Jazz Anecdotes Second Time Around

by Crow, Bill

• ISBN13: 9780195187953
• ISBN10: 0195187954
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-10-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

When jazz musicians get together, they often delight one another with stories about the great, or merely remarkable, players and singers they've worked with. One good story leads to another until someone says, "Somebody ought to wrie these down!" With Jazz Anecdotes, somebody finally has.Drawing on a rich verbal tradition, bassist and jazz writer Bill Crow has culled stories from a wide variety of sources, including interviews, biographies and a remarkable oral history collection, which resides at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, to paint fascinating and veryhuman portraits of jazz musicians. Organized around general topics--teaching and learning, life on the road, prejudice and discrimination, and the importance of a good nickname--Jazz Anecdotes shows the jazz world as it really is. In this fully updated edition, which contains over 150 newanecdotes and new topics like Hiring and Firing, Crow regales us with new stories of such jazz greats as Benny Goodman, Chet Baker, Ravi Coltrane, Buddy Rich and Paul Desmond. He offers extended sections on old favorites--Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, and thefabulous Eddie Condon, who seems to have lived his entire life with the anecdotist in mind. With its unique blend of sparkling dialogue and historical and social insight, Jazz Anecdotes will delight anyone who loves a good story. It offers a fresh perspective on the joys and hardships of amusician's life as well as a rare glimpse of the personalities who created America's most distinctive music.

Author Biography

Bill Crow is a free-lance musician in the New York City area. He writes a monthly humor column for Allegro, published monthly by Local 802, American Federation of Musicians.

Table of Contents

Wild Scenes	p. 3
The Word "Jazz"	p. 19
Beginnings	p. 22
Inventions	p. 29
Pianos	p. 37
Teachers and Students	p. 40
Stage Fright	p. 46
Reading Music	p. 49
Hiring and Firing	p. 54
Managers, Agents, and Bosses	p. 61
On the Road	p. 69
Arrangers and Arrangements	p. 84
Cutting Contests	p. 89
52nd Street	p. 100
Jazz Records	p. 106
Jazz on the Air	p. 119
The Well-dressed Jazz Musician	p. 123
Prejudice	p. 132
Songs	p. 143
Goofs	p. 148
Pranks	p. 156
The Put-on	p. 170
Good Lines	p. 183
Nicknames	p. 197
Louis Armstrong	p. 206
Bessie Smith	p. 217
Bix Beiderbecke	p. 220
Thomas "Fats" Waller	p. 227
Eddie Condon	p. 232
Pee Wee Russell	p. 239
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra	p. 243
Benny Goodman	p. 255
Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young	p. 266
Art Tatum and His Children	p. 275
Joe Venuti	p. 282
Tommy Dorsey	p. 287
Lionel Hampton	p. 292
Charlie Parker	p. 297
John Birks Gillespie	p. 308
Charles Mingus	p. 313
Zoot Sims and Al Cohn	p. 317
Miles Davis and John Coltrane	p. 322
Jokes	p. 326
Acknowledgments	p. 333
Index	p. 339
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