You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Jazz Books We Love - #108

Episode Date: May 17, 2018

In this episode, Peter and Adam list their 7 favorite books about jazz. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus and I'm Peter Martin and you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast Today we're going to give you seven jazz books that we love I guess I better learn how to read then That's right. Let's jump right into this And I want to start with a book by L-R-Jones Who's actually changed his name later on But I believe his name was still L-R-O-I

Cool Called Blues People This book was recommended to me like in the mid-80s by Stan Coucher when I met him one of my first days in New York City, which was a really cool thing. I met him at the Village Vanguard, and he's like, oh, I heard you play piano. Come over to my apartment. I went around the corner, and he played me some records, showed me some books, you know, tried to educate a young, dumb pianist from St. Louis.

That's awesome. But he's like, yeah, you got to read blues people. So I went and bought it the next day, which this being the mid-80s did not involve ordering it on Amazon and waiting. It involved going to a bookstore. Yeah, but there were more bookstores around, though. That's right. I went over to Strand books, actually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's just a very interesting book about, I mean, this is not like the kind of book where it's giving you, it's like the opposite of giving you the diminished scale and how that applies and stuff. It's kind of esoteric, but it's very, you know, like in terms of the blues influence on the music of jazz and it's not like a historical thing where it takes you through that. It's more conceptual, but it really, you know, gives a great framework for the music. I got to go back and read it because I'm actually kind of forgetting it now. But specifics of it, but a lot of it, I remember, I thought about it so much as I was learning music as I was getting older and kind of getting more educated about the music beyond just the technical parts of it, the more conceptual and sociological aspects of the music. So it just kind of puts that in context for you. Exactly.

Nice. I got to check out. I've never read that, but I've heard of it before. That's great. So my first pick is Miles. This was Miles' autobiography that was released shortly before he died, I think. was written with Quincy Troop. Trope? Troop.

It is one of the most fascinating, not just jazz books, but just autobiographies. Oh, it's great. Because Miles was such a character. Yep. Great storyteller. Great storyteller. It's an unbelievable little glimpse into the life of not just Miles,

but a lot of the famous musicians and famous celebrities around jazz during Miles's life. Really, really cool read. you know, some interesting stuff about almost, even if you don't like Miles, if there's a player you like, he's probably in this book somewhere and Miles either loves them or hates it. Right, right. Or sometimes both.

I mean, it was like some of the stuff he said about, like Herbie and Chick-Korea and Pete Jarrett, you know, it was like, man, they were so great, but they were stupid, you know, like back and forth. He hated Hank Jones, like, right? Hank Jones, that's great. Monk, yep.

Oh, I'm just remembered, so it's Amira Baraka, I believe is his name, Leroy Jones. That's kind of how he's known for most of his life. He just died a couple of years ago, I think I remember I saw. Yeah, I got to see him in New York reading poetry. It's amazing. Oh, nice. Cool.

All right, so number three, I'm going to go with kind of a scholarly work by Gunther Schuller called Early Jazz. And this one, I mean, this book may be kind of out of print or you could find it used or something. Hopefully they've kept you going. But this is a great analysis of, you know, exactly what it says, early jazz, New Orleans, rag time, all the elements that went into really creating the music, and it gets very technical in there. It's almost like a type of thing that would be like a textbook, I would think, and really learning about the music. But Gunther Schuller, I think, you know, he's kind of a, he was a composer and a musicologist, a class, you know, from the classical world, but really

had a deep understanding and knowledge, a functional knowledge of jazz. So I think he writes it in a way that's scholarly, but never overly so. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm going to call an audible here for number four. And this is another autobiography. And this is one that I just read last summer. And this is Herbie Hancock's autobiography. I forget the title of it. But there's only one that Herbie actually wrote. And it's also, I mean, it's another glimpse into this era a little bit starts a little bit later than the Miles. But Herbie is such a different character than Miles. So to hear him describe the same events is actually pretty fascinating. You can probably read these books one right after the other and get a real sense of like the different kinds of,

people that these two men were. What I feel like, Herbie might have been setting the record straight in terms of accuracy on some of those stories. No, but I mean, his his, uh, his way of, of telling stories is also fascinating.

And his life as a musician is fascinating. And it goes through all his, you know, his history is a young, a young player in Chicago, studying classical music and had great success with that early on. Yeah. And then, you know, early life playing jazz and, and what it was like to have.

I mean, we always forget, but he had like, pop hits pretty like out the gate right you know and so was like making money and was famous and yeah and it's pretty amazing but then little stuff like you know he's always had a lot of income by writing jingles yeah on the side it's like a side hustle like some some things that you've probably heard of that you know herbie hancock wrote that you know right it's kind of amazing wasn't canelope island like a soap commercial first and then he reworked it for that yeah it's called possibilities I did a little online research while you were waxing eloquently about the book.

