Fifties Jazz Talk
London-based musician and journalist Gordon Jack's method is to let the musicians tell their own stories with minimum intervention, in the manner of Ira Gitler's classic Swing to Bop. Famous or obscure, these more than 30 musicians who came to prominence in the 1950s each has a story to tell, and Jack captures the style and tone of his interviewees in this oral retrospective of what may have been jazz's last golden age. The musicians are: Gene Allen, Mose Allison, Dave Bailey, Chuck...
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More than 25 muscians who first came to prominence during the 1950s are the subject of this collection of interviews. The author's purpose has been to help preserve the oral history of a great American artform, and this book reveals that jazz musicians who can 'tell a story' with their horn when improvising can be just as articulate in conversation.
1Gene Allen12Mose Allison103Dave Bailey164Chuck Berghofer235Eddie Bert326Bob Brookmeyer407Pete Christlieb538Bill Crow619Joe Dodge7310Bob Enevoldsen7811Don Ferrara8212Herb Geller8813Corky Hale9914Peter Ind10415Frank Isola11316Lee Konitz12217Stan Levey12918Jack Montrose13519Gerry Mulligan14320Gerry Mulligan Quartet, 1952-1953 (with Larry Bunker, Chico Hamilton, Carson Smith, and Bob Whitlock)15421Lennie Niehaus17322Jack Nimitz18023Hod O'Brien18624Bill Perkins19325Bud Shank19926Phil Urso20527Phil Woods214
\ Jazz Review...a useful source book. largely authoritative and dependable.\ \ \ \ \ Jazz SpecialThe book is interesting reading because every musician speaks his own mind. Many fascinating and humorous details surface along the way...This is an important publication because - to my knowledge - no other book treats the history of jazz in the 1950s this way.\ — Frank Büchmann-Møller\ \ \ Jazzreview.com...excellent book...Great humor appears throughout, whether in descriptions of characters like altoist Gene Quill or in quotes from well-known wits like Al Cohn or Zoot Sims.\ \ \ \ \ JazzwiseThe merit of such a book as this lies in the balance it strikes between the familiar and the unfamiliar. People such as Lee Konitz, Bob Brookmeyer and Bud Shank have been interviewed often whereas Don Ferrara, Gene Allen and Joe Dodge have spoken far less often. If anything, one might have liked more from some of these minor figures. But it's a job well done.\ \
