Miles Again Giddins Village Voice Weather Bird

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"… if Bix, Bird, and Cecil were all jazz, so this was a world without terminate. I had to hear everything by the artists I loved, peculiarly Armstrong and Ellington. The lack of repetition was addictive, invigorating. I loved the fact that I might hear a few bars of, say, trumpet and know "that's Clifford Brown," long before I understood why I knew information technology…."

"Criticism is as personal a field equally singing and, beyond the fact that a lot of practitioners in both fields aren't particularly good at information technology, the reasons readers respond favorably to ane and not to some other are just equally personal…. Most of us become critics because nosotros venerate critics. We effort and measure upwardly…."

"A writer writes about what he or she knows, wants to know, and wants y'all to know. I thought I had something to say nearly jazz and that through jazz, I could speak to every issue that interested me…."

- Gary Giddins

In that location is no one on the bailiwick of Jazz than I would rather read than Gary Giddins.

His Jazz writings are unsurpassed, they are matchless.

Reading Giddins on Jazz is like sitting down to three scoops of your favorite ice cream with a liberal topping of chocolate sauce – you never want it to end.

Information technology has been said that God sprinkles a few artistic geniuses into each generation to inspire the rest of united states.

For me, Gary Giddins has always been i such inspiration.

I asked Gary if he would consent to a JazzProfiles interview.

As you volition no doubtfulness annotation when you read through the following "chat," he more than generously responded to my request.

Yous can review Gary's many awards and achievements by visiting him at www.garygiddins.com/ . I take re-posted two, earlier JazzProfiles features about Gary and his piece of work to the blog's sidebar.

- How and when did music first come up into your life?

My parents bought me a plastic phonograph when I was three — they were tickled that I could identify the songs on my mother'south 78s or my aunt's 45s by the labels and print, before I could read. On a few occasions, my father and I walked to Coney Island and I'd cut a plastic record in a telephone-similar booth. Eventually, he bought our outset hullo-fi (monaural, of course) and a few LPs, mostly Sinatra-generation popular, but likewise the Reader's Digest classical music box-sets and that really did information technology: I was over the moon playing my style through them.

- Did you play an instrument?

Piano, accordion, clarinet, bongos, guitar, alto sax, each under a dissever tutor who took my parents' dough and stared at me balefully, wondering why we bothered to go through the motions. My instrument was turntable. I didn't desire to be Sonny Rollins or Pablo Casals; I just wanted to listen to them. On the other hand, learning the rudiments of an instrument gives yous useful insights into the labors they need.

- What are your primeval recollections of Jazz?

I've written about this, and refer anyone interested to Weather Bird , pp. xiii – 20, and pp. 208-210.

- Conversations nearly Jazz invariably plow to "impressions" and "favorites." So let's plow to "impressions;" who were the Jazz musicians who first impressed you and why?"

Louis Armstrong changed everything. The longer reply is in Atmospheric condition Bird , but a short one is this: after years of listening to 1950s stone and roll, a limited library of 19 th century and early 20 th century classics, folk music, and blues, the one piece that absolutely owned my Jewish soul was the [Johann Sebastian Bach] B Pocket-size Mass, and Armstrong's 1928 recordings replicated that kind of power, a discovery that simply blew my mind. At the same time, Ray Charles, whom I adored, made a tape called Genius + Soul = Jazz and that perked my marvel about that mysterious word. Others in the first years (1963-65) were Ellington ( Masterpieces, In a Mellow Tone ), Light-headed ( Jambo Caribe , Something Erstwhile Something New ), Miles ( In Europe , Walkin' ), Monk ( Criss Cross , Thelonious Solitary ) Brubeck ( At Carnegie Hall ) Sonny ( Work Time , Our Man in Jazz ), Coltrane ( Ballads , Live at the Vanguard ), Getz / Gilberto , Pecker Evans ( Waltz for Debby ), Hawkins (RCA Vintage album and At the Opera House with Roy), Mingus ( Pre-Bird Mingus , The Clown ), Billie Holiday (Columbia, Commodore sets), Pee Wee Russell ( New Groove ), Fats Waller (the RCA Vintage sets), Eric Dolphy ( Out There ), and Ornette ( Ornette! ) There were many more, though oddly I didn't get into bop and the big bands until a lilliputian later. Bud Powell'south "Cherokee," on a Verve collection, was life altering, every bit were the Parker Dials and Savoys and Verves (in order of meet: Bird Symbols, The Charlie Parker Story, The Essential Charlie Parker ), Tatum ( This is Piano ), Horace Silver ( Song for My Father , Sarah ( + 2, No Count Sarah ), Basie and Pres ( The Lester Young Memorial Album, Lester's Keynotes), the Django set on Capitol, Gil Evans ( Out of the Cool ), Barney Kessel ( Workin' Out ) and on and on, every bit I grew determined to see everyone listed in Plumage'southward 1960 Jazz Encyclopedia still alive, and hear all those who weren't. The cumulative effect and answer to your question lay in the wondrous variety and individualism they represented: if Bix, Bird, and Cecil were all jazz, then this was a world without end. I had to hear everything by the artists I loved, especially Armstrong and Ellington. The lack of repetition was addictive, invigorating. I loved the fact that I might hear a few bars of, say, trumpet and know "that's Clifford Chocolate-brown," long before I understood why I knew it.

