[Frjrbefd]

1)I really enjoyed the Miles autobiography. It was a captivating read and a good look at his life from his perspective.
2)"Beneath the Underdog" was messed up. I like the way he explained how he went to the mental institution. I was just tired. Needed a place to rest. they just got the wrong idea (somthing like that)
3)the Jaco book was bad as he was portrayed as a super hero.
4)I agree that "Chasin the train" was not all that great. I don't quite remember what I diddn't like, I think the book skipped time periods in an unplesant manner and there was a bland sense of phrase. It left me feeling like "who cares"
5)I read a louis armstrong biography, I think it was "Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong" and thought it was ok, but I will check out "in his own words"

[jhfkgkfdvjk]

In keeping with interesting things to read, check out the Improvisor at
http://www.the-improvisor.com/sitemap.html

[JohnVK]

Hi guys,

There are a lot of recommendations here and many are now added to my reading list.

Thanks all.

My own favourite jazz book is a novel called “The Bear Comes Home” by Rafi Zabor, winner of the 1998 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. As well as the guys mentioned below, Ornette and Charlie Haden both have walk-on parts. Touring with Charlie was in fact part of the writer’s research alongside having been a long-time jazz journalist and drummer. He’s a great writer – somehow managing to use a ridiculously fabulous literary conceit to represent “the life” in a true and honest fashion. He gets it right. Very hip.

“The hero of this sensational first novel is an alto sax virtuoso of John Coltrane/Sonny Rollins proportions. He also happens to be a walking, talking, philosophizing, Shakespeare- and Blake-quoting, one-woman-loving bear. The scion of a long line of European circus bears (and the product of an amazing roll of the genetic dice), the Bear, when we first meet him, is eking out a living doing an (ugh) street dancing bear act with his friend and keeper Jones. But what the Bear is really best at besides making himself cosmically miserable is blowing the sax. One day he makes a bold foray out to jam with Arthur Blythe and Lester Bowie at a New York club, thus beginning a musical (and romantic) odyssey. A semi-clandestine gig and a live album. A nightclub bust and long dark nights of the soul in the city's dankest jail cell. Freedom, a recording contract, a road tour. A vexed, physically passionate interspecies love affair with a beautiful woman named Iris. And finally, a triumphant return to a jazz club inside the Brooklyn Bridge, where the Bear plays a solo that blasts him out of the space/time continuum and all the way back home. Lyrical, funny, wildly original, this is the best novel, ursine or human, on the jazz life in decades.”

Not a biography - so sorry if OT - but I'm sure you'll dig it.
Tell Santa.

Lazz

[RjkVwPcV]

I've always been a fan of the Gene Lees stuff, even though they aren't REALLY biographies.

[I9dydJrX]

Ben, I sent you a link to ejazzlines.com which has a page of jazz biographies, but I can't say which are good or not. I had a misspent youth and read biographies when most other young girls were reading horsey novels.. what the hell is that about? At any rate, from that experience I always think it is best to read as many bios about a personality as possible because so much of a person's life is "interpreted." I think you get a truer picture if you walk around the person and look at them from various angles. Also, you are an excellent writer... why don't you do a biography? There aren't enough of them out there about jazz artists.

[Markdogas]

Quote:

[caseferter]

How could I forget "Music Is My Mistress".... that's probably the best of the ones I've read. Duke is so Eloquent it hurts..

[oscilsoda]

Rat Race Blues - the story of Gigi Gryce is great and there is another one on Stan Getz taht I don'[t have the name of at the top of my head but is readily available. Ben, I loved Straight Life however didn't get that Art was a creep. Art had a childhood that most of us would've never even survived. His inner demons and caused him to be how and who he was.

[johnteriz]

The last biography I read was Dance of the Infidels; A Portrait of Bud Powell by Francis Paudras. I highly recommend it.

[Cheeniandab]

Thank you to those who recommended Dance of the Infidels. I'm almost finished reading it.

Francis Paudras, the author, committed suicide, and I'm curious to know why. A quick search on Google shows he suffered from depression and personal setbacks, but I didn't find anything more specific. He was a very sensitive person, and I can understand how he would have been susceptible to depression, but can anyone shed more light on what, exactly, caused him to take his own life?

[Cheeniandab]

Nevermind...

Just finished the book, and the last few pages mention some of the personal setbacks Paudras suffered, so I now have a better understanding of why he took his own life.

