Space Is The Place: The Lives And Times Of Sun Ra [Paperback] Review

First let me say that I am a bigtime Sun Ra fan. If someone did not like Sun Ra's music, this book would probably not be as much fun, but it still might be interesting - say, a three-star rating instead of a five.
Ra has made much of his swing era big band background, having arranged for and performed with Fletcher Henderson ca. 1947, during that band leader's years of decline. This book documents something much less obvious: Ra's indebtedness to doo wop, R&B and even mood music. Who would have guessed the resemblance to Les Baxter? I now hear both Ra and Baxter with new ears. Starting in the first chapter, the book provides important background available nowhere else, such as detailed description of the 1930s Birmingham social clubs, a little known musical scene.
About two thirds of the way through, the narration freezes and the book gets bogged down in describing Ra as a philosopher and poet. This is rather thin soup. Szwed tosses out twenty-dollar terms like "gnosticism" without giving any clear evidence that he, or Ra for that matter, really understands them. Fact is that Ra's genius was largely intuitive, and his uses of Egyptian history and futuristic technophilia were largely metaphorical posturing. Ra's philosophy and poetry are valuable only because he was a musical genius. Students of the music should remember that the programmatic content was used ritually in performance but in no way validates his music or makes it better.
The chapters covering the 1930s through 1960s are fairly detailed. In contrast, the narration about Ra's last 15 years (1977-92) is curtailed (perhaps by a deadline), and we get barely one page per year of activity. A complement to Szwed's book is Robert Campbell's discography, The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra (Cadence Books), which gives very few pages to the early years but becomes thick by listing recordings made in the 1980s, when technology had made live recordings commonplace.
...I am about to read John Szwed's book for the fifth time. After reading it the second time, I was so sorry to finish I had to start over again. That's why I wish there were more about his late recording and touring career.
If you don't know Sun Ra's music, start with the Evidence CDs and get with it. If you already know and like Ra's music, then you will enjoy this book.

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Mingus/Mingus: Two Memoirs (Limelight) [Paperback] Review

Janet Coleman and Al Young were University of Michigan English graduate students when they met Charles MINGUS in the late 1950's. In this slim volume, each writes separate but intertwined memoirs abouttheir relationshipas friend, editor, and fan with the great bassist/composer/bandleader. Their memories are fond, warm, personal, and humorous; their affection and something like awe are evident throughout the book.
This was the period of such Mingus works as "Pithecanthropus Erectus" and "Ah Um."Both Coleman and Young followed Mingus to New York City, where at clubs like the Bohemia,Mingus' "Jazz Workshops" (people pay to hear us practice), musicians such as Jacki Byard, Dannie Richmond, Jimmy Knepper, Jackie McLeanfollowed Mingus' spontaneously combusting arrangements. We get a glimpse of Mingus the musician, the writer, and general connoisseur of life. As Coleman puts it, I knew Mingus during "his Shotgun, Bicycle, Camera, Witchcraft, Cuban Cigar, and Juice Bar periods, and was familiar with his Afro, Egyptian, English banker, Abercrombie and Fitch, Sanford and Son, and ski bunny costumes. I ate his chicken and dumplings, kidneys and brandy, popcorn and garlic . . . "There are several good clues to the puzzle of Mingus' autobiography "Beneath the Underdog," a work which Coleman, among others, helped edit.I recommend reading "Mingus/Mingus" before tackling his Joycean autobiography.
We also see the political Mingus, rightly protesting the treatment of black musicians, as well as racism and militarismgenerally.After all, this is the genius who wrote such pieces as "Oh, Lord, Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me (with the great line, "don't drop it, bebop it"), "Remember Rockefeller at Attica," and thegreat "Fables of Faubus," which courageously lambasted the segregationist governor. Cole's memoir is perhaps the more literary of the two (Coleman is a writer), and gives us a very personal view of Mingus' profound effect.Coleman may have been the closer friend and she offers some rarely heard and often humorous anecdotes. Both Coleman and Young knew Mingus for more than 20 years, and the book is rich with material recalling Mingus and the social and creative forces ofthe period: For example, Mingus played Genghis Kahn in a "psychedelic Western" written by Coleman's husband and filmed at Timothy Leary's ranch. Mingus criticizes Leary's approach: "You can't improvise on nothin', man. You gotta improvise on something."The book is filled with Mingus' humor and anger and appetites; his idealism and his realism.A titan of a man and at times, a study in contrasts, Mingus the subjectis as compelling as the music he composed. (No index, but you get Mingus' recipe for eggnog!) Highly recommended, I just wish there were more to read! Highly recommended for fans of Mingus, jazz and the sociopolitical climate of the era.