- For reasons which you explicate in the introduction to Visions of Jazz: The First Century, you did not include a number of "major figures…personal favorites … and popularizers" in the book. Continuing with your impressions for a while longer, what comes to heed when I mention the post-obit Jazz musicians who were excluded from Visions of Jazz ?

- Benny Carter

One of the wisest, most brilliant men I've had the honour to know. The get-go time I saw him play, in the 1970s, I understood the awe in which older critics and musicians held him. Earlier then, I had not heard most of his key recordings. His playing is beyond time, no matter the context. The other day I listened to his records with Julia Lee; to paraphrase something Benny one time said about Ben Webster, you instantly know who it is and who he is. Working with him in the American Jazz Orchestra and seeing him every Labor Day weekend at the Gibson Jazz Party in Colorado over more two decades was a kind of graduate schoolhouse. I've written a lot about Benny, if not nearly plenty; see Weather Bird .

- Ben Webster

He and Bud Powell were the two guys on my Feather list I never got to see so I took his decease to centre. I had tried to notice him when I studied in French republic in 1967, merely no luck, though that was the summer I became friends with Ted Curson and Nick Brignola, the nigh important "studying" I did that summer. Ben was the well-nigh schizoid jazz thespian: supreme romantic, ferocious aggressor. Is at that place a better improv than "Cotton Tail?" Non that I knew of. Is there a more than sublime encounter than Ben and Tatum? He's one of the musicians I wrote about early on on (Booker Ervin was some other), including long liner notes, so by the fourth dimension I started writing the column and books, I neglected him along with too many others. Never plenty time or words. Mea bloody culpa! But I heed to him all the time.

- Jack Teagarden

I similar everything almost Teagarden, the rippling trombone triplets, the insouciant voice (even Bing sounded taut by comparison), the bemusement (just look at him looking at Chuck Berry in Jazz on a Summer'southward Day ), the interplay with Pops and afterwards with Bobby Hackett, and the perfect—as in P.E.R.F.E.C.T.—rendition of "St. James Infirmary" at the 1947 Town Hall concert. (Though Don Goldie, the trumpet actor in his later ring, wore me the hell out.) A 1977 essay on Big T, "The Best Trombone Player in the Earth," is in Riding on a Blueish Note .

- Mary Lou Williams

Some other spirit beyond time. Her commencement solo slice, "Nite Life," was 1 of the first historicist jazz recordings in that, as, Jaki Byard would practise decades later, she isolates and unites stylistic components of early on piano, from Eubie to James P. to Hines. She was a marvelous composer and a genuinely great orchestrator, but it'southward her pianoforte I relish most, the free-floating harmonies and assertive time. She helped to revive the New York scene in the early '70s, when she convinced Barney Josephson to install a piano at the Cookery and and then "embraced" Cecil Taylor—not a complete success musically but a true cultural occasion at the fourth dimension. Mary asked me to deliver the eulogy at her funeral service at St. Patrick's, a tremendous award. I've written a lot nearly her, little of it in my books, though I compensated a bit by expanding a department on her in the trade edition of Jazz , the textbook I wrote with Scott DeVeaux. Carol Bash is at present completing a long-awaited film almost Mary.

- Tadd Dameron

If I could hear him now, I'd feel no pain. One of the tragically nether-realized talents in jazz, the rare swing figure who understood bop before the boppers did. Blending Wardell and Eager and Navarro was pure genius; and the melodies and voicings unmistakably his own. Fountainbleau has transcendent moments. He helped posthumously to spur jazz historicism in the '70s and '80s, and information technology's ironic and pitiful to me that I wrote more well-nigh Dameronia than Dameron.

