The Thelonious Monk Reader

Of all the major jazz artists, Thelonious Monk was one of the most original musical thinkers--nonconformist, idiosyncratic, imaginative, eccentric--in a word, unique. In The Thelonious Monk Reader, Rob van der Bliek has brought together some of the most revealing pieces ever written on Monk, providing a full portrait of the musician and his impact on the jazz world. Here is a wealth of information that was previously scattered and difficult to locate, including a wide range of articles, profiles, reviews, interviews, liner notes, and music analyses. Ranging in date from 1947 to 1999, these 39 pieces feature the work of some of our best jazz critics, including Leonard Feather, Ira Gitler, Nat Hentoff, Andre Hodeir, Gunther Schuller, Martin Williams, and many others. The book spans Monk's childhood and early recordings with Blue Note and Prestige, his Riverside period and the critical recognition that followed the release of Brilliant Corners, and his fame and fortune during his Columbia years. Readers will find colorful descriptions of Monk's eccentric lifestyle as well as thoughtful commentary on his unorthodox piano technique, which was marked by off-center accents and idiosyncratic voicings, broken rhythms, alternately dense and stripped down chords, and creative use of silence. Rob van der Bliek also provides a general introduction and brief introductions to each piece as well as critical annotations that place the work in context. Controversial, often contradictory, and always engaging, these readings offer a complete view of the man, his music, and his time. The only such book on Monk's life and work, this volume will be "must reading" for jazz fans and scholars, musicians, music lovers, and readers with an interest in African-American culture.

**Winner of the American Book Award (2023)** ​**Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award (2023)** The long-awaited first full biography of legendary jazz saxophonist and composer Sonny Rollins Sonny Rollins has long been considered an enigma. Known as the “Saxophone Colossus,” he is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz improvisers of all time, winning Grammys, the Austrian Cross of Honor, Sweden’s Polar Music Prize and a National Medal of Arts. A bridge from bebop to the avant-garde, he is a lasting link to the golden age of jazz, pictured in the iconic “Great Day in Harlem” portrait. His seven-decade career has been well documented, but the backstage life of the man once called “the only jazz recluse” has gone largely untold—until now. Based on more than 200 interviews with Rollins himself, family members, friends, and collaborators, as well as Rollins’ extensive personal archive, Saxophone Colossus is the comprehensive portrait of this legendary saxophonist and composer, civil rights activist and environmentalist. A child of the Harlem Renaissance, Rollins’ precocious talent landed him on the bandstand and in the recording studio with Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, or playing opposite Billie Holiday. An icon in his own right, he recorded Tenor Madness, featuring John Coltrane; Way Out West; Freedom Suite, the first civil rights-themed album of the hard bop era; A Night at the Village Vanguard; and the 1956 classic Saxophone Colossus. Yet his meteoric rise to fame was not without its challenges. He served two sentences on Rikers Island and won his battle with heroin addiction. In 1959, Rollins took a two-year sabbatical from recording and performing, practicing up to 16 hours a day on the Williamsburg Bridge. In 1968, he left again to study at an ashram in India. He returned to performing from 1971 until his retirement in 2012. The story of Sonny Rollins—innovative, unpredictable, larger than life—is the story of jazz itself, and Sonny’s own narrative is as timeless and timely as the art form he represents. Part jazz oral history told in the musicians’ own words, part chronicle of one man’s quest for social justice and spiritual enlightenment, this is the definitive biography of one of the most enduring and influential artists in jazz and American history.

This text presents a comprehensive and up-to-date reference work on popular music, from the early 20th century to the present day.

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.

How did French musicians and critics interpret jazz--that quintessentially American music--in the mid-twentieth century? How far did players reshape what they learned from records and visitors into more local jazz forms, and how did the music figure in those angry debates that so often suffused French cultural and political life? After Django begins with the famous interwar triumphs of Josephine Baker and Django Reinhardt, but, for the first time, the focus here falls on the French jazz practices of the postwar era. The work of important but neglected French musicians such as Andr Hodeir and Barney Wilen is examined in depth, as are native responses to Americans such as Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. The book provides an original intertwining of musical and historical narrative, supported by extensive archival work; in clear and compelling prose, Perchard describes the problematic efforts towards aesthetic assimilation and transformation made by those concerned with jazz in fact and in idea, listening to the music as it sounded in discourses around local identity, art, 1968 radicalism, social democracy, and post colonial politics.

Includes profiles of African-American performing artists. Provides brief biographies, subject indexes, further reading suggestions and general index. Part of a 10-volume set--each volume devoted to the contributions of African Americans in a particular cultural field. This text contains profiles of some 190 performing artists from choreographer Alvin Ailey to hip hop producer Dr. Dre (nee Andre Young). Each entry provides a biographical sketch of the artist's career and lists readings and other materials of interest. The contributions of musicians receive comparatively greater coverage than other artistic endeavors.

"Comprehensive and intelligently organized. . . . Jazz aficionados . . . should be grateful to have so much good writing on the subject in one place."--The New York Times Book Review "Alluring. . . . Capture[s] much of the breadth of the music, as well as the passionate debates it has stirred, more vividly than any other jazz anthology to date."--Chicago Tribune No musical idiom has inspired more fine writing than jazz, and nowhere has that writing been presented with greater comprehensiveness and taste than in this glorious collection. In Reading Jazz, editor Robert Gottlieb combs through eighty years of autobiography, reportage, and criticism by the music's greatest players, commentators, and fans to create what is at once a monumental tapestry of jazz history and testimony to the elegance, vigor, and variety of jazz writing. Here are Jelly Roll Morton, recalling the whorehouse piano players of New Orleans in 1902; Whitney Balliett, profiling clarinetist Pee Wee Russell; poet Philip Larkin, with an eloquently dyspeptic jeremiad against bop. Here, too, are the voices of Billie Holiday and Charles Mingus, Albert Murray and Leonard Bernstein, Stanley Crouch and LeRoi Jones, reminiscing, analyzing, celebrating, and settling scores. For anyone who loves the music--or the music of great prose--Reading Jazz is indispensable. "The ideal gift for jazzniks and boppers everywhere. . . . It gathers the best and most varied jazz writing of more than a century."--Sunday Times (London)