Bookloft Staff Picks

After a buzzy book season last fall & the holidaze, & a welcomed 2 weeks off in Jamaica (warmth!) in January, The Enthusiast is back at The Bookloft blogsite bracing (just begging) to blog.

The big book for me last year was Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press) by Robin D.G. Kelley.  (Before I praise this book, let me enhance the Monk-mood by putting Monk’s Criss-Cross on the stereo & popping the cork of a bottle of Brother Thelonious (TM) Belgian Style Abbey Ale.  And because I value such a synesthetic experience, I’m also going to pair this discussion of the Monk book with a photo/documentary history of New York jazz & to continue the Rhythm-A-Ning by citing other exciting jazz & music books, including last fall’s other big jazz biography.)  Robin Kelley tells a wonderful, fully-researched & humane life story of my jazz god, Thelonious Sphere Monk. (He adopted his middle name, saying no one could ever take him for a square.)  From this exceptional biographer’s art I got a great sense of the man, as well as of his struggles for acceptance as the jazz innovator he was & the gigs, recordings & his jazz cohorts (Bud Powell & John Coltrane high among them).  In scale & accomplishment, this biography reminds me of the Richard Ellmann bio of James Joyce I read 30 years ago when I was a Joycean.  After reading this tremendous life of Monk, I now feel like a fully-fledged Monkean (Monkophile? Monkie? Monkman? Spheroid?)

The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs & Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue 1957-1965 (Knopf) by Sam Stephenson pairs nicely with Kelley’s Monk book, because it offers snapshots & soundbites in time from a loft in Manhattan used as a rehearsal space by jazz musicians & a bohemian clubhouse by many others.  Monk rehearsed his big band for the historic Town Hall concert there with loft resident musical genius Hall Overton.  Atmospheric b&w photos & snips of recorded music & conversations are sampled in this impressive document, which also includes streetlife shots from the 5th-floor window & colorful, evocative recording graphics from Smith’s monumental collection.  This book is above & beyond cool.

Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats (Abrams Image) gathers candid snapshots & notes by the vaunted Pannonica de Koenigswarter, patroness of many jazzers (particularly Monk), who asked her subjects: “If you were given three wishes, to be instantly granted, what would they be?”  For some playful reason, T.M. answered with things he already had: “To be successful musically. To have a happy family. To have a crazy friend like you!”  There follows a series of snaps of Monk at work & play, & a spread of him taking a nap with a cat on his lap.  The responses of the hundreds of musicians asked (mostly money, then peace, love & understanding) fold in nicely with their photos in this compact & unique look into the jazz scene 50 years ago.

Louis Armstrong is the other recent, great jazzman subject of the biographer’s art.  Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by Terry Teachout is a robust portrait of the classic jazz originator, giving for the first time the “full stories behind his 1930 marijuana arrest, his life-threatening run-in with Chicago gangsters, his triumphant Broadway and Hollywood debuts, his complicated love life, his quarrel with President Eisenhower,” & lots more.  He’s kind of an anti-Monk figure in his approach to life & art (open & solidly trad, yet a major mofo) & endlessly fascinating & fun to listen to.

Who knew he had a great visual sense too?  Satchmo: The Wonderful World & Art of Louis Armstrong (Abrams) presented by Steven Brower, shows in album-sized brilliant color the autobiographical collages he made to put on the boxes of recording tape (I guess today we’d call it scrapbooking).  Where the Teachout book has little visual pop to it, Satchmo’s vivid lifestory-in-collage jumps off the pages like one of his exuberant solos & makes it a fitting, autobiographical companion.  I love it–you can almost hear the music.

I should wind this up by mentioning a couple of Here-Comes-Everybody cultural histories that seem to have it all: JAZZ (Norton) by Gary Giddins & Scott DeVeaux is a definitive textbook of jazz musicians, theories & songs, tracing the jazz line from Ghana field recordings & the blues through Jelly Roll, Duke & Dizzy, to the ‘anti-young-lions’ take on “You’ve Got to Be Modernistic.” The book has a nicely analytical, clear focus on exemplary recordings & a hefty recommended discography (& a companion listening guide you can buy separately). Giddins is one of the best jazz critics going & this monumental opus is a great place for the budding or exfoliated jazz student to start. Norton also published a plump paperback last fall: All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77 by Tony Fletcher & it too has got it all, from all genres (okay maybe not classical).  Cotton Club, Washington Square hootenanny, CBGBs; tin-pan alleycats, popsters, zombies; Moondog, Chano Pozo, Grace Jones. (Just kidding about the zombies–they were British Invasion.)  I can’t wait to have the time to read this.

Hit me with a comment if you’ve got one. Otherwise I just might go on doing this. But, as Samuel Beckett says, I can’t go on. So I’ll sign off, The Enthusiast.