- Mildred Bailey

A circuitous dazzling woman who, like Billie, had to completely reinvent herself. In return for helping to launch Bing'south career, when she was still an unknown working speakeasies, he bundled for Whiteman to rent her: the get-go woman ever to tour as a ring vocalist. The combination of Mildred, Cerise Norvo, and the arranger Eddie Sauter is damn well-nigh sublime. She had a high girlish vocalisation, insinuating style, occasionally arch phrasing, unwavering pitch; her taste in accompanists was beyond cavil. In that location is quite a bit about her in Weather Bird , but someone should write a biography. Her granddaughter Julia Rinker has been mounting a one-woman campaign to restore Mildred to the pantheon, where she ought to exist. The Mosaic box is a treasure.

- Lennie Tristano

The early recordings are quick, surprising and provocative, a brief for complimentary improvisation if non complimentary rhythm, which he afterward attempted to muzzle. "Wow" is a genuine wow and "I Tin can't Become Started" with Baton Bauer takes harmonic substitutions to the point of re-limerick. Merely the Atlantics exemplify his gifts. The 1955 "Y'all Got to My Head" is one of the great piano improvisations and "Line Up" and the later "Becoming" are endlessly mesmerizing. Just as you can hear vestigial elements of Hines in Nat Cole, you can hear vestiges of Nat in Tristano. I detect myself rediscovering him, ignoring him, and so finding him once more, a human relationship I have with several writers and with opera, but not much in jazz.

- Serge Chaloff

Past all accounts a madman, but the two Capitols, Boston Blow Upwardly and Blue Serge , are amidst the outstanding postwar albums. With due respect to Carney and Mulligan, no 1 explored the range of the baritone more than completely and effectively than Serge, peculiarly on ballads, of which his "Body and Soul" and "Thanks for the Retentivity" are incomparable masterworks.

- Django Reinhardt

Everyone loves Django; impossible not to — the subsequently stuff with Hubert Rostaing every bit well as the classic Quintette and everything he did with visiting Americans, particularly Eddie South, who never played meliorate than he did with Django, Male monarch Stewart, Benny Carter, Hawk ("Out of Nowhere" is i of his very groovy solos, and has Benny on trumpet for lagniappe). "St. Louis Dejection," "Improvisation," and his delirious adaptations of Bach's D minor concerto, with South and Grappelli, are pure pleasure, and then there are his those lovely original tunes. I listen to Django a lot, just I seem to have written about him generally en passim or by indirection, as in an essay on James Carter'due south smart homage to him. (See miserable excuse under Ben Webster higher up.)

– Ted Heath

The supreme British bandleader, tremendously popular in his day, and at his best a stubborn defender of the jazz faith — though now sadly forgotten. I hadn't played him in a while when something rekindled my interest, so I went to an old-vinyl store chosen Footlights and bought more than than a dozen LPs, listened with much pleasure, made copious notes for an essay, and then become derailed past something else and never wrote it. You tin can run into him and get a sense of how hip he was in the splendid 1949 Michael Powell flop-defusing-thriller-meets-the-lost-weekend film The Small Dorsum Room (based, incidentally, on a very expert Nigel Balchin novel), when Kenny Baker and Johnny Gray were in the band and Tadd Dameron was i of his arrangers. I don't believe Tadd wrote the music in the pic, merely it definitely reflects his influence. Heath, along with Louis Armstrong, recorded and had an international hit with "The True-blue Hussar," the song that (a year later) Christiane Kubrick sang at the end of Paths of Celebrity .

- Dave Brubeck

Like countless other boomers, I plant in Dave an early and irresistible conduit to jazz. I grew bored with his postal service Desmond, mail service Mulligan, postal service (for a very brusk time) Braxton band, and felt guilty about it because he was a wonderful and generous man. The beginning time I spoke to him, I wanted to interview him for a piece I was writing for Esquire about upcoming jazz talent. He was on bout and his office gave me the number of his hotel in Vancouver. We got into an animated conversation, when of a sudden he said, "Where are you lot?" I said, "New York." He said, "This is costing yous a fortune, allow me call you back." He did and we spoke for an hour. When I worked on a documentary nearly Pops, he and Iola drove to New York to shoot an interview in the Armstrong house, though we would have been happy to practice it anywhere at their convenience. (They loved Pops.) A couple of years agone, I interviewed him on stage at the Kennedy Center, and he was every bit forthright and funny as ever, and seemed genuinely moved when I told him later how much I liked his recent solo piano CD, which is all only antonymous to the usual stomping Brubeck fashion. I'1000 happy with the Brubeck essay in Conditions Bird , and with one on The Real Ambassadors in my book Natural Selection . Baton Taylor once told me, "Dave doesn't get the credit he deserves as an innovator." He was right. Nor does he go enough credit for The Real Ambassadors , which forth with Ellington's Jump For Joy , is the closest we accept to a Broadway jazz musical. Of grade, neither of them got close to Broadway and they exist solely as recordings. Only someday, a smart producer volition see the possibilities!

