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This thread is taking on psychedelic overtones ... 😄 But getting a bit more back to the topic on hand:  First of all, the careers of MANY musicians cannot be separated from their off-stage lives (and I am NOT even referring specifically to drug addiction and everything that this brings with it). So obtaining knowledge and an understanding of the "times and life" (with a fairly big accent on the TIMES!!) of a musician and the style of music he (or, yes, she) performed in really is a key to understanding the essence of the music (his music) too. Anything short of that IMO misses the road to understanding (and taking the reader along) the person's biography and musical accomplishments.  And no, pea-counting musicological analyses geared at advanced music practitioners or musicologists do not make up for this at all.  Which is where the Don Byas bio IMO is a mixed bag, though the book overall is good and definitely worth reading. As Knauer has hinted at in his review, musical analyses are slim (and yes, they COULD be done so that a layman and non-musician understands them too or at least gets a close enough impression of the contents and what to expect from any given session - it has been proven countless times before). But in general, the author's approach to the subject at times is an odd one. Apart from a few errors in the presentation of the times and places (which can happen but are avoidable - sloppy proofreading, maybe?), what baffled me is how the author over and over again seems to have made every effort to derail the reader's immersion into the narrative of the text, i.e. into the life of Don Byas. What is the point of using soooo many quotes and citations (and therefore footnotes) for facts and events that are established, undisputable facts and common knowledge and do not need any quotes or citations at all - ever - to prove to ANYONE that the facts are as the author says? (Though, maybe, to a professor who is to pass judgment on a Ph.D. thesis submitted to him ... But could this ever have been the purpose of THIS book? ) It would require a separate post to list a handful of blatant examples to underline my quibbles, but yes - this did bug me. Because this book by no yardstick whatsoever could ever have been aimed at the total layman in the history of jazz.  And scholarly self-navel gazing at showing to the reader how the author has diligently and painstakingly worked his way through so many reference sources cannot have been the point either? Above all because enough quotes from and references to specialist sources remain anyway that definitely do merit their footnotes.   

Google translator has done too much harm… 😝

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July 20 Carlos Santana - 1947

Here's a suite of the score Schifrin wrote for the Exorcist, that was turned down by Friedkin. Lalo called it a setup by Friedkin, because the studio told Friedkin that the score                   and the scenes in the trailer were too much for audiences. It was scaring the hell out of them, and they told Friedkin to tell Schifrin to tone the score down a lot. But Friedkin, being the weirdo that he was, refused to tell Schifrin that the score was too bombastic, and at the final studio recording, he led Schifrin into a trap where the executives heard the same music from the trailer. Friedkin walked out of the recording studio after a few music sequences, and told Schifrin to meet him privately in the head of the Warner Bros. Music Dept. Schifrin was hearing plenty of horror stories about what was going on- Friedkin's temper tantrums, dismissing friendly advice, firing his collaborators, etc... "He started to scream, foam was coming out of his mouth. "Where are the two orchestras of strings? This is not what we talked about! This music is not going to be in my film!!" he told Schifrin. Lalo could see that WF was out of control, and there was no reasoning with him, so he remained quiet to avoid a physical confrontation. Larry Marks, who was the head of the Music Dept., told LS that WF had already had a group in mind, Tubular Bells- and the help of a composer, Jack Nitzsche. William Blatty cake to LS' defense and made public declarations to the press, and the fired ex-film editor confirmed Blatty's comments about the setup. All Friedkin could respond with was that LS had written a score with "Mexican Maracas"!   From LS' Autobiography.