May 16: Laurie Pepper - Why I Stuck with a Junkie Jazzman

[AllenLowe]

"It is a masterpiece of spontaneous bebop prosody that Kerouac could only dream of."

that is strong stuff; will end up on the book jacket. Are you sure you don't want to amend it?

[sgcim]

That will be the live recordings made by Bob Andrews in 1952 at the Surf Club in Hollywood and releaed on the Xanadu label in 1976 and 1980. The albums under Art Pepper are The Early Show (Xanadu 108) and The Late Show (Xanadu 117).

There's also one as Shorty Rogers & Art Pepper Popo (Xanadu 148) which was recorded in October 1951 at The Lighthouse.

Thanks, mucho.

Great stuff!

[medjuck]

Just finished the book. It's really good as is the music download. Her website has streaming access to much of the music she talks about (not just music by Art).

[mspepper]

Well worth a read if you want to find out even more about Art Peeper's amazing life, after reading Straight Life this gives a completely different perspective of the events in Arts life and for me its makes Art's music seem even more incredible when you read about the conditions it was recorded under.

Laurie has done an amazing job with the book and its complete honesty may prove shocking to some people. The only thing I wish is that a bit more effort had been taken in reproducing the photos as their reproduction in the book is not great (maybe something that can be fixed in future editions)

Sorry about the photos, folks. The reproductions REALLY distressed me when I first saw proofs; they looked like gray soup. So I punched them up. A lot. I was informed that to properly reproduce a black and white photo with a full range of tones you need to use a COLOR press. And coated paper. Which is too pricey for any of us. I researched it. I mean, do you want to pay $100 a copy? Didn't think so. The photos in the EBOOK look REALLY good, and some are in color. Check it out on Amazon. I think it's about $9, ditto iBooks, Nook, etc.

[Big Beat Steve]

Sorry but this can't be true just like that.

That is, unless printing on non-coated paper (which was the standard type of paper for decades in book printing) has RETROGRADED immensely in recent times.

A look at some examples of notable (and comparable) picture-heavy books will confirm this.

Example 1: Keepnews/Grauer's "Pictorial History of Jazz" which saw several editions and printings through the 50s and 60s. Early printings from the US were pretty atrocious at times. I remember comparing a 1955 US printing (printed in Yugoslavia IIRC) to a c.1962 UK-edition (printed in Czechoslovakia IIRC) and the 1955 edition really was pretty bad. You can see the difference at a glance because most of the contents are strictly the same - many shades of grey present in the 1962 edition just turned into blotched-out black in that 1955 printing (there may have been other early printings, though, which turned out better). A UK edition from the later 60s that I have is again pretty OK for the state of the art of the times. The paper was and felt the same in each case. Certainly not coated paper. So the problem is not a new one.

Example 2: The photo reproduction quality in this book ...

http://www.amazon.com/Swing-Era-Scrapbook-Teenage-1936-1938/dp/0810854163

is pretty abysmal. Many photos are way too dark, no contrast, far too little gray shadings. Non-coated paper - OK, but this ....??

And this even though the book comes from renowned Scarecrow Press and isn't that cheap.

Example 3: OTOH, this book here ...

http://www.amazon.com/Country-Music-Originals-Legends-Lost/dp/0195325095/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1-spell&qid=1411385071

in its orignal hardcover edition is printed on non-coated paper too and overall the whole presentation and "feel" of the book very much has a "vintage" (circa 1960s) touch to it. (Intentionally so??) But the photo reproduction quality really isn't bad at all. In fact, I'd consider it very, very satisfactory. Sky-high above the black blotches in example 2 above.

So it CAN be done ....

Even without being a printing expert, it looks to me that care taken by the printers (including the prepress stage) is the prime ingredient in coming up with good results.

Edited September 22, 2014 by Big Beat Steve

[Teasing the Korean]

I read Straight Life over several weeks one winter. I was reading it on the subway one morning, bundled up, and seated between two obese women who were also bundled up. It was one of those uncomfortable urban winter subway moments where suddenly it is hot as hell and you want to rip off your clothes and run out into the snow. So I'm reading the part where Art is playing with, I think, Buddy Rich in the late 60s, and he finds he has a distended liver. All of a sudden, my ears start ringing, and I break out into a cold sweat. I thought I was going to faint. I got out at the next stop and just sat on the bench for about 10 minutes, and then got on another train when I'd gotten my bearings.

It was the one time in my life that literature made me physically ill, although the two bundled obese women I was sandwiched between may have played a role. It was probably a confluence of everything.

Edited September 24, 2014 by Teasing the Korean

[JSngry]

Are you sure it wasn't something to do with Buddy Rich?

[Teasing the Korean]

Now that you mention it...

Oh, and you're FIRED!