- Why were there such rapid developments in Jazz from 1946-1965? Did the speed of this revolution in the music sow the seeds for its own destruction?

What destruction? Every motility sows seeds of destruction and rebirth. It isn't the fault of jazz  that people tin't or don't want to keep upwardly with it. That'southward all to the glory of jazz. Also, the further we get from 1965, or any other deviation betoken, the more unified the evolution of jazz appears.

- Mike Zwerin has written that Jazz went to Europe to live [in many ways, literally] in the 1960s. Did you agree with this assessment?

Yeah and no. It went to live there for virtually four years, the height of the rock juggernaut when jazz artists who knew improve tried to fit information technology in by wearing bad haircuts, sporting funny wearing apparel, and buying shares in Fender Rhodes. The middle '60 were splendid years: in the space of four days in 1966, you could (and I did) hear Pecker Evans at Town Hall, and Titans of the Tenor at Philharmonic Hall, non to mention the serious activeness at the Vanguard and Gate and Half Note. It crashed in the early on '70s, but past 1972, the long exile was terminating and each week brought remarkable new talent from around the country—all those acronyms: AACM, BAG, AEC, WSQ—along with the triumphant returns of everyone from Ted Curson to Red Rodney, Red Norvo to George Russell, Helen Humes to Betty Carter, Dexter and Moody and McLean and Benny Carter and Don Cherry etc. Cecil came back from the academy, Mingus and Rollins ended sabbaticals, Al reunited with Zoot, Sarah re-launched herself, Phil Forest Americanized his rhythm machine. Even Don Byas came past for a snort. Past 1975, jazz returned to New York to stay. Mike remained in Europe, and he made the International Herald Tribune worth reading.

- In Rhythm-a-ning: Jazz Tradition and Innovation you lot wrote: "My intuition tells me that innovation isn't this generation's fate...the neoclassicists take a task no less valuable than innovation: sustenance. [M]usicians such as Marsalis are needed to restore gild, furnish tune, revitalize the beat, loot the tradition for whatever works, and expand the audience. That way nosotros'll be all the hungrier for the next incursion of genuine avant-gardists..." (161) Is this nevertheless your assessment of developments in Jazz circa, 1970-2000?

Sort of, but the phrase "the side by side incursion of genuine avant-gardists" now strikes me as facetious at best and perhaps just patently stupid; and, in any case, it's okay with me — tradition isn't the enemy of novelty or vice versa. In recent weeks, I heard a magnificent concert by Josh Redman with his superb quartet (including Brad Mehldau) and strings; and an energizing bass recital by Charnett Moffett. Iii of the best albums I heard in this period are Marc Carey'south For the Love of Abbey , a pianistic exploration of Abbey Lincoln'south compositions; Bob Dorough'due south lavishly produced hommage à moi Duets (probable the best album ever released by a nonagenarian); and Chucho Valdés's stirring Border-Free . Each is plainly steeped in traditions (Valdés call his band the Afro-Cuban Messengers), however each is startling, fresh, innovative, and audaciously, shamelessly in thrall to tune. It's a wise music that knows its father.

- Gene Lees observed: "Writers about jazz are oftentimes notable for an ill-curtained jealousy and a sullen conviction that they alone know anything nigh the subject, that it is or should be their exclusive domain." What are your views about Gene's argument?

