends of music, and in fact, Berlin was even accused of having anunderground railroad of black song writers in his back room that he wasghosting for. And this, at the time, was not meant as a compliment..
Ofcourse, jazz cannot be discussed in a vacuum and race plays an importantpart in its history. Giddins adds two bits of trivia, which I find speakvolumes in themselves about where we are and where we have come from. Onewas that Al Jolson lobbied Gershwin for the part of Porgy. He, thankfully,did not get it. Second was that Ellington's all black orchestra played inan Amos and Andy movie in the 30's and the producer had the lighter skinnedmembers of the orchestra blacked up with makeup for the scenes. I supposethis was to dispel any idea in the minds of the movie audience that theband might be integrated.
The book lacks a recommended discography, whichwould have been valuable. Giddins does comment on the recordings of hissubjects in their respective chapters so that is a big help. There is a 2CD companion set with the same title which is a nice-to-have but it islargely an afterthought and the only connecting material is the 4 inchsquare flimsy comment sheets that come with the CD which does not reallyrelate back to the book itself.
This is a essential book for any jazzlovers library.

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