This book is great! And you can't beat the price! I was able to order mine for around $12 bucks, and with Amazon's super saver shipping, I was able to have it shipped for that price too! Which is great compared to the $16.00 plus tax plus gas it would take to buy one in a store. Great condition, the pictures inside are invaluable to the information in the book.

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Lowell Grauss

I'v read it

Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2009

Years ago (twice.)
It's a great book, and an inside look at the music.
I like the new cover, too.

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Renato Wardle

As Serious As Your Life

Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2003

Verified Purchase

Val Wilmer presents a completely ignorant and biased review of the life of many key figures in the jazz movement. Her writing is more akin to that of a groupie trying to "suck-up" to her favorite group. With her "band chick" approach and total lack of knowledge about music, Wilmer manages to string along several stories about these musicians, in which each experience becomes granite evidence of the validity of their approach to music as well as proof of Wilmer's superior knowledge of Jazz and music in general.
Please!!!! Wilmer loves this music because it supposedly dispenses with such unnecessary items as harmony, melody, time, and general ability on a given instrument..making it a music analyzed only in superlatives.
Some of the information on Ed Blackwell is informative - but she manages to contradict herself on many occasions. For example...Tony Williams, in Wilmer's opinion is no longer important because he still plays time which in her opinion is useless. However, five stars for Ed Blackwell...come on Wilmer, he played more traditionally than Tony Williams ever did.

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Jeffrey Ruggles

Missing The Point

Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2005

I think that the previous reviewers have really missed the point of Wilmer's book. The fact that Wilmer is criticized by the reviewers for heralding free jazz above all other types of jazz seems ludicrous to me. After all, she did write an entire book on the subject because of her love for the music. She's not writing a book on ALL jazz, just one particular type. One should not expect her to be completely objective to the subject. To say that other music journalists write/wrote objectively about the music that they love is a completely silly notion. Did Lester Bangs write objectively about rock n' roll? NO! And there is really no reason that he should have. However, that being said, there is plenty of criticism of the music that Wilmer points out in "As Serious As Your Life." Criticism such as the weakness of later Albert Ayler recordings or the derivative style of Frank Lowe's tenor playing, etc. is pointed out throughout the book. Every writer has a slant and Wilmer definitely has one when it comes to "the great Black music." But this should not be held against her.

I think that what these other reviewers also have failed to understand, is that "As Serious As Your Life," is not just about the music, about free jazz...it is about the politics behind the music, hence the focus on black musicians playing "The Great Black Music." The focus here really is on the black musicians that played free jazz in the mid-60's through the late 70's. In Wilmer's eyes, this music corresponded directly with the Civil Rights movement of the time and was born out of black musician's search for "freedom" even if it was only through music. Wilmer paints a vivid picture of most of the major musician's ideals and philosophies and her words will have you wanting to run to the record store to hear the musical manifestations of these thoughts and feelings. Really, no stone is left unturned when dealing with The Great Black Music and that is one reason why this book is indispensable for fans of the avant-garde as it pertains to jazz music.

Finally, the reader must understand that this is NOT a definitive history of jazz, or even free jazz, for that matter. It is but one person's interpretation of the music. There are plenty of other sources on the subject and in order to fully understand the music these should also be consulted. But all in all "As Serious As Your Life" is a great read and very much worth your time. Just remember, it's not the ONLY thing out there.

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Sam Adams

As Serious as Your Life

Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2009

This book is dense with the words of a particular class of jazz musicians of the 1970s. It is an enthusiastic, flattering, and almost worshipful look at the jazz avant-garde as it existed in America at the time of publication (1977, revised 1980). I don't recall a disapproving or critical remark by the author on the music anywhere in the book. Its focus is on the Black avant-garde jazz musician in America, to the exclusion of all others not Black, not American, or not both; and in accord with this exclusion, the music itself is called 'Black music', as if the non-Black jazz musician doesn't quite belong. The context of this music within jazz history, or its relation to the avant-garde in classical music, is not discussed. Much of other music is disparaged by the quoted musicians as mere entertainment.