If I say "Gene Lees is an idiot," do I testify his point? I don't think then. To my left is a wall of jazz lit, about 1200 volumes, many of which I relish. Martin Williams and Dan Morgenstern fabricated me want to listen to music I had never heard of and later made me desire to write most it. Jealousy? I loved the rhythmic bliss of Baraka's writing about the advanced and Ira Gitler's bebop wit, Don DeMichael's meticulous praise, Whitney Balliett's watercolor prose, Ralph Ellison'due south musical patriotism, Max Harrison's Olympian acuteness. I read avidly the Chicagoans like John Litweiler and Larry Kart, and the measured sanity of John McDonough alongside the measured insanity of Stanley Trip the light fantastic, who nonetheless documented with enormous skill the musicians he loved. I was mentored by Albert Murray's swinging so-and-so and then-and-so locutions. When I started writing, I was delighted to be function of a generation of critics I could larn and steal from, including JR Taylor, Stanley Crouch, Bob Blumenthal, and Francis Davis. And I love attention a concert or hearing a tape and later on reading Nate Chinen nail it in the Times or Volition Friedwald in the Periodical or Doug Ramsey online. The other day I read a genuinely original and moving piece virtually Neb Evans and jazz racialism past Eugene Holley Jr; I read illuminating stuff all the time by Nib Milkowski, David Adler, and others. Greg Thomas brought solid jazz coverage back to the Daily News and no one should neglect to subscribe to the East Stroudsburg University's The Notation for Phil Woods's cavalcade and the interviews. Howard Mandel succeeded in creating the Jazz Journalists Association because almost of us respect each other. The being in whatever literary field of fools does not undermine the presence of those who write with passion, humility, discernment.

Having said that, there are enough of critics I observe useless for reasons that invariably accept more to do with me than them. I found Gene Lees'south narcissism insufferable and his self-serving, clearly unsourced faux-biographies of Woody Herman and Johnny Mercer offensive. I often found Benny Green's orotund eloquence pompously insincere. I owe a tremendous debt to Andre Hodier, whose early books I read and reread with Talmudic devotion; but the more I learned about music and myself, the less meaningful his work became to me. Critics aren't simply vendors of stance; every bit I emphasized repeatedly when I taught criticism at Columbia, opinions are the to the lowest degree interesting aspect of criticism, which must needs represent a larger gestalt, a way of seeing and understanding the world. Information technology's true that many critics are paranoid. Non long ago, I saw a not-very-bright film critic praise a swell film critic, afterward noting that he didn't always agree with him. Of course you don't ever agree with him; if you did, you lot would exist him.

Criticism is as personal a field equally singing and, beyond the fact that a lot of practitioners in both fields aren't peculiarly good at information technology, the reasons readers reply favorably to one and not to some other are just as personal. The first time I read an issue of Down Beat , when I knew admittedly nothing well-nigh jazz, I intuited that I could trust reviews that were signed Dan Morgenstern , and not reviews by two fellows named Harvey. I respected and admired Robert Palmer, but his take on music was so foreign from mine that even when we agreed we disagreed. But I'd bet the ranch that neither of usa was jealous of the other. Nearly of u.s.a. get critics because we venerate critics. We endeavor and mensurate upward.

- Staying with your thoughts almost another comment by Gene, he realized very early on in his career that he "…could never exist a Jazz critic," and yet, you've written Jazz criticism for well-nigh your unabridged writing career. Why this preference on your function?

I wanted to write from the time I was eight, and write criticism from the fourth dimension (six and vii years later) I discovered Dwight Macdonald and Edmund Wilson. I fully expected to exist a literary critic. Long afterwards jazz and Mr. Armstrong happened to me, I figured my ignorance of musicology cashiered any ambition in that expanse. But there was something liberating about what Martin Williams used to phone call his "amateur status." And so when I'd read some clown opining that Sonny Rollins lacked imagination, or that Charlie Rouse was irksome, or that Garner was every bit predictable every bit canned soup, or that Ellington'southward Far East Suite represented a decline, or the late Billie is but neurotic, or that Jabbo Smith was a superior musician to Louis Armstrong, whose artistry allegedly went downhill later 1928 (I am making none of this upwards), I felt compelled to offering my two cents. A author writes about what he or she knows, wants to know, and wants you to know. I thought I had something to say well-nigh jazz and that through jazz, I could speak to every issue that interested me.

- Although you write about many topics related to the wide category of entertainment, what fabricated you determine to get primarily a Jazz author and is there a course of writing about Jazz that you prefer: reviews, insert notes, articles, books …?

I've answered the start part. Every bit to form, I adopt the medium-track essay, 1500 to 2500 words. I never wanted to write brief newspaper accounts and when I tried, I wasn't any good at information technology. The Voice gave me a page and let me make full it every bit I pleased for 31 years. It was the all-time chore in the world on many accounts, not least that it afforded me curt balance periods when I felt stale and longer ones when I worked on books. For virtually of those years, I worked with the brilliant Bob Christgau, who amidst many other things taught me the discipline of backing upward my ideas. Before the Weather Bird cavalcade, the one format that immune me to write at that length was liner notes, only I soon grew to detest writing them; I always felt I was whoring or compromising to sell a product, and I pretty much cut them out past the early 1980s, except for occasional historical reissues or favors to musician-friends. And it infuriates me that tape companies not simply own them in perpetuity merely experience gratuitous to edit and even revise them without asking permission.  Since 2003, when I left the Vocalism , I've worked nearly exclusively on books (also sold i unproduced screen treatment), a luxury I never idea I'd have, made possible by my work as Managing director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center of the Metropolis Academy of New York. I am very lucky, and know it.

