Rat Race Blues

[fasstrack]

I know this book is old news---but I searched for and could not find a thread on it here. I'd like comments from those who've read it.

I'm almost halfway through and almost gave up after the early chapters due to Cohen's sometimes plodding academic prose style. (For the record I'm a fan and I think he does great work. His website page on jazz in Rochester, NY is a great jazz history piece you won't see elsewhere http://www.attictoys.com/). But I'm glad I hung in.

The best chapter so far is Paris the Beautiful, where the Lionel Hampton (big band) tour of 1953 is examined up close. Hampton was a notorious cheapskate and there was dissent among the younger guys like Clifford Brown, Art Farmer, Gryce, Jimmy Cleveland. They weren't featured on the band, were paid badly, and were given other opportunities to record so they snuck out and did record dates. Hamp found out and was furious---causing tension again with the younger faction. But it was amazing to hear that Clifford Brown was involved in a physical confrontation with Hamp's road manager where a razor was pulled and Brownie's shoulder was dislocated. Quincy Jones pushed his shoulder back in. I never heard anything like this before, and Clifford's image is so angelic through the lore you can't imagine him being in a fight---much less with a blade involved.

The book can read like a long discography (much like Pettinger's Bill Evans bio How My Heart Sings) at times, but it's a worthwhile read. Gryce the person remains elusive---but maybe that's the point: he was his music.

Edited March 8, 2013 by fasstrack

[J.A.W.]

(Former?) board member Michael Fitzgerald is co-author of the book.

If I remember correctly the book has been discussed here. Weird that you couldn't find an old thread about it.

Edited March 7, 2013 by J.A.W.

[JSngry]

One of my favorite jazz bios, this one, not least of all because it's an interesting story well told.

Don't give up. The story gets real interesting from the early 1960s on.

[fasstrack]

No thread turned up in the first 3 pages of my search results. Mr. Fitzgerald did the discography, and I presume part of the research. I think they did a great job despite my criticisms. Gigi Gryce was hardly a sexy, romantic, figure a la self-destructive charismatics Bird or Chet Baker, so this has to be about the music and a chronicle of the scene at the time. Naturally the tone is going to be academic. I'm glad Gryce's clean-living ways precluded a bio like James Gavin's handsome-hearthrob-to-scarecrow-junkie Deep in a Dream (Chet Baker bio, and a book I truly resented). I'm just getting to the part where he sets up Melotone publishing. I'm sure the recounting of the heat Gryce, as a black musician caught from record cos. etc. for controlling his royalties and teaching other jazz musicians to do so will provide the real drama here. Sshh-don't spoil it for me...

Edited March 7, 2013 by fasstrack

[JSngry]

Yeah, you're at the part where it gets really interesting. Enjoy!

[jlhoots]

I read it too several years ago.

I liked it.

[mikeweil]

It's a thoroughly researched book, and a labour of love - don't forget my fellow discographer, Noal Cohen's, substantial contribution to the book! Theupdated Gryce discography can be found on his website. It's a good read, and sheds particular insight on musicians' struggle for royalties etc. in the 1950's and 1960's.

[romualdo]

I remember reading the thread here - it prompted me to search for the book & eventually obtained it from a member of this board

Didn't find it heavy going - enjoyed it, especially the later years

Detailed discography which gets updated (as required) on Noal Cohen's site

[marcello]

Noal is a good friend and I have the book, of course.

Noal's professional background is that of a chemist, so he brings some of that discipline to his work.

Not a bad thing.

He's a exacting discographer.

[bertrand]

Exacting discographers are the only kind of discographers who should be allowed to compile discographies.

One of my two or three favorite jazz books, period. Nothing plodding about the writing in the least.

Bertrand.

[brownie]

I know this book is old news---but I searched for and could not find a thread on it here.

an earlier thread:

One of the essential book on jazz!

[sidewinder]

Yeah, it's really good - a very professional piece of work. A book that I must give a re-read !

[fasstrack]

He's from Rochester and came up with the Mangione brothers and my friend Benny Salzano (tenor saxophonist and Russian studies expert). Very interesting guy.

Noal is a good friend and I have the book, of course.

Noal's professional background is that of a chemist, so he brings some of that discipline to his work.

Not a bad thing.

He's a exacting discographer.

I don't understand why when I select 'quote' my responses post as part of what the person I responded to said. E.g. the above response to Marcello. It's confusing and frustrating

[marcello]

Strange!

[JSngry]

Very strange!

Strange!

[Peter Friedman]

I read this book a few years ago and thought it to be one of the best jazz biographies out there.

I did not find it a bit "plodding".

