Customer Reviews

Rat Race Blues: The Musical Life of Gigi Gryce

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Rat Race Blues is a real find. This account of the life of Gigi Gryce was an inspiration to me. We read it in our library book club for January 2003, where it was a great hit with all our members.
I would recommend it to anyone who is curious about life and/ or music and particularly to young people, struggling against the odds of poverty and racism.

The book rediscovers Gigi Gryce, a name that appears on the records of numerous famous Jazz musicians,Cifford Brown, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach, Thelonius Monk, Donald Byrd, Art Farmer.... to name only a few.
The research done by Noal Cohen and Michael Fitzgerald is meticulous and sensitive. They manage to give us an insiders view of the Jazz scene in the 50's and early 60's, depicting Gigi's whole life from a strict and loving upbringing in Pensecola, Florida to his education at the Boston Conservatory; heady days in New York playing with all the greats and starting a family; his attempts to help musicians protect their publishing rights and finally his reinvention of himself as a teacher in the Bronx.
For the most part, the authors are in the background, letting the musicians, family and friends speak for themselves about their memories of Gryce. Some of the anecdotes are hilarious. There are also great photos, including one of a young Quincy Jones and Clifford Brown who worked with Gigi in the Lionel Hampton band.
Finding Gigi Gryce is akin to finding Zora Neal Hurston or more recently Henry Grimes.
Congratulations to the authors for a book that sets a high standard for biographies of musicians.

This book is the most complete discography you will ever find about the jazz great, GiGi Gryce. It is well-written and a very fascinating history of jazz, itself, revealing many "insider" type anecdotes about the old days in jazz history. There are many interviews with famous jazz greats but best of all, the story of a very talented and enigmatic gentleman, Mr. GiGi Gryce
Kudos to to Cohen and Fitzgerald for a Class A book destined to become a textbook reference on this period in jazz history.