- Riding on a Blue Note: Jazz and American Pop [1981] is your outset published volume. What is the main theme of this work; how and why did this book come about?

At offset, it had no theme. An editor asked me to consider publishing a collection of my essays. When I finished it, the editor said information technology was fine and took a pregnancy leave. The book so went to her colleague who hated information technology and demanded I return the paltry accelerate. Sheldon Meyer at Oxford had been asking me to do a book and nosotros hadn't come upward with anything, so I asked my agent to send him the manuscript (originally called System of Ribbons , another Ellington phrase; my agent told me that a title with the word "system" sounds like an engineering science manual). He bought it that week. What Bob taught me about newspaper writing, Sheldon taught me nearly volume writing and over the course of twenty-plus years, I did six books for him. Sheldon said I should delete ii essays, one because it was the simply i non centered on a item private. That was when I began to come across the book equally a book, with a unified approach and theme. We organized the pieces into 4 sections and underscored the jazz and popular theme. When I asked him why he wanted to cutting the second piece, he said, "Because it isn't worthy of you." Right once more. For Visions of Jazz , I wrote a better chapter on that same effigy.

- As stated in the introduction to Visions of Jazz , "In Rhythm-a-ning: Jazz Tradition and Innovation, [published in1985], I posed the question as it related to jazz: 'Few educated Americans tin proper noun even five jazz musicians nether the historic period of forty." What Jazz musicians nether the age of forty exercise y'all heed to?

Equally a noncombatant, I'm no longer quite equally conscious of age, but I think Jason Moran, Ambrose Akinmusire, Darius Jones, Aaron Parks, Christian Sands, Esperanza Spaulding, Miguel Zenon, Eric Harland, Robert Glasper, Nathaniel Facey, Ryan Truesdell, Aaron Diehl, Christian Scott, Mary Halvorson, and Gerald Cleaver all make the cutting.

- After Jubilant Bird in 1987 and Satchmo in 1988, why did you turn your attention to Bing Crosby as the focus for your next biography [ Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, 2001]? Why not a Featherbrained Gillespie companion volume to your work on Charlie Parker; a book about Miles Davis; a biography nigh Gerry Mulligan – each of whom were significant shapers of the music?

Y'all write about what you find intriguing, and I have written extensively about Giddy, Gerry, and Miles. In any case, Dizzy had merely completed an as-told-to and Jerome Klinkowitz was working on Gerry, and everyone was doing Miles. I did agree to write Stan Getz's autobiography, but he died the calendar week we negotiated the contract. The two curt books you mention are extended biographical essays that served equally a kind of apprenticeship for a serious biography, and I had no intention of doing some other ane. I wanted to tackle a serious biography on Ellington. However, while I was working up a proposal, the Ellington papers were embargoed at the Smithsonian for "inventory," which left me hanging. Paul Bresnick, with whom I did Satchmo , had repeatedly asked me to consider Crosby and I said no. In the absence of the Ellington projection, I began looking at Bing. I always loved his jazz sides and had covered his Uris Theater date in 1976 (see Riding on a Blue Note ). I was astonished to find that in that location had not been a serious book about him since 2 that came out in the late 1940s. The more I researched, the more fascinated I became with the themes of fame, persona, and the doppelganger result: the person that the public creates as opposed to the person behind closed doors. I likewise plant that I admired his pop work in the 1930s and 1940s more than I expected, forth with his more obscure movies. Then at that place was his most forgotten contribution to modern technology, from popularizing the carbon microphone to the financing of tape to his decisive office in changing radio into a prerecorded rather than alive medium. Finally, I was moved by his integrity regarding Civil Rights, especially in his relationship to Louis. Suddenly he seemed a perfect subject for me. Of grade, it was supposed to be a 300-page volume, requiring at best three years to write. After nine years, I published the showtime volume, 700 pages ending in 1940; I'g now closing in on book two.

- In Weather condition Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century [2004]you lot raise this question in one of its essays - "How Come Jazz Ain't Dead?" How come it ain't?

