Jazz Anecdotes: Second Time Around [Paperback]

Bill Crow (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195187954 | ISBN-13: 978-0195187953 | Publication Date: October 15, 2005 | Edition: 2nd

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 very human 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 new anecdotes 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 the fabulous 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 a musician's life as well as a rare glimpse of the personalities who created America's most distinctive music.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for the previous edition "Guarantees up to a thousand laughs...recommended without reservation."--Los Angeles Times

"Read this somewhere where you're not afraid to be seen laughing out loud.... Everyone should be able to find something to like in this rich collection."--Library Journal

"When Bill Crow's book was published in 1990 it became an instant classic. Now I am in pain with sore ribs from reading its [expanded] successor. There's something hilarious from every corner of jazz and all the accounts are vivid and lucid [due to] Crow's elegant and erudite style of writing. I know from experience how difficult it is to re-write anecdotes that others have told. Crow does it admirably and masterfully. It would be impossible not to enjoy the book. It has the unintended function of serving as a great reference work, too. My compliments to the chef."--Steve Voce, Duke Ellington Music Society

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2nd edition (October 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195187954
• ISBN-13: 978-0195187953
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #241,887 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jazz Humor, February 2, 2001

By 

M. Allen Greenbaum (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Jazz Anecdotes (Paperback)

If you were intrigued by the musicians portrayed in Ken Burns' "Jazz" series, this book will deepen your appreciation of the musicians' humor, problems, and triumphs. Though limited to short anecdotes, jokes, and short but histories, the book, much like Gene Lees' great "Meet Me at Jim and Andy's, offers a whole pie of jazz life its intimate slices.

Crow provides a lot of jazz history to introduce the topically arranged anecdotes (e.g., Good Lines," "On the Road," "Beginnings," "Hirings and Firings," "Prejudice"). The lines and stories are very good, and give insights into personalities and jazz, in general. There are one-liners: "Shelley Manne gave an interviewer his definition of jazz musicians: `We never play anything the same way once,'" and longer stories such as the legendary fight between Juan Tizol and Charles Mingus on Ellington's bandstand (We get Tizol's and Mingus' versions of what happened, including Mingus' revealing recitation of what Duke told him afterwards about the fight "I congratulate you on your performance, but why didn't you and Juan inform me about the adagio you planned so that we could score it?."

There are short sections focusing on one or two famous jazz musicians, such as Mingus, Armstrong, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Bessie Smith, "Fats" Waller, Dizzy, Bird, Eddie Condon and others, as well as funny stories about lesser known players: "[Joe] Puma dropped in at a small New York Club where Jim Rainey was working. The club wasn't doing much business...there was a fire department sign on the wall... `OCCUPANCY OF THESE PREMISES BY OVER 116 PEOPLE IS UNLAWFUL.' Jimmy penciled neatly underneath: `AND UNLIKELY.'"

Sources include autobiographies, interviews, biographies, oral histories, and Crow's own experiences. Under "Acknowledgements," the book includes a great bibliography of jazz-related writings. No pictures, but an index, and, as mentioned earlier, lots of information mixed in with the humor. Very highly recommended.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining -- and a good intro to jazz., August 25, 2001

By 

slomamma (San Luis Obispo, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jazz Anecdotes (Paperback)

I bought this book for my son, whoÕs a musician, but I heard him laughing so much as he was reading it that I asked to borrow it. Even if youÕre not a musician, or even very knowledgeable about jazz, this is a really entertaining book. Almost every chapter has at least a couple of laugh-out-loud lines. It also gives you a good feel for what the lives of jazz musicians were like Ð the camaraderie and competition, the inventiveness, the struggles over money, the often terrible working (and especially recording) conditions. There are also poignantly funny stories about problems with drugs and alcohol, and even about the racial prejudice that musicians had to put up with. My favorite story in the book was about Bessie Smith storming out to confront a group of Klansmen gathering outside the tent where she was working. Peppering them with curses, she ordered them to "pick up them sheets and run." They did. Great woman. There are lots of great women (and men Ð mostly men) in this book. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know a little bit about them.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the very best books on jazz!, January 2, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Jazz Anecdotes (Paperback)

As already stated this book is the kind that you can pick up anytime and flip thru to almost any page and get some quick story that you'll learn from and laugh at. Buy two copies because you'll want to give one to a friend