Bird Plays for Stravinsky

[JSngry]

Hill and Sun Ra spent time together in Chicago and may well have had conversations about "identity", of the benefits, perhaps even the need, to create your own, instead of having one placed on you by external forces. Seems to have been in that particular air at the time. 

[medjuck]

My copy of Jazz Modernism finally arrived.  I may never get around to reading it but it's a beautiful book with many great illustrations: photos of musicians and colour reproductions of art works. Even the spine of the book is illustrated. 

[medjuck]

Well I've now read it and quite enjoyed it.  Book is divided into 4 parts each built around a jazz musician: Jo Jones, Fats Waller, Pops and Duke.   He tells other, probably apocryphal, stories about gigs he implies he attended: he may have seen Trane with Monk but I doubt if he was present at an encounter between Buddy Rich and Big Sid Catlett.  (Big  Sid died when Appel was 15).  

I don't buy many of his interpretations of works of art (for him a cigar is never just a cigar) but his close reading jazz recordings is really interesting and his writing on Joyce's Ulysses is terrific. 

Edited July 20, 2022 by medjuck