You'll have to read the essay to detect out. Not much has changed.

- What books are you currently working on?

Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star . A revised edition of Celebrating Bird will be published by the University of Minnesota Printing this fall and Scott DeVeaux and I are preparing a new edition of Jazz .

Switching to the subject of "favorites:"

- What are some of your favorites books about Jazz?

Everything by Martin [Williams], especially The Jazz Tradition , Where's the Melody , Jazz Masters in Transition , and Jazz Panorama , which he edited. Dan [Morgenstern]'s Living with Jazz and his astonishing liner essays that remain to be collected. Louis Armstrong'due south Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans , Marshall Stearns's unjustly forgotten Story of Jazz and Jazz Dance , Sidney Finkelstein'southward Jazz: A People'southward Music. Bernie Wolfe's Mezz Mezzrow volume Actually the Blues , and, among the novels, Dorothy Baker'due south Young Homo with a Horn , Henry Steig's Send Me Down , Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter , Nicholas Christopher'south Tiger Rag , and the glowing jazz tidbits that run throughout John Harvey's Charlie Resnick detective novels. Albert Murray's Stomping the Blues and Blue Devils of Nix , Gunther Schuller's Early Jazz , Hampton Hawes and Don Asher's Raise Up off Me , Art and Laurie Pepper's Directly Life , Amiri Baraka'south Blackness Music , Laurie Wright's Rex Oliver , Walter Allen'south Hendersonia , Ira Gitler's Jazz Masters of the '40s and Swing to Bop , Whitney Balliett'due south American Musicians , Jean Lion's Bix , Harry Sampson'southward Swingin' on the Ether Waves , Geoffrey Ward's Jazz , John Szwed'south Infinite in the Place , Anita O'Twenty-four hour period'due south High Times Difficult Times , Stanley Hunker's Considering Genius , Scott DeVeaux's The Birth of Bebop , Jack Chambers's Miles , Don Marquis's In Search of Buddy Bolden , William Russell's Oh Mister Jelly , Laurent de Wilde'south Monk , Rex Stewart'southward Jazz Masters of the '30s and Boy Meets Horn , Jelly Roll Morton and Alan Lomax's Mister Jelly Roll , Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff's Hear Me Talkin' to Ya , Ted Gioia's West Declension Jazz , Ekkehard Jost's Free Jazz , Duke Ellington's Music is My Mistress , Joe Goldberg's Jazz Masters of the 50s , Bobby Reisner'due south Bird , A. B. Spellman'due south Four Lives in the Bebop Business organization , Will Friedwald's Biographical Guide to Singers , Stanley Trip the light fantastic'due south Globe of serial, The John Coltrane Reference edited by Lewis Porter, the 16-volume Italian discography Knuckles Ellington on Records , the Brian Rust discographies, Jan Evensmo's Solography booklets, David Schiff'south The Ellington Century , Carl Woideck's Charlie Parker , Doug Ramsey'southward Have Five , the Leonard Plume encyclopedias and From Satchmo to Miles , Max Harrison'south Essential Jazz Records , Valerie Wilmer's As Serious every bit Your Life , the nerveless Otis Ferguson, Milt Hinton's Bass Lines , Jimmy Heath's I Walked with Giants , Terry Gibbs's Good Vibes . and . . .  I had better stop. There's a lot of great stuff out there.

- What are some of your favorite Jazz recordings?

Surely you jest. I've written a dozen books in an effort to answer that.

- Who are your favorite big band arrangers?

Ellington, Ellington, Ellington, Ellington, Ellington. Also Strayhorn, Gil Evans, Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson, Nib Challis, Mary Lou Williams, Eddie Sauter, Benny Carter, Sy Oliver (all the Lunceford writers), George Russell, Count Basie (all the Basie writers), Al Cohn, Gerry Mulligan, Bill Holman, Artie Shaw (all the Shaw writers), Gerald Wilson, Bob Brookmeyer, Thad Jones, Nelson Riddle, Ralph Burns, Gil Fuller, Tadd Dameron, Dizzy Gillespie, John Lewis, Neal Hefti, Johnny Richards, Chico O'Farrill, Frank Foster, Jimmy Heath, Gary McFarland, Horace Silver, Muhal Richard Abrams, Charles Mingus (all the Mingus writers, peculiarly Sy Johnson), David Murray, James Newton, Bob Belden, Uri Caine, Butch Morris, for starters.

- Who are your favorite Jazz vocalists?

