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| At the Jazz Band Ball : Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene
ISBN: 9780520945883
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / University of California Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Fine Arts;
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. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Nathan Irving Hentoff was born in Boston, Massachusetts on June 10, 1925. He graduated from Northeastern University in 1946. After several years with a Boston radio station, he moved to New York in 1953 and covered jazz for Down Beat until 1957. In 1958, he was a founding editor of The Jazz Review that lasted until 1961. He wrote for The New Yorker from 1960 to 1986, for The Washington Post from 1984 to 2000, and for The Village Voice from 1958 to 2009. During his freelance career, his work appeared in Esquire, Harper's, Commonweal, The Reporter, Playboy, The New York Herald Tribune, Jewish World Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Times. In 1995, he received the National Press Foundation's award for lifetime achievement in contributions to journalism. He wrote more than 35 books during his lifetime. His nonfiction works included The Jazz Life, Peace Agitator: The Story of A. J. Muste, The New Equality, Living the Bill of Rights, and Free Speech for Me - but Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other. He wrote several memoirs including Boston Boy and Speaking Freely. In 1955, he co-edited with Nat Shapiro Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It. His young adult novels included Jazz Country, This School Is Driving Me Crazy, Does This School Have Capital Punishment?, and The Day They Came to Arrest the Book. He died on January 7, 2017 at the age of 91. (Bowker Author Biography) |
