Author: Ate van Delden
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496825179
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 531
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Book Description
2020 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence—Best History in the category of Best Historical Research in Recorded Jazz Adrian Rollini (1903–1956), an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, played the bass saxophone, piano, vibraphone, and an array of other instruments. He even introduced some, such as the harmonica-like cuesnophone, called Goofus, never before wielded in jazz. Adrian Rollini: The Life and Music of a Jazz Rambler draws on oral history, countless vintage articles, and family archives to trace Rollini’s life, from his family’s arrival in the US to his development and career as a musician and to his retirement and death. A child prodigy, Rollini was playing the piano in public at the age of five. At sixteen in New York he was recording pianola rolls when his peers recognized his talent and asked him to play xylophone and piano in a new band, the California Ramblers. When he decided to play a relatively new instrument, the bass saxophone, the Ramblers made their mark on jazz forever. Rollini became the man who gave this instrument its place. Yet he did not limit himself to playing bass parts—he became the California Ramblers’ major soloist and created the studio and public sound of the band. In 1927 Rollini led a new band that included such jazz greats as Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer. During the Depression years, he was back in New York playing with several bands including his own New California Ramblers. In the 1940s, Rollini purchased a property on Key Largo. He rarely performed again for the public but hosted rollicking jam sessions at his fishing lodge with some of the best nationally known and local players. After a car wreck and an unfortunate hospitalization, Rollini passed away at age fifty-three.
Author: Arthur Rollini
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9781871478402
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
Arthur Rollini describes his career as a tenor saxophonist in the big US jazz orchestras. Here he tells an insider's story of the white swing orchestras.
Author: Frederick J. Spencer, M.D.
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1628469234
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 447
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Book Description
When a jazz hero dies, rumors, speculation, gossip, and legend can muddle the real cause of death. In this book, Frederick J. Spencer, M.D., conducts an inquest on how jazz greats lived and died pursuing their art. Forensics, medical histories, death certificates, and biographies divulge the way many musical virtuosos really died. An essential reference source, Jazz and Death strives to correct misinformation and set the story straight. Reviewing the medical records of such jazz icons as Scott Joplin, James Reese Europe, Bennie Moten, Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Wardell Gray, and Ronnie Scott, the book spans decades, styles, and causes of death. Divided into disease categories, it covers such illnesses as ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), which killed Charlie Mingus, and tuberculosis, which caused the deaths of Chick Webb, Charlie Christian, Bubber Miley, Jimmy Blanton, and Fats Navarro. It notes the significance of dental disease in affecting a musician's embouchure and livelihood, as happened with Joe “King” Oliver. A discussion of Art Tatum's visual impairment leads to discoveries in the pathology of what blinded Lennie Tristano. Heavy drinking, even during Prohibition, was the norm in the clubs of New Orleans and Kansas City and in the ballrooms of Chicago and New York. Too often, the musical scene demanded that those who play jazz be “jazzed.” After World War II, as heroin addiction became the hallmark of revolution, talented bebop artists suffered long absences from the bandstand. Many did jail time, and others succumbed to the ravages of “horse.” With Jazz and Death, the causes behind the great jazz funerals may no longer be misconstrued. Its clinical and morbidly entertaining approach creates an invaluable compendium for jazz fans and scholars alike.
Author: Timme Rosenkrantz
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810882094
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
Timme Rosenkrantz (1911-1969) was a journalist, author, concert and record producer, broadcaster, and entrepreneur with a consuming passion for jazz and little head for business. He was the first European journalist to cover the jazz scene in Harlem from 1934 to 1969. In this English translation and adaptation of the original Danish-language memoir published in 1964, Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron's Memoir, 1934-1969 recounts Rosenkrantz's happy stranding in New York City, where he would record jazz artists and bands in his midtown apartment, organize his own jazz band, and run a record shop with his life companion, the black journalist and singer Inez Cavanaugh. Jazz lovers and social historians interested in the intersection of race and the music business will find in Rosenkrantz's memoir an invaluable primary source on Harlem's social scene and its musical legacy.
Author: Al Rose
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807125717
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
Al Rose has known virtually every noteworthy jazz musician of this century. For many of them he has organized concerts, composed songs that they later played or sang, and promoted their acts. He has, when called upon, bailed them out of jail, straightened out their finances, stood up for them at their weddings, and eulogized them at their funerals. He has caroused with them in bars and clubs from New Orleans to New York, from Paris to Singapore -- and survived to tell the story. The result has been a lifetime of friendship with some of the music world's most engaging and rambunctious personalities. In I Remember Jazz, Rose draws on this unparallelled experience to recall, through brief but poignant vignettes, the greats and the near-greats of jazz. In a style that is always entertaining, unabashedly idiosyncratic, and frequently irreverent, he writes about Jelly Roll Morton and Bunny Berigan, Eubie Blake and Bobby Hackett, Earl Hines and Louis Armstrong, and more than fifty others. Rose was only twenty-two when he was first introduced to Jelly Roll Morton. He quickly discovered that they had more in common than a love of music. Something of a peacock at that age, Rose was dressed in a "polychromatic, green-striped suit, pink shirt with a detachable white collar, dubonnet tie, buttonhole, and handkerchief" -- and so was Jelly Roll. About Eubie Blake, Rose notes that he was not only a superb musician but also a notorious ladies' man. Rose recalls asking the noted pianist when he was ninety-seven, "How old do you have to be before the sex drive goes?" Blake's reply: "You'll have to ask someone older than me." Once in 1947, Rose was asked to assemble a group of musicians to play at a reception to be hosted by President Truman at Blair House in Washington, D.C. The musicians included Muggsy Spanier, George Brunies, Pee Wee Russell, Pops Foster, and Baby DOdds. But the hit of the evening was President Truman himself, who joined the group on the piano to play "Kansas City Kitty" and the "Missouri Waltz." I Remember Jazz is replete with such amusing and affectionate anecdotes -- vignettes that will delight all fans of the music. Al Rose does indeed remember jazz. And for that we can all be grateful.
