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Larry Kart's jazz book


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A bit of I hope legitimate self-promotion. "Jazz In Search of Itself" -- a collection of everything I’ve written over the last 35 years or so that seems worth preserving, plus a fair amount of new stuff -- will be published, they tell me, on or about Nov. 16. You can read more about it here (click on the cover image and it gets larger):

http://yalepress.yale.edu/YupBooks/viewboo...isbn=0300104200

I love that cover image BTW (taken from a circa 1957 photo I had of Ira Sullivan

and Johnny Griffin

at a Chicago club -- Nevin Wilson is the bassist) because its angled-upwards, front-table immediacy links up with one of the implicit themes of the book -- the inseparable relationship in jazz (for better or worse) between players and listeners. (And, of course, players are listeners too -- Griffin clearly is listening intently to what Sullivan is doing.) Also, the photo easily could have been taken on a night when I was present.

Further info: I see that Barnes and Noble online is selling the book at a discount:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearc...R63&cds2Pid=946

Amazon at the moment isn’t.

Finally, my favorite blurb (at least it’s a tie with Dan Morgenstern’s) isn’t on that Yale University Press website but is on the book jacket. It’s from Ira Gitler: "Larry Kart writes on jazz with a focus and clarity that makes me want to read on even when I disagree with him."

My favorite quote in the book is this from a previously unpublished 1969 interview with Wilbur Campbell: "Every drummer who’s been playing can play anything he thinks of; the trouble is thinking of things to play. Lots of cats can play what they think, but they don’t think it."

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Just discovered that the link I posted to the site for the book at Barnes & Noble online (at a discount price, $28) doesn't work anymore, though the discount still stands. If anyone wants to take that route, it probably it makes more sense to go to the main Barnes & Noble site and search under the title "Jazz in Search of Itself." That's how I came up with the now defunct link in the first place, and doing that took me to the right place this morning.

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Anyone who wants it autographed, just send me a copy of the book, and I'll be happy to sign it and mail it back to you. If you want to take that route and don't have my address (I think Jim and some others here do), send me a PM. Or is there some simpler way to do this that I'm not thinking of? All this is new to me.

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