Autobiography or biography recommendations

[Pim]

Holidays are coming, and with my 7 months old son, I am pretty sure that reading will be my number one activity. I love to read about jazz and have already read 2 books on Coltrane and Mingus’ biography. 

Any recommendations to put on on my e-reader? What biographies are essential and of course general books on jazz are also welcome tough they have to be very good of course 😊 

thanks in advance!

Edited June 30, 2019 by Pim

[Big Beat Steve]

Coltrane and Mingus may be an indicator, but ..

What styles (or periods) of jazz are your favorites?
And is e-reader a must?

[T.D.]

Straight Life by Art Pepper, Raise up off me by Hampton Hawes. Both "warts and all" autobiographies which address addiction issues. Don't know about e-book availability.

The Monk biography by Kelley is excellent. Isoardi's bio of Horace Tapscott, The Dark Tree - if you can find it.

I enjoyed John Szwed's biography of Sun Ra, Space is the Place. Szwed's work impressed me, and I expect any of his writing on subjects of interest would be worthwhile.

Edited June 30, 2019 by T.D.

[Rooster_Ties]

20 minutes ago, T.D. said:

I enjoyed John Szwed's biography of Sun Ra, Space is the Place. Szwed's work impressed me, and I expect any of his writings on subjects of interest would be worthwhile.

Szwed's Miles biography (So What), is really my go-to Miles bio,  and beautifully written. Highly recommend.

[sidewinder]

The Tubby Hayes bio by Simon Spillet is a font of information and superbly written.

As for Miles - Ian Carr’s bio is a good one.

[Niko]

a big yes to Kelley's Monk biography and Szwed's books about Miles Davis and about Sun Ra.

re TD: Isoardi has two books, a Tapscott biography (Songs of the Unsung) and a book about the scene around Tapscott (The Dark Tree). I have only read the latter and found it pretty good but not totally amazing... A distant cousin of The Dark Tree is George Lewis book about the AACM (A Power Stronger Than Itself) which I thought was better.

Some more amazing books are Peter Pullman's Bud Powell biography, Ted Gioia on West Coast Jazz (a fairly broad image of WCJ that includes e.g. Ornette Coleman), Jeroen de Valk on Chet Baker (the most recent Dutch edition is more extensive than what's available in English iirc).

Two books from the 60s that I find very instructive to get the spirit of the times are Leroi Jones "Black Music" (collection of essays on Coltrane, Sun Ra, Ayler, ...) and C.O. Simpkins on John Coltrane. In a similar vein maybe also Val Wilmer's As Serious As Your Life. 

[mikeweil]

Chris Albertson's book on Bessie Smith is on my reading list for vacation later this year.

[Ken Dryden]

Willie Ruff's A Call To Assembly: The Autobiography of a Jazzman is superb and a compelling story. I've seen this long out of print book on Amazon for a low price in the past.

Jon Gordon's book For Sue is about his troubled mother as much as himself and jazz isn't as central a topic as you might think. But I've never read any autobiography that matches the challenges that he faced when he was still in elementary school.

[jlhoots]

Hilbert: Pee Wee Russell

[Pim]

3 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Coltrane and Mingus may be an indicator, but ..

What styles (or periods) of jazz are your favorites?
And is e-reader a must?

Mostly postswing with a few exceptions. So pretty much from bebop to freejazz. 

Thanks for all the tips up till now. Peppers Straight Life crosses my mind too

[Larry Kart]

Charlie Barnet's autobiography (as told to Stanley Dance) "Those Swinging Years." Book is pretty much as uninhibited as its author.

[mikeweil]

If you consider Art Pepper, Hampton Hawes' "Raise up off me" might be of interest to you, too. Not as elaborate, but frank and with many inside views of the scene.

[Big Beat Steve]

43 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

Charlie Barnet's autobiography (as told to Stanley Dance) "Those Swinging Years." Book is pretty much as uninhibited as its author.

I had hesitated about mentioning that (as Pim seems to be more into more (much more?) recent jazz artists). But while we're at it and a bit along these lines (or borderlines of interest?) - I'd recommend Terry Gibbs' autobiography "Good Vibes". A VERY enjoyable summer holiday read! Even if in between the weather might be a bit inclement (heaven forbid, Pim! ) and you wonder if maybe you are caught up in "El Foggo" ...

