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Gene Lees ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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Lees, Mr. Gene You Can't Steal a Gift: Dizzy, Clark, Milt, and Nat
Yale University Press 2001 0300089651 / 9780300089653 Hardcover Fine Fine Hardcover
New. Fine in publisher's quarter bound boards in like dust jacket. Available in our UK premises for prompt dispatch worldwide.From Library Journal: The Canadian-born Lees was just a young man when he moved to the United States in 1955. What most startled the up-and-coming jazz critic about his new home was the racism endured by his musician friends, who included Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Milt Hinton, and Nat "King" Cole. In this intimate, four-part portrait of these musicians, Lees (Cats of Any Color) examines the peculiarities of U.S. racial relations from the perspectives of both an outsider and an insider. Plying the waters of jazz literature, such as James Trotter's Musical People of Color and Alyn Shipton's wonderful Groovin' High: The Life of Dizzy Gillespie, he suggests the importance of understanding the history of the music and what factors were involved in its creation, using Terry and Hinton in particular as examples of instrumentalists who are also educators. All the musicians, in fact, were anxious to share their knowledge, the author reveals. Lees's anecdotes, stories, and observations are engagingly written, and while snipes at non-mainstream jazz slightly tarnish the work (which includes a foreword by Nat Hentoff), the book ultimately adds to the literature. Recommended for libraries with strong music holdings. William G. Kenz, Minnesota State Univ. Moorhead Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist: In this unusual book of criticism, longtime jazz critic Lees looks back at a lifelong friendship with four of America's greatest jazz musicians. Lees combines memoir, oral history, and music criticism to recount his own migration to the U.S. from Canada to work as a newspaper reporter in Tennessee, where he received a stunning introduction to American racism and the joys of jazz. A precocious jazz critic, he came to Chicago in the late 1950s as the editor of Down Beat magazine. The impact of racism on these four longtime heroes of jazz--John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, Clark Terry, Milt Hinton, and Nat "King" Cole--is a central theme of this volume. But more subtly and significantly, Lees shares humorous anecdotes, little known biographical facts, and the genius of their musical innovations. He has a natural ease with words and a graceful prose style that captures the reader's attention. Ted Leventhal Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Price:
3.50 GBP
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