Overview

Valerie Wilmer's 1970 classic, Jazz People, has long been considered one of the three or four finest books ever written on jazz. Featuring extensive interviews with fourteen jazz geniuses, including Art Farmer, Cecil Taylor, Eddie ""Lockjaw"" Davis, Thelonious Monk, Jimmy Heath, Clark Terry, Big Joe Turner, and Archie Shepp, Wilmer captures the essential qualities of each artist in her interviews, providing deeply moving portraits--in words and in photographs--of the often troubling lives of the musicians who changed the shape of jazz in the fifties and sixties.

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9780306804342

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Reviews

The emphasis is on the people in these fourteen interviews, the personalities behind the jazz, their moods ambitions, influences. Like drummer Billy Higgins rappin' about gigs with Ornette Coleman when nobody was in to his kind of music - Cats wouldn't even dig being around him. . . . When he started playing, they figured, 'Well, if that's what's happening, where am I?' Or the Black Bartok, composer Cecil Taylor, talking about influence John Cage and his own frustrations in American society. Or old timer Buck Clayton pounding out his own personal enthusiasm - First of all, music is a ball. It's - what you call it - self-inspiration. If nobody else is going to inspire you, you inspire yourself and you end up just playing. Other interviewees include Eddie Davis, Art Farmer, Babs Gonzales, Jimmy Heath, Thelonious Monk, Archie Shepp, Big Joe Turner and Randy Weston. The author observes well and the profiles are short and sharp with high notes for the buff. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Valeria Wilmer is one of England's leading jazz commentators. Her books include The Face of Black Music (also available from Da Capo Press), as Serious As Your Life, and Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This.

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