[JSngry]

 

 

Never mind the "styles" of music. These three speak with true voices of working musicians and their lives.

[Larry Kart]

A review I wrote of Arthur Rollini's autobiography, "Thirty Years with the Big Bands."
 

{1987]

Arthur Rollini’s  name  does  not  loom  large  in the  history  of  jazz, even  though  he  was the younger  brother of a major  artist (bass saxophonist  and mallet  percussionist  Adrian Rollini)  and a member of Benny Goodman’s saxophone section from the  inception of Goodman’s  band until  1939.   But perhaps because of his cog-in-the-wheel status, Rollini has written  a very  moving autobiography ,  Thirty Years With the Big Bands --a book that captures the feel of the Swing Era  from a sideman’s point of view with an attractive blend of stoicism and wit.

Rollini’s tale also is suffused with a casual, peculiarly American grace, as though,  like one of Sherwood Anderson’s narrators, the seeming  innocence with which   he addresses  us were  essential to his message. Rollini records that an early childhood memory was of  “the brass and crystal Ansonia clock on our mantel, which never ceased functioning as long as it was wound every eighth day. It was always wound on time, and its little mercury pendulum kept beating back and forth and intrigued me. I would view  it for hours.” Nothing more than nostalgia, one thinks, until, several pages and decade or so further on, Rollini’s father dies and “the only sound in the living room was the little clock on the mantel, which ticked away and gonged softly on the hour and half hour, its little pendulum still beating back and forth in perfect  rhythm.” 

Following in his older brother’s footsteps, Rollini was a professional musician at age seventeen--traveling to London to work with Fred Elizade’s orchestra at the Savoy Hotel, where the  Prince of Wales often sat in on drums. (“He was, let us put it this way, not too good,”  Rollini says.) Jazz fans will be most interested in Rollini’s account of his time with Benny Goodman, which confirms the widely held belief that Goodman was a difficult man to get along with.  “Inconsiderate Benny, the best jazz clarinetist in the world!”--Rollini  uses that  tag,  and variations thereof, time after time, even when a harsher  adjective  than “inconsiderate”  might  apply.  Rollini and Dick Clark were  Goodman’s  initial tenor  saxophonists, and  “even at this stage,” Rollini says,  “Benny would look at Dick’s bald head with disdain. He wanted a youthful looking band. ‘Fickle Benny,’  I thought,  ‘the best jazz clarinetist in the world!’ Dick was a good player.” 

Quietly  authoritative, Rollini’s  tales of the sideman’s  happy-sad life have a cumulative power. And two of them, when placed side by side, virtually define the big-band musician’s  paradoxical role. In the first, Rollini is playing a dance with Goodman when he meets an old high school friend,  one Johnny Baker, who requests that the band  play  “Always,” on the recording  of which Rollini had a solo. At the dance, Rollini  deliberately  plays “something entirely different from what was on our recording, and after it was over Johnny Baker said to me, ‘What did you change it for?’”  Then, in the mid-1940s,  when Rollini was an NBC Radio  staff  musician, he  stops in a Manhattan  bar after work  and notices that  “two young men were playing the jukebox and had selected Will Bradley’s ‘Request  for a Rhumba,’ which we had recorded in 1941. Finally I stepped off the bar stool and asked,  “Boys, why are you playing that record over and over?” One replied,  “We like the tenor sax solo.” I felt elated, but did not tell them that  it was I who played  it.”

Arthur Rollini died in 1993.

 

 

[Bluesnik]

6 hours ago, T.D. said:

Straight Life by Art Pepper, Raise up off me by Hampton Hawes. Both "warts and all" autobiographies which address addiction issues.

Agreed and recommended in both cases. Ted Gioa's book on West Coast Jazz is also recommended. As is his study about blues Delta blues.

Edited June 30, 2019 by Bluesnik
Addition of a third candidate

[Big Beat Steve]

28 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

 “Inconsiderate Benny, the best jazz clarinetist in the world!”--Rollini  uses that  tag,  and variations thereof, time after time, even when a harsher  adjective  than “inconsiderate”  might  apply.  

Might or must?

