Gene Lees, author of the highly acclaimed Singers and the Song, offers, in Meet Me at Jim and Andy's, another tightly integrated collection of essays about post-War American music. This time he focuses on major jazz instrumentalists and bandleaders. Jim and Andy's, on 48th Street just west of Sixth Avenue, was one of four New York musicians' haunts in the 1960s--the others being Joe Harbor's Spotlight, Charlie's, and Junior's. "For almost every musician I knew," Lees writes, "[it was] a home-away-from-home, restaurant, watering hole, telephone answering service, informal savings (and loan) bank, and storage place for musical instruments." In a vivid series of portraits, we meet its clientele, an unforgettable gallery of individualists who happen to have been major artists--among them Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman, Art Farmer, Billy Taylor, Gerry Mulligan, and Paul Desmond. We share their laughter and meet their friends, such as the late actress Judy Holliday, their wives, even their children (as in the tragic story of Frank Rosolino). We learn about their loves, loyalties, infidelities, and struggles with fame and, sometimes alcohol and drug addiction. The magnificent pianist Bill Evans, describing to Lees his heroin addiction, says, "It's like death and transfiguration. Every day you wake in pain like death, and then you go out and score, and that is transfiguration. Each day becomes all of life in microcosm." Himself a noted songwriter, Lees writes about these musicians with vividness and intimacy. Far from being the inarticulate jazz musicians of legend, they turn out to be eloquent indeed, and the inventors of a colorful slang that has passed into the American language. And of course there was the music. A perceptive critic with enormous respect for the music he writes about, Lees notes the importance and special appeal of each artist's work, as in this comment about Artie Shaw's clarinet: "A fish, it has been said, is unaware of water, and Shaw's music so permeated the very air that it was only too easy to overlook just how good a player and how inventive and significant an improviser he was."

"This biography traces the output of jazz master Charles Mingus--his recordings, his compositions, and his writings--highlighting key moments in his life and musicians who influenced him and were influenced by him. As a young man, Mingus played with Louis Armstrong as well as with Kid Ory. Mingus also played in bands led by Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Lionel Hampton, Red Norvo, Art Tatum, and many others. He began leading his own bands in New York City in 1955. Eric Dolphy, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Jimmy Knepper, Jackie McLean, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Cat Anderson, and Jaki Byard are among the many distinguished jazz artists who made music with Mingus during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. In addition to leaving behind a large collection of compelling recordings by large and small units, Mingus was also a talented writer. His autobiography, Beneath the Underdog: His World Composed by Mingus, is unlike any other book by a major jazz artist. Mingus creates vivid portraits of the many people who passed through his life and tells his story with compelling prose. Mingus also wrote a good deal of poetry and prose, all of it reflecting his unique vision. In 1977 he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. After several months of steady deterioration, he died in 1979 in Mexico"--Provided by publisher.

More than 25 muscians who first came to prominence during the 1950s are the subject of this collection of interviews. The author's purpose has been to help preserve the oral history of a great American artform, and this book reveals that jazz musicians who can 'tell a story' with their horn when improvising can be just as articulate in conversation.

A major new biography of Duke Ellington from the acclaimed author of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was the greatest jazz composer of the twentieth century—and an impenetrably enigmatic personality whom no one, not even his closest friends, claimed to understand. The grandson of a slave, he dropped out of high school to become one of the world’s most famous musicians, a showman of incomparable suavity who was as comfortable in Carnegie Hall as in the nightclubs where he honed his style. He wrote some fifteen hundred compositions, many of which, like “Mood Indigo” and “Sophisticated Lady,” remain beloved standards, and he sought inspiration in an endless string of transient lovers, concealing his inner self behind a smiling mask of flowery language and ironic charm. As the biographer of Louis Armstrong, Terry Teachout is uniquely qualified to tell the story of the public and private lives of Duke Ellington. A semi-finalist for the National Book Award, Duke peels away countless layers of Ellington’s evasion and public deception to tell the unvarnished truth about the creative genius who inspired Miles Davis to say, “All the musicians should get together one certain day and get down on their knees and thank Duke.”

"This is a book I love."--Bret Lott, author of Jewel and Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer's Life From a Minnesota book award-winning author, an essay collection that explores what is most essential to him, from the difficult lives of jazz musicians, to trout fishing, to the shifting population and mores of suburbia. “Here’s the thing,” Richard Terrill writes. “There’s always the thing, isn’t there, and most often, not just one?” Terrill, an award-winning poet and memoirist, asks through this series of wide-ranging, funny, and sometimes gut-punchingly vulnerable essays, what is essential? Maybe trout fishing, the music of Bill Evans, or the whys of dog ownership. Maybe Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story, We Chat, a musician’s early hearing loss, and spying on the neighbors. Or maybe the coming apocalypse, almost getting lost in the woods, trespassing, town clean-up days, and the reason Miles Davis never listened to his own recordings. At times self-effacing and funny, at times outspoken and provocative, Terrill fixes a clear eye on the contradictions in our present moment. “We’re at that point in a journey where you know where you’re going, but you don’t know where you are,” he writes. “The destination should come anytime now.”

Jazz Theory and Practice is the most modern introduction to jazz theory ever published. Rich with examples from the repertoire, it gives performers, arrangers and composers an in-depth and practical knowledge of the theoretical foundations of jazz.