Meet Me at Jim & Andy's: Jazz Musicians and Their World [Paperback]

Gene Lees (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 22, 1990

Gene Lees, author of the highly acclaimed Singers and the Song, offers, in Meet Me at Jim & Andy's, another tightly integrated collection of essays about postwar American music. This time he focuses on major jazz instrumentalists and bandleaders.
In a vivid series of portraits, Lees introduces the clientele of Jim & Andy's, one of the most popular New York musicians' haunts in the sixties. This unforgettable gallery of individualists included Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman, Art Farmer, Billy Taylor, Gerry Mulligan, and Paul Desmond among many others. Lees, himself a noted songwriter, writes about these musicians with vividness and intimacy. Far from being the inarticulate jazz musicians of legend, they turn out to be eloquent indeed as the inventors of a colorful slang that has passed into the American language.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Following on last year's superlative Singers and the Song , this new collection of Lees's perceptive essays from his magazine Jazzletter focuses on major instrumentalists and bandleadersPaul Desmond, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Art Farmer, Woody Herman, Gerry Mulligan, Artie Shaw, Billy Taylor among them. Based on his intimate knowledge of these creative artists, Lees introduces us (often in their own words) to their individual personalities, attitudes and accomplishments. He explodes the "subtly racist" myth that poor, uneducated, inarticulate blacks invented jazz out of inspiration and thin air, by demonstrating that many seminal figures achieved what they did because they were superior musicians who mastered their craft through education and hard work. One of the most delightful essays recreates the bygone world of Jim & Andy's bar on New York's West 48th Street, a favorite tavern of jazz musicians in the 1960s, and an introduction pays tribute to Don DeMicheal, a jazz editor from Louisville who invented the legendary blues singer Blind Orange Adams.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Explaining music through vivid character sketch, noted jazz writer Lees offers a series of revealing, impressionistic portraits of some of the well-known jazz artists who populated the New York bar, Jim & Andy's, during the 1960s. He includes personal recollections of a fragile Bill Evans, tragic Frank Rosolino, tough-but-sensitive John Heard, straightforward Art Farmer, happy-sad Paul Desmond, and others. This moving book will prompt general readers and jazz buffs alike to search out the little-known Jazzletter , where most of this material first appeared. David Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (November 22, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195065808
• ISBN-13: 978-0195065800
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,261,916 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Revealing Vignettes!, May 4, 2000

By 

M. Allen Greenbaum (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Meet Me at Jim & Andy's: Jazz Musicians and Their World (Paperback)

Jim and Andy's bar, located at 48th Street and 6th Avenue in New York, was a home, restaurant, answering service, employment agency, bank, storage place, and general hang-out for some of the 60's most famous jazz musicians, including Gerry Mulligan, Clark Terry, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Eddie Davis, Al Cohn, and Zoot Sims--with visits from Belafonte, Bennett, Horne, and Vaughan.

Here, the bar serves primarily as a backdrop for Lees' intimate conversations with musicians and observations on the idiom. Lee admonishes critics who question the status of jazz as a "serious" art form. The rest of the book, while somewhat overly-structured, includes chapters devoted to such icons as Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, Billy Taylor, and Art Farmer. The writing is uniformly lucid; the anecdotes humorous and illuminating.

While the book doesn't return to a satisfying coda to either Jim and Andy's (now closed) or the new hang-outs, Lee's first person narrative conveys a singular warmth and sympathy, radiant with his love of jazz.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine book for all comers, September 12, 2005

By 

CLIFF HOPKINSON (NEW YORK, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Meet Me at Jim & Andy's: Jazz Musicians and Their World (Hardcover)

I read "Meet Me at Jim and Andy's" a decade ago and still can enjoy now the joy it gave me then. I have just (September, 2005) looked up the book on Amazon to buy it for a friend and am surprised to see only a lone review of it, and that bestowing somewhat qualified praise. I was an editor for many years and am a teacher of writing. I would bet whatever reputation I have on my belief that every book Gene Lees has written is a gem and that this one is a masterpiece. Lees reports from the front lines of jazz on remarkable individuals who come alive in the reading. You do not need any great interest in jazz to be fascinated and moved by the writing. Lees has deep humanitarian insights, the gifts of a born storyteller and the prose of a poet. He has uncanny knowledge of his subject, the memory of an elephant and the respect of great numbers of practitioners in the varied realms of music. Necessary disclosure: I met Gene Lees early in the Nineties and we became friends. For years, living 3,000 miles apart, we have had only spasmodic communication. I don't believe this should disbar me from stating my conviction that this book, and others of Lees's award winning titles, will occupy a deserved and undying place in the history of music. Today they are an enlightenment and a joy for all.

5.0 out of 5 stars Jazz Musicians are real people too!, July 12, 2010

By 

michael thompson (San Bernardino, California, US) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Meet Me at Jim & Andy's: Jazz Musicians and Their World (Hardcover)

An illuminating look into the lives of some of the most brilliantly talented jazz musicians in the 20th & 21st century. You'll learn
some very interesting facts about these talented people that one would never imagine. The author, Gene Lees, was a knowledgeable and factual
writer with strong feelings for the jazz world. Plus, Lees understood "The Guys." This is a "must read" book.
Michael Thomas - Thompson