Author: Jean Pierre Lion
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780826416995
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
"Bix Beiderbecke is a figure of legend: the white cornetist's short life (1903-1931) fit the myth of the tragic artist, surrounded by the nostalgia of an era (Prohibition), and rooted in the dark history of jazz. Considered a genius by his fans and fellow musicians, Bix was a master cornet player, pianist, and composer, and one of the most inspiring jazz musicians of his age." "French jazz scholar Jean Pierre Lion traveled the trajectory of Bix's life, from birth to death, to boarding school, on tour, and beyond, to uncover the truth behind the legend. He creates historical ambience with descriptions of 1920s Chicago - ruled by Al Capone and peopled with fast cars, flappers, and hot jazz musicians - and Bix's personality is revealed through excerpts from the few letters he wrote in his lifetime and the memories of friends and witnesses of the jazz age." "When he died, Bix left behind a tremendous list of recordings (included here in a definitive discography) and several original compositions. This biography culls the entirety of Bix scholarship into one volume, painting a complete picture of the man, his music, and his times."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Author: Brian Rust
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jazz
Languages : en
Pages : 992
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Book Description
Author: Timme Rosenkrantz
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810879786
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
Timme Rosenkrantz (1911–1969) was a Danish journalist, author, concert and record producer, radio show host, and entrepreneur with a consuming passion for jazz and little head for business. Known in Denmark and New York as the “Jazz Baron” because of his noble lineage, he was the first European journalist to cover the jazz scene in Harlem. Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934–1969 recounts Rosenkrantz’s happy years in New York City, where he would produce jazz concerts, record top musicians and bands in his midtown apartment, organize a “dream band” for Timme Rosenkrantz and His Barrelhouse Barons, a 1938 RCA Victor recording, (DL) live in Harlem and run a record shop with his life companion, journalist and singer Inez Cavanaugh. A good friend of jazz impresario John Hammond, Rosenkrantz would become the James Boswell of the Harlem jazz scene. Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, Billie Holiday—there wasn’t a New York jazz musician unknown to “Honeysuckle Rosenkrantz,” as christened by Fats Waller. Drawing on the published Danish-language original Dus med Jazzen, and an unpublished English free translation (DL) by Rosenkrantz and Cavanaugh, translator-adapter Fradley Hamilton Garner gives polish and context to Rosenkrantz’s stories of meetings with Cecile and Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Eddie Condon, Erroll Garner—whom Rosenkrantz discovered and was first to record—and many others. This book is a must-have for jazz lovers. Social historians interested in the intersection of race and the music business will find in Rosenkrantz’s memoir an invaluable primary source on Harlem’s social scene and its musical legacy.
Author: Alyn Shipton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441167803
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
Fats Waller (1904-1943) was an outsize man in all respects: five feet, eleven inches tall, he weighed 285 pounds. The greatest of the Harlem "stride" pianists, he composed hundreds of songs, he led a band that made over 400 recordings, and he wrote several Broadway shows. Waller's gargantuan appetites have been celebrated in anecdotes and earlier biographies. He is seen by jazz historians as a man of immense musical talent that was never fulfilled. In this fully revised and updated biography of Waller, Alyn Shipton re-examines his career, arguing that his talents as a songwriter, show composer, and brilliant recording and broadcasting artist have not been fully appreciated. In a newly written final chapter, there is a comprehensive survey of Waller's recordings as they have been reissued for the CD era.
Author: Don Armstrong
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501366998
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 447
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Book Description
Discover the enthralling world of Ralph J. Gleason, a pioneering music journalist who expanded the possibilities of the newspaper music column, sparked the San Francisco jazz and rock scenes, and co-founded Rolling Stone magazine. Gleason not only reported on but influenced the trajectory of popular music. He alone chronicled the unparalleled evolution of popular music from the 1930s into the 1970s, and while doing so, interviewed and befriended many trailblazers such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles. A true iconoclast, he dismantled the barriers between popular and highbrow music, and barriers separating the musical genres. He played a crucial role in shaping postwar music criticism by covering all genres and analyzing music's social, political, and historical meanings. This book uncovers never-before-seen letters, anecdotes, family accounts, and exclusive interviews to reveal one of the most intriguing personalities of the 20th century.
