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JELLY’S BLUES

Name: JELLY’S BLUES
Author: Howard Reich
ISBN: 0-306-81209-6

THE LIFE, MUSIC, AND REDEMPTION OF JELLY ROLL MORTON

by Howard Reich & William Gaines ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

An important, vindicatory contribution to music history, restoring Morton to the high station he deserves in American jazz....

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Aided by a trove of uncovered historical documents, two veteran Chicago Tribune journalists sweep aside demeaning caricatures regarding the great jazz composer and pianist.

Many of the 65,000 pieces in a New Orleans collector’s stash of jazz memorabilia, made public after his death in 1992, pertained to Jelly Roll Morton (1885–1941). In particular, they shed light on the period from 1930 until his death, during which Morton was in popular eclipse but busy on two fronts: trying to secure some of the royalties due him and writing plush, pressing ensemble music full of radically dissonant chord progressions. Jazz critic Reich and retired investigative reporter Gaines make good use of this and other material to present a thorough and considered account of Morton’s life. Starting out as a piano player in New Orleans brothels and honkytonks, he was the first jazzman to put his music down on paper, innovating a complex, contrapuntal music inflected with a Spanish tinge that evolved into a rhythmically free style defying a sense of steady meter, with plenty of breaks and surprises. His reputation as a flamboyant egotist was well earned, say the authors; a cocky-talking hustler, Morton had led a life to make any storyteller proud, and his virtuoso piano playing backed up the bravura. He was abrasive and demanding, for sure, but the notion that he was passé by 1930 was primarily due to a white popular press obsessed with perpetually discovering new talent, and to a white music industry happy to denigrate the achievements of a man whose royalties it had pocketed. But Morton kept playing and composing until he died, introducing “astringent chords, bizarre key changes, and exotic scales of a sort that would not be heard in jazz until at least the early 1950s.”

An important, vindicatory contribution to music history, restoring Morton to the high station he deserves in American jazz. (16 pp. photos, not seen)

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-306-81209-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Da Capo

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ART OF INVENTING HOPE
by Howard Reich

- BOOK REVIEW
VAN CLIBURN
by Howard Reich

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.