That's such a Herbie name for anything. Well, he had an album called Possibilities. Greatwood, yeah. Good stuff. That's great. Okay. And also, yeah, a bunch of, I guess you mentioned it, but yeah, a bunch of cool, like, Chicago story. Oh, in Iowa, when he went up to Grinnell College and was, like, going and doing gigs and stuff.

Yeah, totally. A lot of fun stuff. Okay, so now what do we get? Number five. Okay, so I want to throw out there kind of blue, the making of the kind of blue record by Ashley Kahn. I believe it's called The Making of a Classic

or something like that, but if you look up Kind of Blue, the making of Kind of Blue. And this is the thing, and I think it came out when it was the, what was it,

the 50th anniversary or something a few years ago. A couple books came out, but I think Ashley Kahn's version is, I mean version, his book is, I actually read at least two of them. And you wouldn't think

that even one album could ever warrant a whole book being about an album, but this book really is it's so interesting and it's so much great information. A lot of it, you know, from Jimmy Cobb, who's the only survivor, you know, the only player still alive from that record, I believe, now.

But it really goes into the different sessions because it was recorded over a few months on some different sessions. And they've got all these cool documents in there. There's like pay stubs from the musicians union on how they were paid for the session, mixing notes, mastering things, talks about how they got that great sound.

Yeah, the engineer's been very forthcoming with how he's, done everything, which isn't always the case. Exactly. Yeah, well, waited 50 years and they did. But that's a cool one kind of behind the scenes on how records used to be made. That's awesome. Yep.

Cool. And that takes us to another biography, and this is Lush Life, the biography of Billy Strayhorn, one of the great figures in jazz, one of the great composers, arrangers. I've not read this one. Have you? Yeah, I read it, and it's a great thing. I thought I knew about Billy Strayhorn's life, but it's so much more.

I mean, he was such a, you know, know, so many interesting things. He moved to France. He moved to Paris. And like, there's a lot of stuff about his life there. Um, you know, he was openly homosexual at a time when a, you know, a male African American homosexual jazz musician was not the most popular thing to be doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so he was really a trailblazer in terms of that. Really goes into a lot of interesting things about his relationship with Duke Ellington, about, you know, kind of a mentorship, but a partnership. And a lot of the financial, interesting financial things that happen between them, but they're real friendship, almost like a marriage, you know, over all those years and just a fascinating and really well written.

You know, some of these jazz biogra, I guess it's like this for any field, but especially in terms of music, you know, some of, I mean, anyone can write a biography about someone, apparently. You don't need a license to, and some of them are pretty poorly written. It's true. They're getting better, but I mean, this is just a great. I actually, I apologize, I don't remember the name with the author, but he's really good, really good. So that brings us to number seven, I believe. We're doing seven jazz books, yep. And this is a book that I read when I was first getting into jazz like 13, 14 years old.

And again, it may be out of print, but I think if you could find it, it would be great. It's called The Great Jazz Pianist. What a generic title by Len Lyons. And this is funny. I'm going to throw a little shade on Mr. Lyons here in that I don't think this book is very well written, but he did such a great job. Like he assembled so many great, It's just an interview.

It's almost like it could be a collection of interviews from like Esquire magazine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But his questions actually aren't that great, but he, I mean, I shouldn't say they're not that great. They're very personal to him. Like, obviously he's a jazz pianist. What he's like, what are you playing over this two-five? Yeah, it's stuff like that.

But it was things that I was kind of interested in it, too. I think for somebody that, you know, is not a pianist, it would not be that interesting. Yeah. Although the name of it is the great jazz pian, so I guess it's kind of leading you in there. But it's just great. I mean, it's like, you know, Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans, Oscar, Oscar, Peterson, Red Garland. It's like one of our lists.

Yeah, no, it's an incredible. I mean, the fact that he got all these great players. Lynn would have had his own podcast, is what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, Len did a good job. But if you can find that one, that one's a lot of fun. That's awesome. Well, I know we're leaving off, you know, again, dozens of probably great biographies and autobiographies and anthologies and history books and everything.

There's a ton of stuff out there. Maybe we'll do a second round of these lists in a couple weeks. Or maybe not. Or maybe not. You know, either way. You'll hear it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hear It podcast. You can go to you'll hear it.com to get more information, submit a question, or just say hello.

Wait, you can do that. Absolutely. All right. And if you like what you heard, please leave a review and a rating below. Thanks.