Stan Getz - Nobody Else But Me (Book) [Paperback] Review

Jazz Critic Dave Gelly has a jazzy and breezy prose style, not unlike the tenor saxophone style of the book's subject, Stan Getz. I zipped through this book, and it went down as easy as a dry martini after a hard day's work.

Getz's nickname was "The Sound" and the sound was lush, beautiful, lyrical, melodic, and swung like crazy. But Stan, "The Man" was a different story, and it is a paradox that such lovely music could come from someone so flawed. Heroin addiction at one point caused a desperate young Getz to attempt to rob a pharmacy. He later kicked heroin, but was an alcoholic wife beater. He was not the best parent. He was jealous of Chet Baker. He was an adulterous womanizer.

But then there was the music, Jack Teagarden, Stan Kenton, the Woody Herman Band, the Bossa Nova, the exciting career, the gorgeous sound . . .

Gelly tells it like it is, spinning a compelling narrative that doesn't shy away from the life behind the music, but still illuminates that music, putting it all in perspective, and making us feel the wonder of "The Sound" anew. It's all there in this book, Nobody Else But Me, shakin' like Gelly on a plate.

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Product Description:
The creator of the unforgettable "Girl from Ipanema" tenor sax tone, this son of Ukranian immigrants took his unique sound through five decades of swing, cool, bossa, and beyond. From Getz's teenage gigs with Dorsey, Goodman, and Stan Kenton, fame with Woody Herman, years as a masterful bandleader, and struggles with drugs and the law, this biography tells the bittersweet story of one of our most beloved jazz musicians. This is the first book to focus on Getz's musical legacy, exploring the lightness of touch, lyricism, and warm glow that marked his sound. It also gives insight into his skills as a consummate improviser, capable of playing with a musical, tonal, and emotional range matched by few other musicians.

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Define "Normal" [Paperback] Review

Antonia, a straight-A student, a teacher-pleaser, and a "priss," is assigned Jasmine, a punker, a "in-your-face" non-conformist, for peer counseling in their middle school.Both are certain that the counseling is a waste of their time.But as Antonia's home life disintegrates, she finds she looks forward to meeting with Jazz.And Jazz likes talking with Antonia about her family life as well.The two slowly form a bond.

This is much more than a book about two girls in middle school.It's about the effects that both "good" and "bad" parents have on their children, it's about deciding what is, and isn't, normal, and it's about accepting the non-conformists in our midst.

This is an excellent book for all ages (even though it is about 8th graders, high schoolers can get something from it).Parents, too, should read it - it might help them understand what - and more importantly why - their children are revolting.

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Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould [Paperback] Review

With this book, Otto Friedrich's biography of Glenn Gould is finally surpassed.Kevin Bazzana was able to get more people to talk about their memories of Gould, and the result is this very readable biography.The author brings back the impact that Gould's 1955 Goldberg Variations had on the music world.One record executive said that it was as if there had been a big run on a new printing of the Enneads of Plotinus. Throughout, Gould's career and life is told in satisfying detail and insight.He tries hard to explain Gould's musical contrariness, as in his mauling of Mozart's sonatas, but often has to simply yield and accept Gould's contrariness as such (though he intriguingly suggests that Gould may have been a musical forerunner of the postmodernists).And of course there is ample celebration of Gould's genius and his enduring cult.

According to Bazzana, he's a regular Victor Borge in the humor department.But on this score as on so many others, Bazzana must largely concur with the received legend, while offering scattered counter-examples.On balance, Gould was an excruciatingly unfunny humorist, a clotted, unreadable essayist, but also an entertaining raconteur, an unaffected star, and a proud Canadian.

Bazzana's biography of Gould succeeds, but I was left wanting more.For example, there doesn't seem to be any discussion of Gould's mysterious failure to record the crown jewel of Bach's oeuvre, The Art of the Fugue.His organ rendition doesn't count, and may be seen as Gould's way of side-stepping the issue.He could certainly play the fugues: they appear in any number of his concerts, and I especially treasure those that appear in his Russian lecture/concert on a Harmonia Mundi disc I own.Fugue no. 1 sounds like the dawning of some grand insight.Yet Gould never committed the whole thing to record on piano, and disappointingly, Bazzana doesn't offer any insight on why.