[ghost of miles]

I'll second the recommendation for Robin D.G. Kelley's Monk biography.  Also recommend Harvey Cohen's book about Duke Ellington; here's a write-up I did about it for the Night Lights site a few years ago:

He, Too, Was America: Duke Ellington's Sepia Panorama

I'd also add Gary Burton's Learning To Listen to some of the already-suggested titles by Art Pepper (a must-read IMO), Hampton Hawes, etc.  Here's a comprehensive list that I put together of jazz autobiographies (with input from board members) that might be of interest:

Songs Of Themselves: Jazz Autobiographies

[Rooster_Ties]

Without adding specifically to the discussion here (now), isn't there a "city-based" jazz-book thread somewhere around here?

I remember a good discussion of books specifically about one-city-each's jazz history. Anyone have a link?

[ghost of miles]

11 minutes ago, Rooster_Ties said:

Without adding specifically to the discussion here (now), isn't there a "city-based" jazz-book thread somewhere around here?

I remember a good discussion of books specifically about one-city-each's jazz history. Anyone have a link?

Hey Rooster, maybe a discussion I started when I was putting together this bibliography?

Jazz Capitals of America

... but my initial searches on Organissimo aren't turning it up so far.

[BillF]

7 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

Willie Ruff's A Call To Assembly: The Autobiography of a Jazzman is superb and a compelling story. I've seen this long out of print book on Amazon for a low price in the past.

Jon Gordon's book For Sue is about his troubled mother as much as himself and jazz isn't as central a topic as you might think. But I've never read any autobiography that matches the challenges that he faced when he was still in elementary school.

Thanks Ken. Have just bought the Willie Ruff used for £2. Just my sort of price!

Some excellent books mentioned so far. I would add Horace Silver's Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty, Peter Leitch's Off the Books, Ted Hershon's Norman Granz, Chris Smith's The View from the Back of the Band on Mel Lewis and Cohen and Fitzgerald's Rat Race Blues on Gigi Gryce.

41 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

Hey Rooster, maybe a discussion I started when I was putting together this bibliography?

Jazz Capitals of America

... but my initial searches on Organissimo aren't turning it up so far.

Here you are!

Edited June 30, 2019 by BillF

[sidewinder]

I found Horace’s autobiography sort-of disappointing. He comes across as a really nice guy but there wasn’t much in there that I didn’t already know.

The Mel Lewis book is definitely worth reading. I enjoyed Duncan Heining’s bio of Graham Collier and Clark Tracey’s bio of his dad Stan Tracey as well.

Strong recommendation on saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith’s bio (forget what it is called) and Jon Hiseman’s very comprehensive ‘Playing The Band’ as well. 

[Ken Dryden]

I enjoyed Gwen Terry's bio of her husband Clark Terry, though I don't recall a funny anecdote that he shared with me during a phone interview being in it. I asked him how he debuted his routine of alternating between trumpet and flugelhorn in a song and he shared a hilarious story about how he premiered it while in Duke Ellington's band.

 

It's a shame that Iola Brubeck's biography of her husband remains unpublished. Evidnetly it was near completion around the time of her death and it remains in the family's hands.

I talked to Jill Goodwin last fall and she said that Phil Woods' LIfe in E Flat was being edited by Ted Panken for possibile distribution as an e-book. It seems like it would have been a natural for Scarecrow Press, which published Terry Gibbs' great autobiography that won the ASCAP/Deems Taylor award.

 

 

[gmonahan]

7 hours ago, mikeweil said:

Chris Albertson's book on Bessie Smith is on my reading list for vacation later this year.

I just finished that one. Well worth a read, and he does a nice job of disentangling the legend of her death. From the same era, I'd recommend the autobiography attributed to Sidney Bechet, _Treat it Gentle_. It's a good read. Aside from that and several of the other suggestions made here, if you're at all interested in a biography of someone associated *with* the music, I liked Tad Hershorn's recent _Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz For Justice_.

 

gregmo

[Rooster_Ties]

2 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

Hey Rooster, maybe a discussion I started when I was putting together this bibliography?

Jazz Capitals of America

... but my initial searches on Organissimo aren't turning it up so far.

Yup, I'm *sure* that was the one. You(?) started a thread about the general topic of city-specific jazz books. Not sure how long the thread got here, but I do remember there being a very nice (long) list of books.