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New Peter Leitch Autobiography


John Tapscott

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Not reading it yet, but just ordered it (to be released next week). I really like Peter Leitch and I've followed his career/recordings ever since seeing live him in his struggling days in Toronto circa 1980.

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Here's the write up from his website - looks very interesting ( at least to me)

Off the Books: A Jazz Life

Coincidental with the CD release is the publication of Peter Leitch’s memoir Off the Books: A Jazz Life by Vehicule Press in Montreal. Slated for summer release in Canada, September launch in the U.S., in it the author recounts the in vivid detail a life lived in search of excellence in music and art, learning his craft on the bandstand in the days before jazz education, while battling depression and drug addiction. His depiction of the Montreal of his youth reveals a long-gone vibrant club scene in that city. Peter’s moves, first to Toronto in 1977 and then to his present home , New York City, in 1982 are also recounted in detail. There is a great deal of humor in some of his recollections and observations, and more than a few hard truths leavened with bits of absurdist fantasy.

Also ordered Peter's new CD release referenced above:

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  • 8 months later...

I just finished this book, and PL is "not going to go quietly".

He is one of the few world class jazz musicians to lay down the truth, as he sees it.

The book doesn't get really interesting until PL comes over to the US; then PL unloads some of the more controversial shit.

He talks about the race issue in jazz in NYC, and said that when he first came to NYC, most of the white jazz cats would "look right through him", because he didn't have the "music school, old boy network behind him."

When he worked, toured and recorded with the great black quartet he had of John Hicks, Ray Drummond and Marvin "Smitty" Smith, white musicians said to him, "Why are you working with those black guys? They're not gonna hire you."
PL answered them, "Well, you're not hiring me! Goddamn!"

He then laced into the clueless jazz critics and journalists with a suggestion that musicians should have polls on them, the way they have polls on us.
The categories he makes up are so hilarious, it's worth buying the book just for that. I won't spoil it.

He talks about being named the music director of the "Guitars Play Mingus Group"

by Mingus' widow, and then finding out that the one guitarist who wasn't a good fit for the group, Larry Coryell (who couldn't read the parts, and was playing way too loud), was being paid more than everyone else.

PL complained to Sue Mingus, and she replied, "Well, he made a record with Charles."
PL replied, "Yeah, and it was the worst record Charles ever made!"

She thought for a minute, and replied, "That's what Charles said."

He then took on the whole the early 90s, Wynton Marsalis "Young,Gifted and Black syndrome", talking about how the corporate record label support went to black musicians under the age of 25, who "were still in the early or transitional stages of their development, and were about as ready to make a major label record as (he) was ready to fly to Mars. Maybe not as ready!"

He later talked about being hired in 2005 by Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at JALC, and said the gig paid so little that he couldn't hire a respectable trio, and played the gig with just a bass player for a week.

He later mentioned how he doesn't use electronic effects, because of their tendency to take away one's individual voice and personality.
He said listening to Pat Metheny and Mike Stern, he thought, "If you're going to use that much digital reverb or delay, you might just as well have a lobotomy! The digital effects, especially the delay, seemed to obscure the attack of the note, which somehow impeded the forward motion of the music."
He did say that he had no problem with it on non-jazz music.

Finally, he talks about how he teaches students the things that jazz academia doesn't teach- jazz esthetics (sic?).

There's obviously a lot more covered in the book, but I'd thought I'd just cover some of the more controversial aspects.

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  • 3 years later...

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