A valuable revisionist look at one of the key figures of modern American music.
Scottish music critic Tingen examines the controversial second half of Miles Davis's career, when he performed with electric bands.
One of the household names of jazz, Davis virtually invented the vocabulary of modern trumpet playing. But in the mid-1960s, on the album Bitches Brew, he added electric guitars and keyboards to his band and lost many of his original fans, who accused him of pandering to the rock-’n’-roll crowd. Tingen, whose background is in rock criticism, argues that Davis's later music, far from being a sell-out, arose from a serious attempt to incorporate the idioms of contemporary African-American music into the trumpeter's vocabulary. In support of this, he interviews many members of Davis's bands during that era. Their testimony sheds interesting light on Davis's approach. As a leader, he tended to assemble a group in whose abilities he felt confident, then throw them on their own resources by taking them into the recording studio with no advance notice of the material to be performed. The author makes a convincing case that Davis's openness to a variety of musical idioms harks back to his early days in blues-oriented bands and as a sideman to Charlie Parker. Tingen also provides a comprehensive list of Davis's supporting musicians and of his concert and recording activity during the latter half of his career, as well as insights into the trumpeter's troubled private life. The comments on specific performances tend toward the impressionistic. While unlikely to convince hard-core jazz fans that Davis's electric experiments deserve close listening, Tingen does make a good case for the continuity of the trumpeter's vision and for the importance and influence of the music he played in the ’60s and after.
A valuable revisionist look at one of the key figures of modern American music.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8230-8346-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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