At the Jazz Band Ball
Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
Nat Hentoff, renowned jazz critic, civil liberties activist, and fearless contrarian—"I’m a Jewish atheist civil-libertarian pro-lifer"—has lived through much of jazz’s history and has known many of jazz’s most important figures, often as friend and confidant. Hentoff has been a tireless advocate for the neglected parts of jazz history, including forgotten sidemen and -women. This volume includes his best recent work—short essays, long interviews, and personal recollections. From Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong to Ornette Coleman and Quincy Jones, Hentoff brings the jazz greats to life and traces their art to gospel, blues, and many other forms of American music. At the Jazz Band Ball also includes Hentoff’s keen, cosmopolitan observations on a wide range of issues. The book shows how jazz and education are a vital partnership, how free expression is the essence of liberty, and how social justice issues like health care and strong civil rights and liberties keep all the arts—and all members of society—strong.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For more than half a century, Hentoff has deftly chronicled the lives of jazz musicians, the rise of jazz music in America, and the intimate relationship between jazz and civil rights, weaving intricate rhythmic prose around themes of loss, triumph, and musical virtuosity. In this collection of 64 interviews, essays, and recollections (many of them previously published), Hentoff ranges widely over numerous topics, from the meaning of jazz and the elements of a perfect jazz club to profiles of Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Oscar Peterson, and Anita O Day. Hentoff vividly recalls hearing Artie Shaw s "Nightmare" while walking past a record store in Boston when he was 11 and being touched as viscerally by Shaw s haunting music as by the passionate and mesmerizing singing of his synagogue s cantor during the High Holy Days. In a paean to Louis Armstrong and the trumpeter s recognition of the healing power of music, Hentoff discusses the development of the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at New York s Beth Israel hospital, which focuses on medical treatment for patients with asthma and chronic pulmonary disease. Because the author realizes the power of jazz to educate young people about civil rights as well as music, Wynton Marsalis becomes, in Hentoff s eyes, the Leonard Bernstein of today. Although the collection is repetitious and uneven (as such collections often are), Hentoff s essays often generate thoughtful insights into this uniquely American musical form.
