Straight Life: the Story of Art Pepper

Straight Life: the Story of Art Pepper PDF Author: Art Pepper
Publisher: Canons
ISBN: 9781838857950
Category : Jazz musicians
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Art Pepper was described as the greatest alto-saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation. Straight Life, originally narrated on tape to his wife Laurie, is an explosive work chronicling his work amidst a life dealing with alcoholism, heroin addiction, armed robberies and imprisonment. The result is an autobiography like no other, a masterpiece of the spoken word, shaped into a genuine work of literature.

Straight Life: the Story of Art Pepper

Straight Life: the Story of Art Pepper PDF Author: Art Pepper
Publisher: Canons
ISBN: 9781838857950
Category : Jazz musicians
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Art Pepper was described as the greatest alto-saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation. Straight Life, originally narrated on tape to his wife Laurie, is an explosive work chronicling his work amidst a life dealing with alcoholism, heroin addiction, armed robberies and imprisonment. The result is an autobiography like no other, a masterpiece of the spoken word, shaped into a genuine work of literature.

Straight Life

Straight Life PDF Author: Art Pepper
Publisher: Macmillan Reference USA
ISBN:
Category : Jazz musicians
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
A world famous saxophonist tells the story of his successful career as a jazz musician, his problems with drug addiction, and the time he spent in hospitals, prisons, and drug rehabilitation centers.

My Life in E-flat

My Life in E-flat PDF Author: Chan Parker
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 164336278X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
A memoir of the Jazz Age and a life profoundly influenced by it My Life in E-flat is the remarkable memoir of a woman who witnessed some of the most important movements in the history of jazz. Through her autobiography, Chan Parker provides intimate insights into the music and into life with Charlie Parker, the key figure in the development of bebop and one of the most important of all jazz musicians. Born Beverly Dolores Berg in New York City at the height of the Jazz Age, Parker's father was a producer of vaudeville shows and her mother was a dancer in Florenz Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic. Parker became part of the jazz culture as a nightclub dancer and later as the wife of jazz saxophonists Charlie Parker and then Phil Woods. In a moving and candid portrait of Charlie Parker, the author describes in harrowing detail a man of incredible talent besieged with addictions and self-destructiveness. She painfully recounts his death at the age of 35 while married to her and its effect on her life as well as on the musical world. Parker's honest portrait of one of the most gifted musicians in jazz provides unique insight into the history of the music and the difficulties faced by African American performers during the 1940s. Parker also reflects on her struggle to find her own voice and on her work with Clint Eastwood on the film biography of Charlie Parker, Bird (1988).

Bird

Bird PDF Author: Chuck Haddix
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252095170
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Saxophone virtuoso Charlie "Bird" Parker began playing professionally in his early teens, became a heroin addict at 16, changed the course of music, and then died when only 34 years old. His friend Robert Reisner observed, "Parker, in the brief span of his life, crowded more living into it than any other human being." Like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane, he was a transitional composer and improviser who ushered in a new era of jazz by pioneering bebop and influenced subsequent generations of musicians. Meticulously researched and written, Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker tells the story of his life, music, and career. This new biography artfully weaves together firsthand accounts from those who knew him with new information about his life and career to create a compelling narrative portrait of a tragic genius. While other books about Parker have focused primarily on his music and recordings, this portrait reveals the troubled man behind the music, illustrating how his addictions and struggles with mental health affected his life and career. He was alternatively generous and miserly; a loving husband and father at home but an incorrigible philanderer on the road; and a chronic addict who lectured younger musicians about the dangers of drugs. Above all he was a musician, who overcame humiliation, disappointment, and a life-threatening car wreck to take wing as Bird, a brilliant improviser and composer. With in-depth research into previously overlooked sources and illustrated with several never-before-seen images, Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker corrects much of the misinformation and myth about one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century.

Beneath the Underdog

Beneath the Underdog PDF Author: Charles Mingus
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 9780857862181
Category : Double-bassists
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Charles Mingus, bassist, composer and bandleader, was one of the towering figures of American twentieth century music. In this memoir, Mingus documents his childhood on an Army base in Arizona, his difficult teenage years in Watts, and his musical education by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker. Unique and lyrical voice, this memoir charts the highs and lows of a life lived to the full. Beneath the Underdog is also a portrait of life in the Forties and Fifties, of ideas of identity and race in America and the ways in which they affected the young Mingus. Above all, it is a powerful tale told through the eyes of an inspiring, anguished and extraordinary musician.

Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk PDF Author: Robin D. G. Kelley
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439190461
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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Book Description
The first full biography of Thelonious Monk, written by a brilliant historian, with full access to the family's archives and with dozens of interviews.

The Paper Garden

The Paper Garden PDF Author: Molly Peacock
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608195236
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Traces the life and accomplishments of septuagenarian artist Mary Delany, describing her invention of the art of collage late in life after two heart-breaking marriages, in an account that also evaluates the roles of her relationships with such figures as Jonathan Swift, the Duchess of Portland and King George III. 35,000 first printing.

The Art of Time in Memoir

The Art of Time in Memoir PDF Author: Sven Birkerts
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555973396
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
The Art Of series is a new line of books reinvigorating the practice of craft and criticism. Each book will be a brief, witty, and useful exploration of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry by a writer impassioned by a singular craft issue. The Art Of volumes will provide a series of sustained examinations of key but sometimes neglected aspects of creative writing by some of contemporary literature's finest practioners. In The Art of Time in Memoir, critic and memoirist Sven Birkerts examines the human impulse to write about the self. By examining memoirs such as Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory; Virginia Woolf's unfinished A Sketch of the Past; and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club, Birkerts describes the memoirist's essential art of assembling patterns of meaning, stirring to life our own sense of past and present.

Raise Up Off Me

Raise Up Off Me PDF Author: Hampton Hawes
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 9781560253532
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Hampton Hawes [1928–1977] was one of jazz's greatest pianists. Among his peers from California the self-taught Hawes was second only to Oscar Peterson. At the time of his celebration as New Star of the Year by downbeat magazine (1956), Hawes was already struggling with a heroin addiction that would lead to his arrest and imprisonment, and the interruption of a brilliant career. In 1963 President John F. Kennedy granted Hawes an Executive Pardon. In eloquent and humorous language Hampton Hawes tells of a life of suffering and redemption that reads like an improbable novel. Gary Giddins has called it "a major contribution to the literature of jazz." This book includes a complete discography and eight pages of photographs.

Louise Loves Art

Louise Loves Art PDF Author: Kelly Light
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062355848
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 41

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Book Description
For fans of Olivia and Eloise, this stunning debut from Kelly Light is an irresistible story about the importance of creativity in all its forms. Meet Louise. Louise loves art more than anything. It's her imagination on the outside. She is determined to create a masterpiece—her pièce de résistance! Louise also loves Art, her little brother. This is their story. Louise Loves Art is a celebration of the brilliant artist who resides in all of us.