A clear, simple melody played, surprisingly, with very little improvisation or ornamentation, but with enormous respect and...
A former bureau chief for Time and a certified jazz freak from adolescence onward tells his sweet coming-of-age story in pre-Katrina New Orleans when “the mens” (as the black jazz masters called one another) played the music that won his heart.
Sancton, co-author of a clear-eyed account of the death of Princess Di (Death of Princess, 1998, not reviewed), returns with a memoir about his fathers—his biological one (who once edited the New Republic and wrote two novels) and his musical ones, the legendary black musicians of New Orleans, most notably clarinetist George Lewis, the first to tell the author, “You got music inside you.” Sancton believed what he heard and was soon taking lessons at the feet of the masters, playing in street-funeral processions, sitting in at Preservation Hall, often finding himself the lone white face in the band. He played with these men, fished with them, ate with them, visited their simple (and sometimes collapsing) dwellings as if they were religious shrines. The author’s parents were remarkable: They took him to Preservation Hall regularly, befriended many of the musicians, proudly sat in the audience while their son honed his craft. Sancton kept his love mostly hidden from his all-white schoolmates (one girlfriend chided him for spending time with black people) and even played ’60s rock in a high-school group. Sancton’s great public service is to usher these unique artists—almost all of whom are now dead—back onto the stage for one more encore. They become more than mere names. We learn what angered and amused them, what they liked to eat, how they interacted with one another and, in some cases, how they died. Almost all of them kept playing until they simply no longer could. Music for the “mens” was life itself.
A clear, simple melody played, surprisingly, with very little improvisation or ornamentation, but with enormous respect and affection.Pub Date: June 5, 2006
ISBN: 1-59051-243-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 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
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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