Peter King's book ranks among the great jazz autobiographies. One of the
world's leading alto saxophonists, he tells his story with searing
honesty, reveaqling the obsessions and motivations that have driven him
and the dilemmas of surviving as a top creative musician in an often
inhospitable world. With unsparing self-analysis he describes the
traumas that accompanied his brilliant career for many years.
Internationally recognised as a jazz star, he has perforned and recorded
with a galaxy of musical legends, many of them his close friends. Among
those vividly recalled in this book are Bud Powell, Milt Jackson, Ray
Charles, Anita O'Day, Elvin Jones, Max Roach, Hampton Hawes, Al Haig,
Philly Joe Jones, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Witherspoon, Dakota Staton, Red
Rodney, John Hendricks, Tony Bennett and Marlene Dietrich.
But while the story here centers on Peter King's life in jazz it shows
other important sides of him too: his ambitions and achievements in
classical composing, his interests outside music (he is a leading figure
and writer in the aero-modelling world) and, above all, the treasured
personal relationships rhat have sustained him through a turbulent life.
"Flying High" tells of an exhilarating high altitude journey, in the
jazz world and beyond.
