REMINISCING IN TEMPO

In the centenary year of his birth, a life of jazz legend Duke Ellington, in an oral history’style narrative composed of a series of short quotations from Ellington and those who knew him. Ellington casts a large shadow over American popular music and engenders strong opinions. In a search for authenticity, Nicholson, a British jazz journalist (Jazz: A History, 1998), has chosen to assemble the words of the composer, his colleagues, culled from pre-existing sources (Ellington himself has been dead for 25 years), which makes for an oddly disconnected text. The book covers every important aspect of Ellington’s career, and many of the comments from fellow musicians shed interesting light on the way he was perceived, but it is disjointed and extremely difficult to read. Reproductions of period posters, record labels, and advertisements provide a lively visual accompaniment, but—like the uninterrupted series of quotes that make up the text—they could use some context.