*First essay in what has become a remarkably extensive series on jazz!*
Billie Holiday‘s 1957 TV appearance must be among the most moving videos ever, with Billie in rapture, showing the depth of the rapport between great musicians—don’t miss the final trumpet solo from Roy Eldridge! (For the making of the film, see here, with a link to another YouTube video; among discussions, I admire the Coda of Farah Jasmine Griffin, In search of Billie Holiday.)
For my personal Billie Holiday playlists, see here and here, the latter referring to some of the myriad books on her…
Apart from the experience of listening, jazz biographies are just as captivating as jazz photos. If only I could bring the Li family Daoists to life with such detail as we find in books like
- Ross Russell, Bird lives (for a fine review of three more books on Charlie Parker, interrogating the whole genre of jazz biographies, click here)
- Miles, The autobiography (see e.g. Miles meets Bird and Some middle-period Miles, as well as under Mahler, vibrato, jazz, and Daoism and The spiritual path of John Coltrane)
- David Brun-Lambert, Nina Simone: the biography
- J.C. Thomas, Coltrane: Chasing the trane.
I discuss Chet Baker here, and here. See also Frank Morgan and Art Pepper. And for a brilliant biography of Lenny Bruce, click here.
More academic, but (sic) masterly, is
- Paul Berliner, Thinking in Jazz.
In books like this, it’s not just the social and personal detail that impresses, but the technical aspects of their constant musical strivings—the musos’ obsession with chords, timbre, and so on. From Charlie Parker’s use of the Rico number five reed (Russell pp.10–13) to Keith Richards‘ sheer exhilaration at discovering the open five-string tuning (in Life p.270ff.), no less captivating than the many gaudy experiences throughout the book.
We could compile lists of similar excursions in world music, but jazz leads the way…
While I’m about it, don’t forget
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Here’s a fun party game. When reading Life, be sure to read it in Keef’s voice—his inclusive conspiratorial chuckle is one of the great primeval sounds of nature.
Conversely, Miles’s autobiography should be read in the voice of the Queen, Brian Sewell, Jacob Wee-Smug [aka The Haunted Pencil]—or (for yet older readers…) the presenter of Listen with Mother. If serialised on Radio 4, it could be called Listen with Motherfucker. For a related story from Istanbul trumpeter Muvaffak “Maffy” Falay, see Jazz in Turkey.
Stephen Jones: a blog 