Dvorák to Duke Ellington: A Conductor Explores America's Music and Its African American Roots [Hardcover] Review

Maurice Peress is an inspiring guide to the main roads and byways of American music. A conductor of distinction and a writer, scholar and thinker of substance, he offers a combination of personal reminiscences and exciting historical discoveries. He is a leading expert on Dvorak and his time, and offers fresh new insights into the material. His original research on Dvorak's American years has been quite influential in the development of this field more broadly and thus he may be considered the "Dean" of American Dvorak scholarship.

This is a splendid book to read straight through, or to browse and enjoy.

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Product Description:
In From Dvorak to Duke Ellington the prominent symphony conductor Maurice Peress describes his career and experiences with American music and musicians. Peress conducted the world premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass, worked with Duke Ellington on the Suite from Black Brown and Beige and Queenie Pie, and reconstructed and recreated historic American concerts at which Antheil's Ballet Mecanique, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, and Ellington's Black, Brown, and Beige were first presented. Peress also revisits Dvorak's three year residency in 1892-95, the controversy that greeted his radical notion that composers turn to Negro music for inspiration, and the careers of his students who went on to teach Copeland, Gershwin, and Ellington.

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Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn [Hardcover] Review

Billy Strayhorn'scontribution to the work of Duke Ellington is immeasurable--at last he is given his full due in David Hajdu's perceptive and insightful portrait of this largely unsung genius of 20th centurymusic. Hajdu's sensitive biography, derived from countless interviewswith friends, family and fellow musicians, reveals Strayhorn as a complex,creative individual who preferred to stay discreetly in Ellington's shadow throughout much of his life.It also provides a telling portrait of a manwho lived his life as a gay African-American musician completely out in the open during a time in this country when it was both difficult anddangerous to do so.Hajdu has givenus telling portraits as well of manyof Strayhorn's contemporaries such as Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, JohnnyHodges, Ray Nance and the Duke himself who loved "Swea-Pea"(Strayhorn's nickname) as a part of himself.Not only a portrait of acreative, intellectual genius, "Lush Life"also gives us aninsightful look into the world of jazz and African-american popular musicthat grew out of an age of racism and discrimination.The concludingchapters that chronicle Strayhorn's involvement inthe civil rightsmovement of the early '60's andhis friendships with Martin Luther Kingand Medgar Evans and his own battle with the throat cancer that cut hislife short (at age fifty-one) areespecially powerful.Throughout thebook, Hajduprovides lively anecdotal writing while remaining a respectfuljournalist and chronicler of his subject.I highly recommend this book toanyone interested in jazz history, popular culture, orpurely for aportrait of an understated genius.

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Duke Ellington and His World [Paperback] Review

I found this book reasonably entertaining, approaching, you might say "attacking", Duke Ellington from a psychologizing angle. Interesting. Few people ever really knew Ellington, and the ones who did didn't talk much about him, at least not in any revealing way. And the man was clearly an affable narcissist, with a tendency to be passively cruel to band members and some family members. If this personality hadn't existed, Thomas Mann would have invented him, with a little help from Freud. And of course there's nothing wrong with taking a figure so frequently deified down a couple of pegs. So the author's tack seemed, for the nonce, acceptable.
Unfortunately, I noticed quite a few oddities, in dates, attribution of composer credit, and elsewhere. I also wondered how this guy could have interviewed all these old timers, this late in the era. And I'd never heard of a trombonist of this name who played with Benny Carter, Luis Russell etc. in the Forties. And though I'm a thorough Ellington fan and personal admirer, I'm no scholar. So I had to wait till I stumbled on the "brief" by Steven Lasker, who is a scholar, to realize what a hoax this book is. Stick "depanorama stratemann lasker lawrence routledge" into the google search engine. You'll get a issue of the Duke Ellington Music Society bulletin from late 2001. Read it before you buy this book.
Routledge didn't originate the contract on this book. They bought it from some other outfit. Routledge used to be a standard issue publisher of unreadable academic jabber of the paramarxist school, parasitizing on English universities. In the last few years they've tried to break into the American popular market. Hence opportunistic stuff like this.
There's a Duke Ellington industry out there, appealing to scholars, musicologists and plain enthusiasts of good music. So there are bogus reissues on CD and preposterous books like this. The same thing happens with Mark Twain; you come to expect it. But damn Routledge for getting involved in the seamy side of it as they scramble to find a place in the dwindling high end market.

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Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra [Paperback] Review

I just finished reading the Pinkney's "Duke Ellington" to a first grade class in our predominantly white rural school northeast of Seattle. Being trained as a musician, but now working as a librarian, I loved the way this text really swings. When I noticed much of the slang was going over the heads of the children, I'd ask them if they knew what certain words meant. Interestingly, the one African-American girl in the class was hip to most of the jive.
Sure some of the terminology went right past these kids, but they got into the groove, which is carried along soulfully by the vibrant illustrations. Like another reviewer here, when I was done reading this to the kids, I wanted to hear "Take the 'A' Train." Fortunately I had a CD of "Duke Ellington's 16 Most Requested Songs" sitting in my library, so I popped it in, and these kids were a-hoppin' and a-boppin'.
I think next time, I'll play the CD first. Hopefully, I'll be able to settle 'em down afterwards to hear this jazzy biography.

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