Armstrong, Crosby, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Jimmy Rushing, Dinah Washington, Rosemary Clooney, Ethel Waters, Mildred Bailey, Frank Sinatra, Nat "Rex" Cole, Ray Charles, Abbey Lincoln, Helen Forrest, Bessie Smith, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Witherspoon, Connie Boswell (and the Boswell Sisters), Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Lee Wiley, Harry and Donald Mills (and the Mills Brothers), Bill Kenny (and the Ink Spots), Joe Williams, Jackie Wilson, Chuck Berry, B. B. King, Tony Williams (and the Platters), Louis Jordan, Maxine Sullivan, Jack Teagarden, Ivy Anderson, Billy Eckstine, Tony Bennett, Doris 24-hour interval, Jo Stafford, Bob Dorough, Johnny Hartman, Bobby Bland, Anita O'Day, Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, Betty Carter, Peggy Lee, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Etta Jones, Julia Lee, Helen Humes, Kay Starr, Carmen McRae, Helen Merrill, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Cassandra Wilson, Mary Cleere Haran, Dianne Reeves, Jane Harvey, Fats Domino, and Herb Jeffries for starters.

- Who are some of your favorite Jazz instrumentalists?

Can't do it.

- Of all your writings about Jazz over the years, which ane/south are you about addicted of and why?

I similar all my books: the best are probably Bing Crosby: Pocketful of Dreams and Visions of Jazz , though I doubtable my best essay writing is in Weather Bird and Natural Selection . I have personal amore for Faces in the Crowd considering it was written over a four-year flow get-go shortly earlier our daughter was born, an extraordinarily happy time and I think the book reflects that. Celebrating Bird and Satchmo were well received and fun to do, and fun to revise! (You don't often get that second chance.) Warning Shadows: Home Alone with Archetype Cinema is my outset volume entirely well-nigh moving picture, though quite a chip on jazz crept into information technology. Jazz , the book written with Scott, is the intro we wish we had had when we started listening.

- What are your thoughts most blogs and websites devoted to Jazz?

Bravo to all! But I confess I read very little that doesn't have pages I tin can plow and scribble on. Until The New York Daily News penny-pinchers caught upward with him, I enjoyed Greg Thomas' online and print weekly jazz feature stories on jazz artists and events in New York City.

- If you lot could host a fictional "Jazz dinner," who would you invite and why?

Although I'd impale for a 30-minute interview with King Oliver, my dinner parties would include only the most entertaining and convivial artists I've had the pleasure of knowing, now gone and sorely missed: they would include (with their spouses and significant others): Roy Eldridge, John Lewis, Rosemary Clooney, Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, Ted Curson, Mel Lewis, Sarah Vaughan, Gerry Mulligan, Benny Carter, Gil Evans, Tommy Flanagan, Jaki Byard, Martin Williams, Lester Bowie, Julius Hemphill, Steve McCall, Mary Cleere Haran, Pops and Bing (they brand the cut as I met each of them once), and my indispensable banana of 14 years Elora Charles. I'd add Artie Shaw, but no one else would become a give-and-take in edgewise.

- Whose music do you mind to when you desire to exist alone with the music, then to speak; not to clarify it for the purposes of writing about it, but assuasive it to reach directly into your emotions?

It varies, and whatever calendar month would bring a different answer. Last week I listened to a lot of Wardell, Hampton Hawes, Sonny Clarke, and 1950s Knuckles. Then there was a 24-hour interval of Cecil Taylor. Last nighttime: Tommy Flanagan. I doubt a week goes by that I don't heed to Tatum, Nat Cole, Sonny Rollins, Clifford Chocolate-brown. Armstrong is a constant tonic. So is Bud Powell. Revising the Bird volume had me digging through obscure live performances I hadn't played in years. I often jog to Ray Charles. The Joshua Redman concert had me returning to his early work. The great thing almost leaving journalism is that I heed just to what I desire to hear, which includes a lot of classical music besides. 1 affair I can tell y'all with certainty: when I'1000 solitary with the music and my wife, we mind mostly to vinyl. I am and then glad I did not unload my vinyl!

- I realize that your interests are wide-ranging, merely could you please conclude this "interview" by talking a bit nearly what excites you as you expect out over the current jazz scene?

The incredible number of gifted, dedicated musicians (including the children of several close friends), who want cipher more than to master and play jazz, utterly resolved and unshaken by warnings from people like me that the work opportunities may be limited."

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Source: https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2018/12/gary-giddins-conversation-about-jazz.html

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