You Can't Steal a Gift: Dizzy, Clark, Milt, and Nat [Hardcover]

Mr. Gene Lees (Author), Gene Lees (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2001

In this wise, stimulating, and deeply personal book, an eminent jazz chronicler writes of his encounters with four great black musicians: Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Milt Hinton, and Nat "King" Cole. Equal parts memoir, oral history, and commentary, each of the main chapters is a minibiography, weaving together conversations Gene Lees had with the musicians and their families, friends, and associates over a period of several decades.

Lees begins the book with an essay that tells of his introduction to the world of jazz and his reaction to racism in the United States when he emigrated from Canada in 1955. The underlying theme in his book is the impact racism had on the four musicians’ lives and careers and their determination to overcome it. As Lees writes, “No white person can even begin to understand the black experience in the United States. . . . All [of the four jazz makers] are men who had every reason to embrace bitterness—and didn’t.”

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The Canadian-born Lees was just a young man when he moved to the United States in 1955. What most startled the up-and-coming jazz critic about his new home was the racism endured by his musician friends, who included Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Milt Hinton, and Nat "King" Cole. In this intimate, four-part portrait of these musicians, Lees (Cats of Any Color) examines the peculiarities of U.S. racial relations from the perspectives of both an outsider and an insider. Plying the waters of jazz literature, such as James Trotter's Musical People of Color and Alyn Shipton's wonderful Groovin' High: The Life of Dizzy Gillespie, he suggests the importance of understanding the history of the music and what factors were involved in its creation, using Terry and Hinton in particular as examples of instrumentalists who are also educators. All the musicians, in fact, were anxious to share their knowledge, the author reveals. Lees's anecdotes, stories, and observations are engagingly written, and while snipes at non-mainstream jazz slightly tarnish the work (which includes a foreword by Nat Hentoff), the book ultimately adds to the literature. Recommended for libraries with strong music holdings. William G. Kenz, Minnesota State Univ. Moorhead
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In this unusual book of criticism, longtime jazz critic Lees looks back at a lifelong friendship with four of America's greatest jazz musicians. Lees combines memoir, oral history, and music criticism to recount his own migration to the U.S. from Canada to work as a newspaper reporter in Tennessee, where he received a stunning introduction to American racism and the joys of jazz. A precocious jazz critic, he came to Chicago in the late 1950s as the editor of Down Beat magazine. The impact of racism on these four longtime heroes of jazz--John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, Clark Terry, Milt Hinton, and Nat "King" Cole--is a central theme of this volume. But more subtly and significantly, Lees shares humorous anecdotes, little known biographical facts, and the genius of their musical innovations. He has a natural ease with words and a graceful prose style that captures the reader's attention. Ted Leventhal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1ST edition (November 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300089651
• ISBN-13: 978-0300089653
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,820,968 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An accurate history of great musicians, December 13, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: You Can't Steal a Gift: Dizzy, Clark, Milt, and Nat (Hardcover)

First- and second-person history as practised by Gene Lees and Nat Hentoff is accurate, human, informative, entertaining and deeply satisfying. It is also a refreshing palliative to the third- and fourth-hand histories that often pass for fact nowadays. To refer to Lees' writings on race as "ranting," as one reviwer has it, with that word's connotation of violence, polarizes the matter and misrepresents the thought and care that have gone into this book's discussion of race. To "skip all that," would be to remain ignorant and in denial of what it took for the four subjects of the book to achieve their status in the pantheon of American artists. Don't skip all that: read the whole thing to learn, from the artists themselves and the people close to them, more about Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Milt Hinton and Nat King Cole and to understand the social environment they lived and worked in.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars You Can't Steal a Central Idea, May 8, 2004

By 

Robert Slocum (STAMFORD, CT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: You Can't Steal a Gift: Dizzy, Clark, Milt, and Nat (Hardcover)

Two caveats with this book: (1) It was reviewed in The Economist as being for the general reader, but it really is meant for the jazz aficionado. There is a lot of name-dropping, and lists of albums and songs that might as well have been Sumerian kings to me. (2) The jacket misleads when it says "the underlying theme in his book is the impact racism had on the four musicians' lives and careers and their determination to overcome it." I agree with the other reviewer who complains that Lees sometimes thinks it's still 1955 (with regard to race)-maybe an effect of his Canadian upbringing-but there's not too much of this. The real problem is that there IS no underlying theme. This book goes all over the place, and I DO mean even within each separate chapter/biography.

But the vignettes of these four great artists' lives in mid-century are often quite memorable anyway. Oral history, biography, music criticism, history of the Prohibition period, anecdotes of racism; cameo appearances by Jackie Gleason, Cab Calloway, and Louis Armstrong; there's a lot of interesting stuff here. Think of it as a magazine with most of the articles running together.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Flawed but nice, October 24, 2001

By A Customer

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This review is from: You Can't Steal a Gift: Dizzy, Clark, Milt, and Nat (Hardcover)

This is a fun read, essays on four jazz greats based largely on personal recollections. But there is just too much of the author, a failing in all of Lees' books. We must endure his rantings on race (the man still thinks it's 1955) and politics. Indeed, race is the focus for the book, even at times overshadowing the musicians and jazz. Skip all of that, and there is much to learn and to be enjoyed.