The implicit agenda of the book is political, not musical (this becomes overt in the spelling of 'white' and 'Black' in every occurrence with the contrasting small w and capital B -- an editorial convention, perhaps, but glaring in its effect). The instruments and musical techniques of Africa are discussed as if superior to, rather than simply unlike and culturally independent of, those of Europe; and jazz is discussed, without explanation or qualification, as if it were entirely founded, advanced and expanded through the revolutionary insight and maverick efforts of Black musicians in America. The most prominent innovators certainly (according my limited understanding) have been Black Americans, but at its very core, jazz is an amalgam of cultures and musical influence, even if the early innovators themselves typically belonged to a relatively single, distinct subculture of America. By the 1960s, even the culture and music of India, which has nothing to do historically with the complex, pre-20th century cultural heritage of 20th century African Americans, was being included. The very instruments, and therefore the possible tonalities, timbres and sounds, through which jazz is expressed are of European invention (the drum being in some instances of design an exception), and the influence upon jazz of certain European "classical" composers is well known. Music evolves. It is not invented.

The book is not a cover-to-cover narrative, but rather a collection of chapter-length essays gathered together into thematic sections.

CONTENTS --

Introduction: A State of Mind

Part One: Innovators and Innovations
1. Great Black Music - From a Love Supreme to the Sex Machine
2. John Coltrane - A Love Supreme
3. Cecil Taylor - Eighty-Eight Tuned Drums
4. Ornette Coleman - The Art of the Improvisor
5. Sun Ra - Pictures of Infinity
5. Albert Ayler - Spiritual Unity

Part Two: Who are the New Musicians?
8. As Serious as Your Life

Part Three: Give the Drummer Some!
9. The Spirit Behind the Musicians
10. A Family of Rhythms

Part Four: Woman's Role
11. It Takes Two People to Confirm the Truth
12. "You Sound Good, for a Woman!"

Part Five: The Conspiracy and Some Solutions
13. Bill Dixon and the Jazz Composers Guild
14. Politics, the Media and Collectivism
15. Recording - Getting the Music Out There
16. Does the Music have a Future?

Biographies of the New Musicians
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index

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therealus

Irreplaceable account

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 23, 2016

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Valerie Wilmer’s study of The New Jazz of the 1960s and 1970s provides an eye-witness account of one of the key revolutionary periods of music, where experimentation and cross-fertilisation joined hands, most notably within the crucible of New York, to forge new ideas about what music was, could be, and was for.

That this all took place within the context of civil unrest born of a burning dissatisfaction with the historical mistreatment and oppression of blacks in the United States was no coincidence. The deep anger at this state of affairs is heard loud and clear in the turmoil of The New Thing, articulated both by musical instruments and in such moments as Abby Lincoln’s screams on Max Roach’s Freedom Now! suite. Additionally its message reached beyond the shores of the United States, being adopted as a part of their cultural armoury by radical youth in Europe, most notably in the Paris of 1968.

Wilmer is careful to ensure that this aspect of the music is emphasised, but mostly looks at the music and the musicians themselves, respectively as art and artists. Followers of the music of the period will find close studies of musicians such as Ed Blackwell, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler and many others, in addition to an examination of the pivotal role of John Coltrane and the development of his music, from his days assimilating the essence of modality in Miles’s band through to the way this was subsequently built upon by his contact with Ornette, via his encounters with Indian music, not least in personal encounters with Ravi Shankar. She examines the way in which the members of Coltrane’s band themselves influenced the music, pointing out the differences in style of Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali and the impact of Pharaoh Sanders’s atonality. She also points up the way Coltrane’s inclusion of his wife Alice, and her ability to more than hold her own within what must have been a highly challenging environment, encouraged other jazz musicians to include women in their line-ups.

Having told us that, however, Wilmer is subsequently quite weak on the contribution women make to jazz. Her principal focus in a very brief Part 4 of the book, Woman’s Role, is on how women provide a support mechanism for the men who play jazz, holding the fort at home and providing financial assistance. When she does get around to female musicians there are few names – Alice Coltrane again and Mary Lou Williams stand out. She points out that in other styles musicians such as Sly Stone had no hesitation in employing women, and that Bird’s Donna Lee refers to a female bassist. She misses out, however, on the way in which Joni Mitchell at the time was exploring jazz music as a means to express her musical vision, a leader in her own right of projects employing jazz musicians to produce music which, whilst miles away from New Jazz, was nevertheless innovative and, in relative terms, popular without making enormous concessions. Two years after the original publication of Wilmer’s book Mitchell would release her most overtly jazz-oriented work, Mingus.

Perhaps in that respect, though, Wilmer was reflecting the preoccupations of the time, which is in general terms part of the strength of the book itself, as a contemporary record of a milieu to which many of us with an interest in it had no direct access. That in itself makes the account irreplaceable.

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Amazon Customer

A must read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 24, 2019

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Seriously good book. Entertaining and educational at the same time.