Though this is putatively Nica’s story, neither the author nor readers can long avert attention from mesmerizing Monk and...
Music historian and educator Kastin (I Hear America Singing: An Introduction to Popular Music, 2001) narrates the life of Kathleen Annie Pannonica (Nica) Rothschild (1913–1988), an heiress who fell in love with American jazz and soon became a sort of fairy godmother to some of the form’s greatest names, principally Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.
The author begins with the most controversial moment in Nica’s life: the shocking death in 1955 of Parker, 34, in her New York hotel room. The event propelled her onto the front pages and raised many eyebrows (including, respectfully, Kastin’s, who doubts Nica had sexual relations with her musician friends). The author is stymied throughout by the reluctance of Nica’s children to grant interviews—or even to permit access to their mother’s rich archive of recordings and papers. But he goes with what he has, which is considerable. Kastin chronicles the rise of the Rothschilds, Nica’s family, her marriage, notable service in World War II, motherhood, divorce and her absolute devotion to jazz—and to the many musicians she befriended and subsidized. Night after night, she parked her Rolls (later, a Bentley) outside the clubs; she opened her hotel rooms and (later) her house to all-night jam sessions; she helped rescue Monk from oblivion, saw him enjoy a long period of soaring popularity, endured and supported him during his various psychological crises and allowed him to board for protracted times with her. Along the way, Kastin introduces us to just about every major figure in American jazz (Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Art Blakey et al.)—and a few notable fans as well (Norman Mailer and Leonard Bernstein, among others).
Though this is putatively Nica’s story, neither the author nor readers can long avert attention from mesmerizing Monk and the other Olympians of bebop.Pub Date: June 20, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-393-06940-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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