Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Used book still in good condition. Cover and corners has some wear but pages are free from notes. See images. A great book.

About the book >.>.> The earliest of the forty-nine biographical essays in this book was written in 1962 and the most recent in 1986. The book was not planned; it evolved and its subjects were generally chosen because they were for one reason or another irresistible. Important figures are missing. Either there was nothing new to say about them or they were not interviewable. The chapters on Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus consist largely of run- ning glimpses and may suggest tracking an America’s Cup race from a dinghy. Neither man was good any longer at sitting still. Hugues Panassi? and Charles Delaunay are included because of their pioneering and often uncanny proselytizing. And St?phane Grappelli is included because he and his difficult and brilliant compeer Django Reinhardt were the first true mirrors of what was going on musically in this country in the thirties. Here under one roof are all my biographical pieces on jazz musicians. They form a gapped history a sort of highly personal encyclopedia a series of close accounts of how a beautiful music grew flourished and (perhaps) began the long trek back to its native silence. May 1986 New York City W. B.