Living the Jazz
Life
Conversations with Forty Musicians
about Their Careers in Jazz,.
By W. ROYAL STOKES,
Oxford University
Press,
2000.
A seasoned jazz critic draws on his
interviews of forty musicians, from Slide Hampton and
Bucky Pizzarelli to Dee Dee Bridgewater and Diana Krall,
illuminating their lives, careers, and
art.
No music is as individual as jazz. And
no writer is as deft at bringing out what is individual
in each artist as W. Royal Stokes. As a reviewer, feature
writer, public radio host, and author of three books on
the subject, Stokes has spent three decades covering the
jazz scene. Now he draws on that rich store of knowledge
and friendship to introduce us to the jazz life.
Stokes illuminates the lives of the
artists and the sheer pleasure of the sounds they create.
In some forty interviews with saxophonists, pianists,
singers, composers, and string, brass, and rhythm
players, he paints a vivid portrait of their lives and
influences, including the role of their families and
childhood environments. The musicians discuss how they
became interested in jazz as youngsters and how they
became part of the jazz scene. Nat Adderley recalls how
he and his brother Cannonball grew up across from a
Tabernacle Baptist Church and how as boys on Sunday they
would listen to the music from the church--tambourines
and trombones and a blind man playing the piano. Stokes
ranges across the globe, both physically and culturally,
in his interviews, introducing us to vaudeville stars,
blues musicians, and a dozen women instrumentalists--such
as acclaimed violinist Regina Carter--out of the many who
now shine on a scene where they were once limited to
vocals alone.
From legendary veterans Jackie McLean
and Louie Bellson to such rising stars as Diana Krall,
Cyrus Chestnut, and Ingrid Jensen, Stokes gathers
together the brightest lights in the jazz firmament,
capturing not only the life of the musician, but how the
musician gives life to jazz.
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