When jazz musicians get together, they often delight one another with
stories about the great, or merely remarkable, players and singers
they've worked with. One good story leads to another until someone says,
"Somebody ought to wrie these down!" With Jazz Anecdotes, somebody
finally has. Drawing on a rich verbal tradition, bassist and jazz writer
Bill Crow has culled stories from a wide variety of sources, including
interviews, biographies and a remarkable oral history collection, which
resides at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, to paint
fascinating and very human portraits of jazz musicians. Organized around
general topics--teaching and learning, life on the road, prejudice and
discrimination, and the importance of a good nickname--Jazz Anecdotes
shows the jazz world as it really is. In this fully updated edition,
which contains over 150 new anecdotes and new topics like Hiring and
Firing, Crow regales us with new stories of such jazz greats as Benny
Goodman, Chet Baker, Ravi Coltrane, Buddy Rich and Paul Desmond. He
offers extended sections on old favorites--Louis Armstrong, Duke
Ellington, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, and the fabulous Eddie
Condon, who seems to have lived his entire life with the anecdotist in
mind. With its unique blend of sparkling dialogue and historical and
social insight, Jazz Anecdotes will delight anyone who loves a good
story. It offers a fresh perspective on the joys and hardships of a
musician's life as well as a rare glimpse of the personalities who
created America's most distinctive music.
