Book / Magazine News

"1959: The Year Everything Changed" by Fred Kaplan

Source: Michael Ricci
July 20, 2009

The end of the 1950s was a pivotal time, a cabinet of wonders, the author contends, that overshadows every other year, including those of the '60s. When a writer needs a break these days, he picks a year -- 1968 was popular last year -- and spends a few hundred pages arguing how it's central to our lives now. This year, we have Rob Kirkpatrick's “1969: The Year Everything Changed" and now Fred Kaplan's “1959," whose subtitle makes the same ...

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Innovative Memoir of Jazz Genius Dizzy Gillespie Back in Print

Source: All About Jazz
July 14, 2009

To Be, or Not... to Bop Dizzy Gillespie with Al Fraser University of Minnesota Press | 576 pages | 2009 ISBN 978-0-8166-6547-1 | paperback | $19.95

BACK IN PRINT!

This extensive biography is intertwined with reflections from famous Gillespie associates Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Ella Fitzgerald, and many others. They provide numerous perspectives of Gillespie’s start on the road to fame and the spirited times that would follow. To ...

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Jazztimes Resuscitated

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
July 14, 2009

JazzTimes magazine announced today that it will come back to life with an August issue. A post on the magazine's web site says that a Boston company, Madavor Media, has acquired JazzTimes. It describes Madavor as “a market-leading enthusiast publishing and trade-show group."

Jazz Times announced in early June that it was temporarily suspending publication. A New York Times report today says that Madavor bought the JazzTimes brand and assets from publisher Glenn Sabin. Sabin's father, Ira, founded the publication ...

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Nick Catalano's "New York Nights"

Source: All About Jazz
July 13, 2009

Includes intriguing details about the hangouts of jazz legends Miles Davis, Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, and Max Roach Catalano shares his personal experiences, gossipy anecdotes and critical commentary as a television and concert producer who was once firmly entrenched in the unpredictable and exciting comedy and jazz scene coming out of New York City. It is the ever-changing relationship that the author has with the city that constitutes the theme running through New York Nights. Catalano says, “The perspectives from ...

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JazzTimes Will Play On

Source: Michael Ricci
July 13, 2009

JazzTimes, one of the country’s most prominent jazz magazines with a circulation of more than 100,000, announced last month on its Web site, jazztimes.com, that it was ceasing publication because of financial trouble. Much of the magazine’s audience — as well as contributors who hadn’t been paid for their recent work — assumed that this was the end of a long-running institution, one that started as the newsletter Radio Free Jazz in 1970 and developed into a glossy magazine in ...

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Read Chris Anderson's New Book "Free" for Free

Source: HypeBot
July 10, 2009

Wired Editor Chris Anderson's new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price" is already creating controversy and discussion across the net. “Free" has particular significance to artists and labels who use free songs to attract new fans, as well as, their entire industry which has been turned upside down by free access to music via file-sharing networks. The book explores the Free model from all angles ,both current and historic, and reading an advance copy inspired me to think ...

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Alaadeen: The Rest of the Story

Source: DeBlaze & Associates
July 6, 2009

The Rest of the Story Ahmad S. Alaadeen Spiral Bound Manual; 53 pages ISBN: 6-38087-01012-6 Fandeen Publising 2009

User-Friendly Jazz Improvisation Methods to Finding Yourself as a Soloist

“...Alaadeen is a wise elder in this music we call jazz and young musicians would do well to devour the practical wisdom he lays down in The Rest of the Story." --Willard Jenkins, Journalist / Broadcaster / Producer

“(The Rest ...

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Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne

Source: Michael Ricci
July 6, 2009

Lena Horne biography tells of a star shaped by rejection, racism 'Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne' by James Gavin reveals a woman whose life reflects the civil rights struggles of the times.

According to James Gavin's new biography, “Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne," the legendary singer-actress was never comfortable being an icon.

“As I say in the introduction of my book, icons are not allowed to be human beings," explains Gavin, a lifelong fan who interviewed ...

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