A rewarding jazz biography and a revealing look at a broad swath of American cultural history.
A comprehensive, affectionate biography of arguably the single most important figure in the history of jazz.
The broad outlines of the story are well known to jazz fans. Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) was born into poverty in New Orleans; learned to play at a school for juvenile offenders; went to Chicago in 1922 to join his idol King Oliver’s band. He made a series of groundbreaking records in the late ’20s and toured with big bands until after World War II, when he returned to his preferred small-group format. With the advent of television, Armstrong became a pop-recording star, with such hits as “Mack the Knife” and “Hello Dolly.” Former professional jazz musician and Wall Street Journal drama critic Teachout (All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine, 2004, etc.) fills in the details with a sure hand, drawing on numerous published sources as well as voluminous tape recordings and autobiographical writings left by Armstrong, many not available to earlier writers. The author sheds light on the embouchure problems that temporarily derailed Armstrong’s career, and dictated a change of style, in the early ’30s. He sympathetically re-evaluates Armstrong’s later career, which many critics have dismissed as elevating showmanship above art, demonstrating that the trumpeter was much more than the unschooled natural genius some admirers saw in him. Without overloading the reader with technical details, Teachout shows how Armstrong’s music evolved over the years, while staying true to lessons learned—above all, attention to melody—from his New Orleans mentors such as Oliver. Quotes from Armstrong’s earthy autobiographical writings give the book authentic flavor. Teachout also deals frankly with Armstrong’s lifelong marijuana use, the role of organized crime in his business affairs, his untidy marital life and his forthright statements on racial issues. The author makes an eloquent case for Armstrong’s status as a pioneer, not just in jazz but in the broader context of 20th-century art.
A rewarding jazz biography and a revealing look at a broad swath of American cultural history.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-15-101089-9
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
IN THE NEWS
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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