Book Excerpts

[Editor's Note: The following extract is from Duncan Heining's Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers (Equinox, 2012) and is taken from from Chapter 11, “The Best Things in Life are Free," which discusses free jazz and free improvisation in British jazz. In this section, Heining examines the early work of the avant-garde group AMM and ...

[The following is an excerpt from Pheralyn Dove's forthcoming memoir, No Time for Tears: A Book of True Life Stories, and the chapter titled “Today I Cried."] The Student Meets the Master Talking to keyboardist Trudy Pitts is like going on an adventure. It's the type of escapade where wanderlust, laughter and discovery are all ...

[Editor's Note: The Last Balladeer: The Johnny Hartman Story (Scarecrow Press, 2012), by AllAboutJazz.com contributor Gregg Akkerman, is the long-overdue biography of a singer who, amongst other things, achieved considerable fame for his classic collaboration with intrepid saxophonist John Coltrane, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman (Impulse!, 1963). AllAboutJazz.com is pleased to provide an excerpt from the ...

This article appears in the prologue of The Jazz Standards A Guide to the Repertoire by Ted Gioia (Oxford Univ. Press, 2012). Introduction When I was learning how to play jazz during my teenage years, I kept encountering songs that the older musicians expected me to know. I eventually realized that there were around 200 or ...

[The following is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of What It Is: The Life of a Jazz Artist (Scarecrow Press, 2012), by saxophonist Dave Liebman, in conversation with Lewis Porter, author of John Coltrane: His Life and Music (University of Michigan Press, 2000). In it, Liebman and Porter discuss the saxophonist's involvement in the loft scene ...

This article appears in the prologue of Vince Guaraldi at the Piano by Derrick Bang (McFarland Books, 2012). Prologue: “The Sound of Surprise" Saturday, October 4, 1958: shortly after midnight, at the first-ever Monterey Jazz Festival. It had been a busy day; indeed, it was already a long three-day weekend. Headliner Louis Armstrong--introduced by emcee Dizzy ...

This chapter is an excerpt from Naked Mind: On Music and Power, a work in progress by All About Jazz contributor Gordon Marshall.

It is said that the '60s ended in 1974, with Richard Nixon's resignation. On the one hand, there was nothing left to believe in. On the other, there was nothing left ...

This excerpt is adapted from The Insanity Hoax: Exposing the Myth of the Mad Genius (Shrinktunes Media, 2011) by its author, psychologist and All About Jazz columnist Judith Schlesinger. It appears in Chapter 3, “Elastic Madness: One Size Fits All," which explains the ongoing backstage controversy over the definition of so-called mental “illness." This shows how ...

This article appears in Chapter 3 of Birds of Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk, and the Creation of Fusion by Kevin Fellezs (Duke University Press, 2011).

Vital Transformation: Fusion's Discontents Ironically, fusion was, on the one hand, largely a concern for jazz participants and observers even though they largely denied its value or any valid connection to ...

This article appears in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 of Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones By Papa Jo Jones As Told to Albert Murray (University of Minnesota Press, 2011).

A Different Kind of Living in That Southwest Here is what happened. Basie did exactly what Fats Waller did: all the ...

This article, adapted by the author, appears in Chapter 4 of George Russell: The Story of an American Composer, by Duncan Heining (Scarecrow Press, 2010).

New York, NY

It was May 1945, the war was still on, Bebop was at its height in New York and George Russell and his two friends, Little Bird and Little ...

This article appears in the preface of Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club by Kathy Sloane (Indiana Univ. Press, 2011).

The Keystone Legacy I enjoy imagining jazz clubs as I listen to live recordings, and if those sessions took place at venues I've known, I find it downright difficult not to recreate (and sometimes relive) ...

This article appears in Chapter 2 “A Star is Born" of David Baker: A Legacy in Music by Monika Herzig (Indiana Univ. Press, 2011).

The George Russell Sextet Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 23, 1923, George Russell started out as a drummer and soon entered the New York jazz scene.32 Bouts of tuberculosis kept him ...

This article, adapted by the author, appears in Chapter 5 of Traditional New Orleans Jazz, Conversations with the Men Who Make the Music by Thomas W. Jacobsen (LSU Press, 2011).

Irvin Mayfield: Boy Wonder

Sometimes people live long enough to fulfill the promise of their youth, and sometimes they don't. Some individuals eventually achieve their youthful ...