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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Lives of Four Important Jazz Artists in their Own Words,
This review is from: Black Music, Four Lives (Paperback)
Originally published in 1966 by Pantheon Books under the title, Four Lives in the Bebop Business, this review is based on a 1976 re-printing of the paperback edition first published by Schocken Books in 1970. As a testament to the value of this classic to the worldwide jazz community, one can also find two editions of Spellman's classic published in 2004 by Limelight Editions (under the original title), and the University of Michigan Press under the different title, Four Jazz Lives.
One of the main strengths of this book is that it is based on extensive interviews with the musicians profiled. In this way Spellman was able to get his subjects to talk not only about their particular style of jazz but also their childhoods, how they became musicians, and the paths each of them took through the nightclubs, dance halls, and recording studios to arrive at the place they occupy in the jazz landscape. While we learn a great deal about each musician's personal life, we also hear many stories about how blacks were treated in both the South and the North by whites in the clubs and recording companies, and how the economic necessity of sheer survival and providing for one's family became significant factors in the course of each musician's jazz career. I found the two chapters on Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman especially interesting because both men explore with Spellman the nature of the jazz avant-garde as it affected each of them. Both Taylor and Coleman are articulate and discerning voices about the music that many critics once despised and strongly criticised at the time. The chapter on Jackie McLean is a fascinating glimpse into the formative years in Harlem of this highly respected alto saxophonist who studied with Bud Powell and idolized Charlie Parker, who gradually became his mentor and friend. Running throughout this chapter are anecdotes related to McLean's addiction to heroin and insightful remarks about the role of drugs in the jazz life during the late 1940s and 1950s. The unfairly neglected Herbie Nichols, a pianist and jazz composer of the first rank who for many years was largely limited to earning money by playing in Dixieland groups, seems to have touched the author most deeply. Nichols' story is a sad one, for today his compositions are recognized and widely admired among jazz musicians. critics, and fans. I strongly recommend this book, in any of its several editions, to jazz fans of Taylor, Coleman, Nichols, and McLean and also to anyone wishing to learn more about the jazz avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s. This is one of the best books that I've come across that deals with modern jazz and it well deserves the seldom-used term, "classic."
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