An informative, brightly written anthology—and a must for any jazz bookshelf.
One of jazz’s most distinguished critics and historians receives a welcome compilation.
Currently director of Rutgers University’s Institute of Jazz Studies, Morgenstern has written prolifically and insightfully about jazz since the ’50s. Incredibly, the present volume is the first anthology of his work. Sensitively edited by Sheldon Meyer, it kicks off with a lovely memoir, “Reminiscing in Tempo,” which recalls how Morgenstern got hooked on jazz as a youth in Vienna, a refugee in wartime Europe, and a newly emigrated arrival in ’40s New York. The book then plunges into his voluminous writing about jazz—profiles, concert reviews, album liner notes, and think pieces produced over six decades. Morgenstern is steeped in the history of traditional jazz; his work reflects a deep familiarity with the minutiae of the music, and he will often debunk a much-circulated myth or illuminate a fine discographical point. He is also a trained musician with a working knowledge of technique and improvisational mechanics, and has a rare ability to get inside a jazz performance and demonstrate what makes it tick. It’s hard to beat his keen observations of such crucial players as Louis Armstrong (who was a longtime friend), Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis, but he writes with equal vibrancy about lesser-known or neglected figures he champions. His pieces about the late, now-overlooked trumpeter Oran “Hot Lips” Page are models of what fine writing about jazz should be: He considers the life and career of this superb musician with warmth, subtle humor, a sharp eye and ear for detail, and a thorough understanding of the jazz milieu. The only drawback is that Morgenstern’s interest in the music’s development evidently began to wane in the early ’60s, when the “new thing” of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Cecil Taylor (about whom he writes with clarity) was in its ascendancy; latter-day insurgents garner scant attention here. That cavil aside, few jazz observers swing as mightily as Morgenstern.
An informative, brightly written anthology—and a must for any jazz bookshelf.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-42072-X
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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