The First Lady of Song is more than deserving of a full-length biography, and English musician-critic Nicholson (Jazz: The Modern Resurgence, not reviewed) is erudite and intelligent. But this book is too often a pedestrian catalogue of dates, places, and band personnel. Perhaps the problem is, as one of his sources says, ``There's no scandal about Ella.... And that doesn't make for exciting journalism.'' As is the case for many key figures in jazz, Ella Fitzgerald's public persona is a mÇlange of fact and fancy, legend and reality. This book, which corrects and updates a slightly earlier European edition, blows away some of the mist. Among other minor revelations Nicholson provides is the news that Ella was born out of wedlock in 1917, a year earlier than previously thought; that she had a disastrous first marriage in the mid-1930s to a smooth-talking ex-con that was annulled, and that she had affairs with several younger men during the '60s. Much more compelling is the rags-to-riches story of a young black girl, orphaned in her early teens, who rose to become one of the great artists of jazz, who has garnered countless awards, international fame, and adulation. The best passages are those that analyze Fitzgerald's unique singing style. He brings a musician's insight to these sections and even the die-hard Fitzgerald fan will learn something new from them. The book also includes an exhaustive discography by jazz historian Phil Schaap, which makes it a valuable addition to the jazz bookshelf. When he isn't writing about the music itself, Nicholson's prose lies limply on the page. But his musical analyses enliven his language, and his treatment of his subject's human and musical strengths and weaknesses is well balanced.
Pub Date: May 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-684-19699-9
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994
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
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
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