Some Hustling This!:Taking Jazz to the World, 1914-1929 is a narrative of first encounters, notable events, and significant figures in the internationalization of jazz. The narrative is framed by Louis Mitchell’s career abroad, beginning with his first trip as a drummer with the Southern Symphony Quintette to London in 1914 and concluding with his final attempt as an entrepreneur to operate a nightclub in Paris in 1929. The 15 years of Mitchell’s European sojourn encompassed the Jazz Age, which has been dated from around the time of the end of the First World War in November 1918 to the New York stock market crash of October 1929. Some Hustling This! is the story of the young men and women who took jazz in its formative stages to the world— a story of hope, escape, and wanderlust, success, infamy, and tragedy.
Mark Miller has been a writer -- journalist, critic, author, historian --and photographer in the field of music, specifically jazz, for more than 35 years. He is the author of 10 books and served from 1978 to 2005 as the jazz columnist for Canada's National Newspaper, "The Globe and Mail." He has also written for "Coda Magazine," "Down Beat," "The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz," "Encyclopedia of Music in Canada," "Saturday Night" and several other popular and scholarly publications.
His interests as an author and historian lay in musicians and stories that have been lost, forgotten or overlooked in the annals of jazz. His books include several studies of jazz in Canada -- notably "Such Melodious Racket: The Lost History of Jazz in Canada, 1914-1949" (1998) and "The Miller Companion to Jazz in Canada" (2001) -- and a survey of the pioneering American musicians who introduced jazz to Europe, Asia and South America, "Some Hustling This! -- Taking Jazz to the World, 1914-1929" (2005).
He has also written the biographies "High Hat, Trumpet and Rhythm: The Life and Music of Valaida Snow" (2007) and "Herbie Nichols: A Jazzist's Life" (2009), as well as the biographical studies "Cool Blues: Charlie Parker in Canada, 1953" (1989) and "Way Down That Lonesome Road: Lonnie Johnson in Toronto, 1965-1970" (2011). Some of his several thousand articles for "The Globe and Mail" were anthologized in "A Certain Respect for Tradition: Mark Miller on Jazz, Selected Writings 1980-2005" (2006).
Miller has been described as "the dean of Canadian jazz journalists" ("The Jazz Report," Spring 1998) and is often praised for the clarity of his writing and the depth of his research.
He lives in Toronto.
