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 jazz biography books |
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Jazz Biography: Miles Davis
This critically and commercially acclaimed tribute to the most popular jazz album of all time is now available in paperback. With transcriptions of the unedited session tapes; in-depth interviews with musicians; freshly discovered Columbia Records files; never-before-seen photographs; and a foreword by the last surviving member of the band, drummer Jimmy Cobb, Kind of Blue is a vital piece of music history-and will be essential for fans and scholars for years to come.
BUY: Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece
More:
- It's About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off Record
- Running the Voodoo Down: The Electric Music of Miles Davis
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Jazz Biography: Charles Mingus
Sue Graham Mingus gives us an honest memoir of a romance between American opposites: she, a product of privilege, a former midwestern debutante, Smith College graduate, and journalist in Europe and New York; he, an authentic jazz titan, a brilliant, eccentric, difficult artist, a scion of Watts, Los Angeles, and one of America's foremost composers. Charles Mingus' love for Sue Graham, his unpredictable confrontations, excesses, and exaggerations, drew her into a world where jazz and art were magnificent obsessions but were refracted, as was everything else, through Charles' interpretation of life.
BUY: Tonight at Noon: A Love Story
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Jazz Biography: John Coltrane
From a reviewer who read this book: Lewis Porter's bio of Coltrane is, so far, the best. After reading 4 bios of Coltrane, each new one more disappointing that the last, I've finally found a reliable source of facts. Mr Porter has done his homework: the chronology, at the end of the book, is worth the purchase alone.
BUY: John Coltrane: His Life and Music
More:
- Chasin' the Trane: The Music and Mystique of John Coltrane
- Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest
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Jazz Biography: Stan Getz
When he was 16, Stan Getz toured with Jack Teagarden. He won his first Down Beat reader's poll when he was 23. In the 1960s, he helped inaugurate the bossa nova craze with his recording of "The Girl from Ipanema." But he was nearly as well known for his messy personal life as his beautiful musicianship. A long-time abuser of drugs and alcohol, he was a philanderer who beat his wife. Somehow, he managed to age gracefully. "The thing I will always be proud of is this," he told the New York Times not long before he died of cancer in 1991, "toward the end of my life, I became what I always should have been -- a decent gentleman."
Available only on audiobook (item#0786117745)
BUY: Stan Getz: A Life in Jazz |
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Jazz Biography: Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan possessed the most spectacular voice in jazz history. But life offstage was never smooth for Vaughan, as her voluptuous voice was matched by her appetite for excess. The acclaimed biographer of Nat King Cole, Leslie Gourse, celebrates Vaughan's vital musical legacy and offers a detailed portrait of her private life, including five marriages and expensive lifestyle.
BUY: Sassy: The Life of Sarah Vaughan |
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Jazz Biography: Dizzy Gillespie
Alyn Shipton's biography on world-renowned trumpeter/ composer/ bandleader "Dizzy" Gillespie reveals him to be a man who sometimes angered and alienated his fellow musicians, as evidenced by the trumpeter's infamous spitball affair with Cab Calloway; his fathering of a daughter by a white woman out of wedlock in 1958, and his spiritual quest as a member of the Islam-based Baha'i faith. Shipton's portrait of Gillespie in his final years in the '90s as the leader of his multiracial United Nation Orchestra is that of cultural ambassador and musical innovator. "With his death," Shipton writes, "the world lost a man who had revolutionized jazz, gave it a set of principles on which it could develop musically, and shown by example how to create within those principles at the highest level."
BUY: Groovin' High: The Life of Dizzy Gillespie |
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Jazz Biography: Nat King Cole
Pianist/vocalist Nat King Cole made everything look easy. His warm and haunting tenor voice, suave demeanor, and elegant piano style influenced dozen of singers. But as Daniel Mark Epstein unveils in this biography, it took years of dues-paying for Cole to reach superstardom. Epstein takes the reader through the artist's life: from his birth in Alabama in 1919, his family's turbulent move to Chicago, and his rise as an Earl Hines-influenced teen jazz sensation, to the formation of his famous piano-guitar-bass trio in the '40s. Epstein doesn't shy away from the lows. But these are balanced with the highs, like the tremendous success of Cole's vocal hits.
BUY: Nat King Cole |
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Jazz Biography: Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald, who died in 1996, came from a poverty-stricken background. She was abandoned by her father, possibly abused by her stepfather and lived on the streets as a teenager. As a club singer she had to contend with racism, sexism and advances from predatory men. But in the 1950s, just when Billie Holiday, from a similar background, was falling toward drug addiction and a sordid death, Fitzgerald escaped the seeming inevitability of that fate. Her songbook albums relaunched her career in a new direction, and she became a beloved figure in American jazz.
BUY: Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz
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Other popular jazz biography books:
 Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings
Dexter Gordon: A Musical Biography
Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn
More jazz books:
our reader's picks for jazz books
exclusive A&E jazz biographies
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