[fasstrack]

I take back the 'plodding' remark, since it seems to have offended. I'm getting a lot of information and enjoyment from this book and have nothing but respect for the authors. I will observe that books of this type-the subtitle is 'the musical life of Gigi Gryce'-function as much as discography as biography, (in this case more discography since Gryce the man left little of a 'paper trail' to piece together a righteous portrait). It's inherently a different type of biography than, say, Robin G. Kelly's Monk book, Monk's life and personality having been such fodder for dramatic reportage. When a book takes the approach Cohen and Fitzgerald do here there is an inherent danger of the pace slowing down with descriptions of all the minutae of every solo of every record date. Maybe that's what felt 'plodding' at times. But this book, taken as a work of great scholarship, I nonetheless have gotten much out of reading. And I regret using a word that offends either the readers or authors of such a fine work.

[mjzee]

He's from Rochester and came up with the Mangione brothers and my friend Benny Salzano (tenor saxophonist and Russian studies expert). Very interesting guy.

Noal is a good friend and I have the book, of course.

Noal's professional background is that of a chemist, so he brings some of that discipline to his work.

Not a bad thing.

He's a exacting discographer.

I don't understand why when I select 'quote' my responses post as part of what the person I responded to said. E.g. the above response to Marcello. It's confusing and frustrating

Make sure where you start typing (where your cursor is) is below the tan box that contains the post you're quoting.

[Big Beat Steve]

I take back the 'plodding' remark, since it seems to have offended. ... When a book takes the approach Cohen and Fitzgerald do here there is an inherent danger of the pace slowing down with descriptions of all the minutae of every solo of every record date. Maybe that's what felt 'plodding' at times. But this book, taken as a work of great scholarship, I nonetheless have gotten much out of reading. And I regret using a word that offends either the readers or authors of such a fine work.

As well ...

Never mind the "offended" problem by using the word "plodding" IMHO. First of all, I cannot see much of an "offended" attitude in the replies of those who praise the book here. Anyway, you are entitled to your opinion. Opinions differ, so do assessments of works of "literature". Isn't this quite natural?

And honestly (and totally P. in-C. ), in order to feel "offended" on a level such as this where the entire "crime" consists in using a qualifier such as "plodding", IMHO (again) it takes a real determination and zeal to allow oneself to be "offended" in order to be able to feel "offended" at all.

In short, the use of the sentiment of being "offended" seems to be overinflated anyway these days (maybe to quiet dissenters, who knows? - "I feel offended by what you say, so thou shalt nevermore reiterate what thou just said and I shall therfore be free from any obligation of having to refute your statements by facts" - A bit of an easy way out in any "discussion", I feel ... ).

So much for that, as for that "plodding" feel of being overwhelmed by the focus being extensively (maybe too extensively) on the minutest details of recordings that a given artist (and subject of said biography) left behind, I for one do understand your feelings and I tend to agre to a certain extent. Maybe because I am a non-musician (just an interested listener). You being a musician and therefore possibly be better equipped to make something of such analyses, I'd figure there is a point to your judgment.

And aren't there many books like this?

Case in point: "Infatuation - The Music and Life of Theodore Fats Navarro" by Petersen and Rehak. There the music really is dissected almost to the tiniest atom. And though I have almost all of the released key recordings examined it is extremely tough listening closely enough to make something of ALL the analyses. So I must admit so far I've skipped a good deal of those analyses - and yet I don't regret having bought it. I tend to regard it as a sort of "commented discography" to be pulled out when I feel like spinning Fats' Savoy or BN recordings, etc., at length.

Edited March 9, 2013 by Big Beat Steve

[fasstrack]

I mean giving some highlights and focusing on the more important dates leaves room for the reader to listen to the music and draw his own conclusions, make his own analyses. And do I really need to that (p. 248) 'Gryce and (Ray)Copeland worked at the Big George Restaurant in Corona, Queens, in February..when the real point is that the Jazz Lab broke up after Donald Byrd quit the group? It makes a book too congested with unimportant details. I would've preferred more detail on the Monk's Music session-way more important than some little gig in Queens with a sub on trumpet. Anyway the main reason I wanted to read the book was to the story of how/why Gryce left the music business, how pressure from the big boys b/c of his publishing activities-or how his Islamic faith factored in. That part is coming up..

I

Edited March 11, 2013 by fasstrack

[robertoart]

It's double posted again fasstrack

[J.A.W.]

It's double posted again fasstrack

He obviously felt the need to emphasize his points

Edited March 9, 2013 by J.A.W.

[robertoart]

It's double posted again fasstrack

He obviously felt the need to emphasize his points

I thought these things were meant to be smart phones

[J.A.W.]

It's double posted again fasstrack

He obviously felt the need to emphasize his points

I thought these things were meant to be smart phones

[Head Man]

It's double posted again fasstrack

He obviously felt the need to emphasize his points

I thought these things were meant to be smart phones

Only as smart as their users, I guess.........

Edited March 9, 2013 by Head Man