New Artie Shaw bio

[ghost of miles]

Lately I've been immersed in Vladimir Simosko's excellent bio-discography of Shaw, but tonight I stumbled (quite by accident) across this brand-new book:

Three Chords for Beauty's Sake

...is this the same Tom Nolan who wrote a biography of Ross MacDonald?

EDIT: Evidently so

Edited April 23, 2010 by ghost of miles

[Matthew]

Thanks for pointing this one out, looks like it might be a good bio. On an interesting side note: I notice that Kevin Starr is quoted praising the book, I wonder if he has written anything on jazz, a writer of that quality on jazz would be worth reading.

[Dave James]

NYT review of the "Three Chords" Shaw biography. Looks interestting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/books/review/Gates-t.html?hpw

[neveronfriday]

Interesting, but the review makes it sound more than sketchy in many places.

I'm going to wait for some more solid reviews.

[mr jazz]

just finished the Nolan bio and it's excellent. I need to add more Shaw to my collection.

[EKE BBB]

Michael Zirpolo's authoritative and critical review of Nolan's biography of Artie Shaw:

A biography of clarinetist Artie Shaw has been published. Its title is Three Chords for Beauty's Sake...The Life of Artie Shaw, W.W. Horton Co., by Tom Nolan. While this biography is a welcome survey of Shaw's life, it is far from definitive. Mr. Nolan, like many interviewers, researchers, and documentarists before him, devotes far too many pages to quoting Mr. Shaw, thus perpetuating many of Shaw's "rationalizing smokescreens", as they were so aptly described by Gunther Schuller in his book The Swing Era (Oxford University Press, 1989). Mr. Nolan might have been able to get away with this if he had balanced Shaw's version of reality with independent research. Unfortunately, the balance in this biography is tilted in the direction of Shaw's recollections, and his unseemly rants against most of his colleagues in the music profession, which undercuts the authoritativeness of this biography.

(...)

Please follow the link above to get the full review.

BTW, there are both hardcover and paperback editions, with different title and cover:

[Big Beat Steve]

Wow, that's what I call a thorough and well-founded review.

As far as I can judge, Mike Zirpolo is one whose judgment is entirely to be trusted (I crossed paths with him on the Big Band bulletin board a couple of years ago and read a good many of his contributions there). So the reservations he has about that book no doubt are to be taken into consideration.

[AllenLowe]

I'm not impressed with that review, sorry. The corrections he makes and the errors he catches seem primarily designed to illustrate and impress with the reviewer's own grasp of minutia, and are really of no consequence in a book like that (it's like someone on Amazon who took off a star my collection of Devilin' Tune because I mis-identified a song; I felt like asking him if he had verified the other thousand included).

[Larry Kart]

Nolan's book is no bargain IMO. In particular, his overuse of emphasized words in quoted speech -- e.g. "So I said to Lou Fromm, take it down a little or you're fired" (not an actual quote but my recollection of how things go) -- is not only maddening in itself but also tends to make everyone sound the same. That is, if Shaw himself spoke that way, OK --though if he did, I'd appreciate a note to that effect from the author. But when everyone speaks that way, it feels like a damn carnival ride.

[AllenLowe]

I understand.

[Big Beat Steve]

I'm not impressed with that review, sorry. The corrections he makes and the errors he catches seem primarily designed to illustrate and impress with the reviewer's own grasp of minutia, and are really of no consequence in a book like that (it's like someone on Amazon who took off a star my collection of Devilin' Tune because I mis-identified a song; I felt like asking him if he had verified the other thousand included).

OTOH if we assume that the reviewer is correct in pointing out that the MUSICAL life of Artie Shaw is passed over relatively briefly (and I assume he is because from all I can see no reviewer would get himself out on a limb by "misjudging" the contents to THAT extent by stating that book rather is about "who Artie Shaw was") then isn't it sad (or even maddening) that the author does not even get that (necessarily) LIMITED amount of facts dead right?

I would have been interested in a thorough Artie Shaw bio but probably much less so in an opus dedicated (almost exclusively? certainly much too heavily, it seems) to examining personal quirks of the person on hand to the exclusion of a lot of the musical career of the man.

So that books does not look like it fits my bill.

At any rate, to me this kind of bio suffers from one major flaw all such bios are burdened with anyway: Assuming one wants to look behind the scenes and behind the "public" mask of a celebrity of this stature and would therefore benefit from personal testimonials of those who knew the person at ALL stages and under ALL aspects of his life, it was written WAY too late because too many of those who would have been able to reply to targeted questions asked from TODAY's approach are long gone.

Edited December 8, 2011 by Big Beat Steve

[AllenLowe]

in terms of what he got wrong (as in the engagements cited by the reviewer) I wouldn't say it was a high percentage unless I actually knew the percentage - in other words, if there are 1000 citations in the book, and he got just those wrong that the reviewer mentions, than it's not, to me, a serious problem. So it all depends on how much he used this kind of info and how regularly he does it wrong and right.

anybody who writes a (non-commercial) book these days can tell you how difficult it is - no money and no editors, so one ends up doing it on the side, and it's very difficult and easy to make even obvious mistakes.

on the other hand, I would take Larry's criticisms more seriously, as they get more to the core of the book,

[Larry Kart]

Given how intensely whack-o narcissistic Shaw was, and how paradoxical that crucial strain in his nature was in relation to the beautiful music he made (this paradox may closely resemble that of Art Pepper), a Shaw bio presents grave problems. If you had extensive access to the man, as Nolan did, he would do his considerable best to seduce you, or at least pull you into his realm of fragile grandiosity. In that sense, the Canadian documentary film about Shaw from (I think) the 1980s, was almost inadvertently quite effective. The filmmakers were more or less awestruck (though they and Shaw had a big falling-out later on), allowing Shaw to ramble on in his self-aggrandizing/self-justifying manner, but because the style of the film was straight-on documentary, it was not hard for a viewer to see that Shaw was an a--hole maniac in the top class (which, again, did not preclude his being a musician of genius).

[AllenLowe]

I would add, just parenthetically, that the late recordings are not as great as Shaw thinks they were - my recollection is that his playing is good, but in a tense and overly careful way as though (at least they way I heard it) he was trying to prove that he had come along with the (bebop) times. However, it's been quite a while since I listened to that stuff.

as for Shaw personally, and re what Larry points out, I read The Trouble With Cinderalla years ago and felt it was padded with pseudo-intellectual blather.

[Face of the Bass]

Nolan's book is no bargain IMO. In particular, his overuse of emphasized words in quoted speech -- e.g. "So I said to Lou Fromm, take it down a little or you're fired" (not an actual quote but my recollection of how things go) -- is not only maddening in itself but also tends to make everyone sound the same. That is, if Shaw himself spoke that way, OK --though if he did, I'd appreciate a note to that effect from the author. But when everyone speaks that way, it feels like a damn carnival ride.

I agree with this. I found the italicization of so many words so irritating that it actually caused me to put down the book. Really unnecessary intervention on the part of the author.

[Larry Kart]

From the IMDB:

◄ Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got (1985)

Artie Shaw agreed to do the film after being interviewed by Brigitte Berman for her previous film about Bix Beiderbecke, Bix: 'Ain't None of Them Play Like Him Yet', which he felt was an accurate documentary.

After the film won the Academy Award, Artie Shaw sued Brigitte Berman in Canadian court, claiming ownership of the film (which he liked). When he eventually lost his case both in the initial trial and on appeal, he restarted the suit in California courts. The legal difficulties prevented the film's release between 1987 and Shaw's death in 2004.

[Lazaro Vega]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj1uSK5DKnw