[caseferter]

Mingus "Beneath the Underdog" and Dizzy's "To Be or Not (To Bop!)." Especially the Dizzy... it's full of hilarious anecdotes.

[Dwemadayday]

"Beneath the Underdog" is a biography? I thought it was Science Fiction... ;-) Seriously though, I know the thoughts of the man himself are hard to argue with, even if they are a bit out there at times. I would have loved to see his original draft, before his editors got to it. It's a good companion to "Myself When I Am Real".

"Bass Line" by Milt Hinton. Great words, historic photographs (by Milt himself) on just about every page.

"Jazz Annecdotes" - Bill Crow.

[Cheeniandab]

Don't know if this subject has been dealt with before in this forum, but Brian Nation's mention of Lush Life, David Hajdu's excellent biography of Billy Strayhorn, prompts me to ask if people would like to recommend other jazz biographies/autobiographies they've read.

If anyone knows of a good Coltrane biography, for example, I'd sure like to hear about it. The only Coltrane biography I've read was J.C. Thomas's Chasin the Trane, and I didn't find it very informative or enjoyable to read.

Others I've read and enjoyed were Art Pepper's Straight Life (love his music, but what a creep), Miles (Miles Davis autobiography with Quincy Troupe, which was a hoot), Bird Lives! (Charlie Parker) and Myself When I Am Real (Charlie Mingus). I'm now reading Billie Holiday by Donald Clarke, and so far it seems pretty good, too.

So, what are some other good ones?

[jhfkgkfdvjk]

Check out "Duke Ellington in Person" by Mercer Ellington with Stanley Dance.

[huntbytnkbel]

I read Dance of the Infidels and enjoyed it as well. It gave some good insight into the world of psychiatric difficulties and the resulting stigma, which can often be more problematic than the original problem.

[jojocomok]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned "Louis Armstrong,In His Own Words."

He had two other biographies that were essentially destroyed by clumsy editing and outright censorship (in "In His Own Words" he laughs about how the publishers shitcanned volume two of his autobiography because it was, "mostly about ganja.")

Armstrong was a very prolific writer. He wrote thousands of letters, some of which are held here at the Hogan Archive in New Orleans( I've held some. Talk about a splinter from the true cross!!) including letters to fans that often ran into several pages. But "In His Own Words" also contains big chunks of autobiographical stuff that's a must read for anyone interested in jazz.

[bZEUWO4F]

I once attended a lecture (actually a few lectures) by a Dr. Lewis Porter. He is probably the worlds leading expert on John Coltrane’s life and music from an academic standpoint. He recently wrote a book called, "John Coltrane His Life And Music."

http://www.jazzscript.co.uk/books/coltraneporter.htm

I think its safe to say that Dr. Porter is a little obsessed with Coltrane; he went so far as to dig up the birth and death records of Coltrane's entire family and interview just about everyone that ever knew, meet or served a cup of coffee to him. But his psychological abnormalities are our gain. While I have not read the book I have seen a lot of the material he used to put it together, and it is some fascinating stuff. Porter goes into detail about Coltrane's practice habits and the books he used for composition; very interesting if you are a musician. It is factual and accurate, which is more than you can say about most Coltrane Bios.

(Someone may have already mentioned Porter, I'm not sure. I apologize for any redundancy. I don't mean to be redundant. If I am redundant, I apologize.)

[I9dydJrX]

Just a tip for jazz fans out there, your local library has a certain amount of money set aside for purchases every year. If you submit a request for purchase, along with a book review from a reputable reviewer... Globe and Mail is always good, they more than likely will buy it. Not only are you saving money, but you are creating opportunities for people in your community to plug in to jazz and jazz musicians. In addition, the library starts to think in terms of supplying those jazz fans in their readership, if they are getting response. It is a win-win situation. So if you love a book, and have a good reviewer's blurb, go down and request it for purchase for the rest of the blokes out there that would enjoy it.

[Markdogas]

I was trying to remember the name of that amazing book. “The Bear Comes Home” Thanks, Lazz.

Man, they just keep coming. Another unusual masterpiece is 'But Beautiful" by Geoff Dyer. Dyer has written short fictionalized and poetically charged pieces based on stories and images of eight jazz masters. Sometimes "the facts" get in the way of the essence. Here Dyer uses his imagination to paint insightful portraits - 'Not as they were but as they appear to me....' he says. Great book.