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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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The Vince Guaraldi Collection: Piano (Artist Transcriptions) [Paperback] Review

I bought this together with Vince Guaraldi - Greatest Hits, both containing a lot of songs I really wanted to play on the piano myself. That combination has allowed me to hear what Vince played while also reading through the music to see just what it is he played. Without exception, I've found the written music exactly true to what Vince recorded, including pick up notes, tricky min-maj-min progressions, arpeggios, diminished 9th chords, and what-not, and it has made some previously unapproachable passages much easier to understand. I've also been able to use the book as a sort of learning tool, getting a feel for what a jazz musician really tries to accomplish when he sits down and plays a piece. I would like to have seen some fingering indications included, and without those, I think some beginners will not be able to do much with this work. And personally, I didn't find the performance notations particularly useful ("laid back" doesn't really convey much to me), but like I said, I also purchased a CD of Vince's music, so I already have an idea of what sort of sound I want to achieve. Other than those two minor points, I can't find anything wrong with this edition. The binding is "lay flat" perfect bound, so the pages stay glued together but pull away from the spine, allowing this book to retain a crisp appearance and feel even after the pages are pulled open on a music stand. Guaraldi fans and aspiring jazz pianists will gain a lot from this work.

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Product Description:
Along with Dave Brubeck, Vince Guaraldi was one of the leading pianists to rise to prominence from the California Bay Area scene. Originally a Latin jazz musician, his recording of "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" is one of the best-selling jazz records of all time. Guaraldi later composed the beloved and timeless music for the Peanuts television specials. This folio spans Guaraldi's multi-faceted career, with note-for-note transcriptions of 9 terrific songs: Cast Your Fate to the Wind * Christmas Time Is Here * Greensleeves * Linus and Lucy * Manha De Carnaval * O Tannenbaum * Outra Vez * Samba De Orfeu * Star Song. Includes a biography and a discography.

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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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The Devil's Music: A History Of The Blues [Paperback] Review

Very comprehensive; from Slavery era through the 60s, provides a long list of the men and women who created the blues and the following generations that assimilated and popularized them.Discusses the social, economic and political forces that influenced them as well. Good educational read.Pretty much ends at the Muddy Waters/BB King heyday of the 60s. If you're looking more for the modern blues (the Alberts, Buddy Guy, Clapton, Hendrix, SRV even) then this one is not for you.However, if you want to know about the guys (and gals) from whom the modern-era bluesmen learned their chops, this is your book.

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Product Description:
The Devil's Music is one of the only books to trace the rise and development of the blues both in relation to other forms of black music and in the context of American social history as experienced by African Americans. From its roots in the turn-of-the-century honky-tonks of New Orleans and the barrelhouses and plantations of the Mississippi Delta to modern legends such as John Lee Hooker and B. B. King, the blues comes alive here through accounts by the blues musicians themselves and those who knew them. Throughout this wide-ranging and fascinating book, BBC-TV producer Giles Oakley describes the texture of the life that made the blues possible, and the changing attitudes towards the music. The Devil's Music is a wholehearted and loving examination of one of America's most powerful traditions.

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Blues, Jazz and Rock Riffs for Keyboards (Instructional) [Paperback] Review

This is a good book for anyone who hasn't played much rock or blues.The book is full of riffs - however, I found that there were sometimes riffs that were almost identical.You might play 2 pages of riffs, but it really is 2-3 riffs with some variations.

I'm not saying that this is particularly bad - especially if you would benefit from working on and perfecting some good finger patterns.These are mainly usable riffs and if you got used to playing them, I think you'd find that you use them a lot.

One of my favorite parts of this book happens to be when Mr. Eveleth writes short compositions that use these riffs one right after the other.This really gives a feel as to how you might go about using these riffs in a practical setting.

Also, almost everything is in the key of C.There are some benefits to this - but if you're going to get your money from this book, better be ready to either write out transpostions, or better yet, learn to transpose in your head.If you get all these riffs down in C, F, G and perhaps Bb and Eb, you will be able to play them without problem in most of the songs you'll come across.

I didn't personally spend much time with this book.I read through it once at the keyboard - played around with the compositions a bit, played the riffs that I liked in a few keys and otherwise, I only get it out once in a while to find a new finger pattern or idea.

This is a pretty good book if you take into consideration a few of the limiations I've mentioned!I would recommend it!

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Product Description:
This book presents a practical approach to improvising through a system of patterns in a traditional blues style. Because so much of today's popular music has its roots in blues, the material included here is a vital component of jazz, rock, RandB, gospel, soul, and even pop. The author has compiled actual licks, riffs, turnaround phrases, embellishments, and basic patterns that define good piano blues and can be used as a basis for players to explore and create their own style.

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