Forthcoming Robin D.G. Kelley book

[ghost of miles]

He mentioned both of these when I interviewed him for the Night Lights Monk shows last year, and they're listed on his online vita:

*Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2011)

*A new edition of Babs Gonzales' I Paid My Dues (for which iirc Kelley has written a lengthy introduction) as forthcoming from Duke University Press.

[AllenLowe]

interested in the Babs; now, there was more than one of his books that appeared, IIRC, and one (or maybe both) had a fair amount of anti-semitic comments in them.

[Christiern]

I believe there are two books. I have them both, one in two different editions.

Babs, a next door neighbor gave them to me (which was unusual for him), but I paid my dues each time he clip-clopped into the lobby in his wooden shoes and had the doorman ring me at 5 in the morning

[cih]

Would you guys recommend Robin D.G. Kelley's writing?

Edited January 24, 2011 by cih

[Face of the Bass]

He's an excellent researcher and a good writer, but I wasn't particularly moved by his Monk biography. (It's a fine book, but the writing style didn't grab me the way I hoped it would.) My favorite author of jazz history is John Szwed, FWIW.

[jlhoots]

I believe the Monk book is essential.

"Style" is less of an issue for me in biographies & non-fiction.

Actually I'm more interested in the first book listed in the initial post than in the Gonzales.

[RJ Spangler]

I have always wanted to read the Babs & the other I would certainly buy as well.

[AllenLowe]

I liked the Monk book because, for once, a jazz bio was approached with the discipline and reach of a (good) literary biography. HOWEVER - I do know that Larry Kart had some reservations about the biij, though I've never heard specifics from him.

LARRY! you out there?

btw I love Babs' singing - Joe Albany told me to listen to him; Joe thought Babs was the hippest guy around.

[cih]

HOWEVER - I do know that Larry Kart had some reservations about the biij

The Biomedical Imaging and Intervention Journal?

[AllenLowe]

close enough

[tranemonk]

I thoroughly enjoyed the Monk book... What's the new going to be about? The title doesn't say much.

[Christiern]

It won't be "The Soul of Wynton Marsalis"

[Larry Kart]

I liked the Monk book because, for once, a jazz bio was approached with the discipline and reach of a (good) literary biography. HOWEVER - I do know that Larry Kart had some reservations about the biij, though I've never heard specifics from him.

LARRY! you out there?

Yes, I'm here. Hard for me to say right now, because I bought the book, started to read it and soon just didn't feel like continuing. Thought I'd posted something here about what my feelings were at that time, though. Basically, IIRC, it was that Kelley didn't give me enough of a sense that he knew what Monk's music was really like/amounted to, so what then was all of Kelley's work built around/attached to?

Not that a book of this sort needs to be, or perhaps even should be, marked by an intense effort to grasp what its subject's music is up to, but Monk was a unique figure and one whose importance is still being registered in the music quite actively and perhaps even urgently, which may be why I began to get the feeling that Kelley's Monk was a figure he meant to encase in amber and/or place on a pedestal, as though the goal were to add another great man to the historical jazz pantheon. Not that Monk doesn't belong there in one sense, but ... well, I now recall that I said back then that while one could imagine a reasonable biography of Beethoven being written by a man who didn't grasp that LvB's music was at once historical and still radically alive, ideally one would very much want the author to have a sure grip on both of those things.

[J.A.W.]

I met Babs Gonzales in my home town back in the 1970s. He told us some amazing stories about his life and the people he met. Funny guy.