Peter Hum offers thoughts on five of the genre’s best books published this year.
Good Things Happen Slowly Fred Hersch
Crown Archetype
This candid memoir delves into the artistic development and musical triumphs of the great and supremely lyrical New York pianist. Hersch, 62, is the first openly gay, HIV-positive jazz player, and for more than three decades he has survived profound health setbacks including a two-monthlong coma in 2007.
My Dear Departed Past
Dave Frishberg
Backbeat Books
If you’ve heard Diana Krall sing Peel Me A Grape, or recall the ditties of the animated U.S. TV series Schoolhouse Rock! such as I’m Just A Bill, you’ve heard the music of Frishberg. The connoisseur’s songwriter and jazz pianist, now 84, eloquently tells his own anecdote-rich story in this autobiography that’s dotted with run-ins with greats such as Ben Webster, Sheila Jordan, Anita O’Day and even Krall herself.
Claude Ranger: Canadian Jazz Legend
Mark Miller Self-published
Canadian writer Miller has specialized in researching and sharing the tales of overlooked but fascinating musicians. His latest biography brings into focus the mysterious Montreal-raised drummer Claude Ranger, who between the 1960s and 1990s lit up the jazz scenes of his hometown, Toronto and Vancouver with his ferocious playing and personal nonconformism.
50 Years at the Village Vanguard: Thad Jones, Mel Lewis and The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra
Dave Lisik and Eric Allen SkyDeck
This year’s pre-eminent jazz coffee-table book is a lavish and loving 50thanniversary commemoration of a storied big band, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, which debuted in 1966 at New York’s legendary Village Vanguard jazz club under the leadership of trumpeter Thad Jones and drummer Mel Lewis. While Jones and Lewis have since died, the band remains a vital Monday-night institution, and this tome is a marvellously complete documentation of the band’s origins, personalities, lore and achievements.
The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums
Will Friedwald
Pantheon
With this followup to his definitive book A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, author Friedwald tells the detailed stories and contexts of 51 albums, examining the finest music by Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland and others, up to Cassandra Wilson’s 2002 album Belly of the Sun. We should not, I guess, hold the inclusion of Tiny Tim’s God Bless Tiny Tim against Friedwald.