There are some very minor errors of fact here and there.For example, Bazzana apparently didn't realize that the Last Letters From Stalingrad, for which Gould wrote vocal sketches, were later proven to be forgeries.

It is very good to have a mini-biography of Gould's teacher, Alberto Guerrero.It's a shame that he made no commercial recordings, so that we could assess his influence on his famous pupil.

Bazzana seeks to explain the oft-rumored Canadian Identity to his readers, as it applies to Gould.Marshal McLuhan and Stephen Leacock are presented as exemplars of the Canadian spirit in communications technology and understated humor, respectively.Like McLuhan, Gould's ideas about communications were ahead of their time.Indeed, even with satellite communications and the technological miracles of the Internet Age, we may doubt that we have caught up with him yet.Oscar Wilde would have been a natural on TV chat shows; maybe Gould would have fit right in sometime in the future, after a few more revolutions in technology.It's as if he was a natural born genius at some field of endeavor that hadn't been invented yet, and so had to settle for realizing his visions by splicing magnetic tape.And playing piano, of course.

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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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Bird Lives!: The High Life And Hard Times Of Charlie (yardbird) Parker [Paperback] Review

Ross Russell was the president of Dial records when Parker was in California. He recorded several sides while there, but Mr Russell, an obvious fan of Parker, makes a huge effort to desribe Parker's whole spectacular and at the same time tragic life and career. When I read this book, I literally could not put it down.
Parker was a great clown and entertainer, something which Clint Eastwood's disappointing movie "Bird" never portrayed, instead sticking to the sad and seedy sections of the great Parker's life. I read this book years before the film came out, and I was shocked because I knew Eastwood to be a big jazz fan.
Anyhow, every major event in Parker's short life is chronicled, giving an excellent narrative of an extraordinary career.
Miled Davis in his autobiography said that Bird was a con, a cheat, and that Ross Russell exploited him. Nonetheless, this book presents many facets to describe Parker's life, in vivid detail. I'd call this essential for any true jazz fan to understand the man, his music, and the truly monumental and unsurpassed contribution Parker made to all music. Also revealed are all the main players of the time and their relation to the music and the man.
Also, there are three books I recommend (in this order) to anyone who really wants the inside scoop on the jazz life: Bird Lives, Miles Davis' in-your-face-autobiography, and Albert Goldman's biography of Lenny Bruce. All three books can be read as companion pieces and give a realistic portrait of 3 of the most influential people of the 20th century and the world that created them. At the same time all three books provide an excellent reality check to anyone contemplating a heroin habit!

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Product Description:
This work on Charlie "Bird" Parker offers a picture of not only of the saxophonist-composer as an artist and as a human being, but also of zeitgeist and the musical/social setting that produced him. It shows his complex personality; his great appetites; the extent of his influence; and his work.

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Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones [Paperback] Review

Quincy Jones embodies the best of what it means to be fully human.He's always been on the cutting edge, at least a generation ahead of everyone else: in movies, in theater, in television, and, of course, in music.Now, in the disguise of an artist, he transcends art into healing.
This is a great book and works on so many different levels: as intimate biography, as powerful literature, and the story of one who transcended suffering into healing.And what an interesting life!
But this is more than just a fascinating story.He offers a wise roadmap to self-discovery and wholeness, both individually and culturally.Read it and be inspired by his courage and wisdom.
Somehow, the corrosive idea that the evil guy is interesting and the good guy is boring has entered popular culture, especially in rap and hip-hop.Only an artist of Quincy Jones' stature could show by extraordinary example even to the most angry and dispossessed that it is possible to be both loving and cool, generous and hip, selfless and self-fulfilled--and that it's a lot more fun and exciting to live this way.Come for the music and stay for the love.

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