Time And Anthony Braxton
By Stuart Broomer
The Mercury Press, Toronto, 2009; 176 pages; $19.95 paperback.
Over the past two decades Stuart Broomer has become such a prolific and thought-provoking critic that it might have slipped by many of his readers that he comes to writing about contemporary music from the inside out; that is, he is an… [read more]
The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957 – 1965
By Sam Stephenson
Alfred A. Knopf, and Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, 2009;
288 pp.; $40 hardcover
When W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) moved into his storied loft in New York, he was already a superstar of the photographic world… [read more]
Historic Photos of New Orleans Jazz
By Thomas L. Morgan
Turner Publishing, Nashville, TN, 2009;
206 pp., $39.95 hardcover
This attractive volume contains more than 200 images, many of which are quite rare, illustrating the history of jazz in New Orleans from the earliest times through the end of the 20th century. The vast majority (85-90 percent) of… [read more]
Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong
By Terry Teachout
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston/New York, 2009;
496 pp.; $30 hardcover
If we subscribe to the theory that there should be at least one book on Armstrong every decade, then this thoroughly researched tome is the one for the 2010’s. And it should be a bestseller as well. Pops… [read more]
Jazz Notes: Interviews across the Generations
By Sanford Josephson
Praeger, Santa Barbara, CA, 2009;
207 pp.; $49.95 hardcover
This is a collection of profiles unlike any I have encountered in that it both updates interviews done three decades ago and presents interviewees from the perspectives of musical associates or admirers. The profiles originally appeared between… [read more]
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
By Robin D.G. Kelley
The Free Press, New York, 2009;
608 pp.; $30 hardcover
Early on in the pages of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Robin D. G. Kelley explains where the name “Thelonious” may have originated. Saint Tillo was a Benedictine monk who… [read more]
