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During the talk you heard, I take it?

The article makes a lot of sense in light of the way Kelley presents certain things in his book, but I can see how it would be largely "?" if you don't have access to a copy. her point about Bellevue is very interesting, in that it's very hard to believe that there was *no* diagnosis made during the course of a 3-week hospitalization. I think there's a gaping hole there (in Kelley's presentation of it), because the docs had to have made some kinds of at least semi-conclusive comments and observations. she's also dead on in terms of the way people used to get labeled as "paranoid schizophrenic" (and variations thereof) in the 50s, 60s and even into the 70s. (No matter how inaccurate the label, it was a common catchall at that time...) for the sake of clarity, here's the graph in question (Schlesinger): * But hey... historical and biographical research is largely full of holes that can't be filled. Even though Monk's life is far more closely documented than would have been the case had he lived in the 19th-early 20th century, there's still - inevitably - a lot of guesswork there for anyone wanting to write about him. (or most anyone else, for that matter!)

I bet the things you're talking about are one of the main reasons people are posting in this thread. What you're saying is very true of - and for - me as well, Larry. Monk's music has so many "Aha!" moments in it... so much surprise, and so much wit, too.

Come on down! I wish she would, but I bet she's getting a lot of email right now due to the AAJ piece... might take a while to get through all of that!

Exactly! fwiw, I've already said that I don't necessarily agree with everything Judith S. wrote in the AAJ piece. I'd prefer to talk with her about that, rather than getting into some big digression here. (of course, it would be nifty to have her posting in this thread.)

Harold, thanks for the info. - sounds really good!

Part of the problem (re. differences between her 1st album and others) is that Suba - her producer - died. And nobody else has been able to recreate the feel/sound that he came up with for her 1st album. OK, you guys are talking me into those recent albums of Paula's... will give one or the other a go.

* Last night I watched The Jazz Baroness - liked it a great deal. Nica's niece (the filmmaker) has a nice web site, with some interesting sound clips.

As for people supposedly not putting stock in the notion that "musicians and artists are crazy people" anymore, well... Kay Redfield Jamison won a McArthur Foundation grant for advocating just that, in her book Touched with Fire. She's widely cited as an expert on all things related to the arts and mental illness - there was even a JazzTimes cover story on her ideas published a number of years ago. I think Judith S. has been very much on the money in her analyses of Jamison's work. (Several of them can be found on the AAJ site; one is a rebuttal of the JT cover story.) A lot of people - in my experience, at least - tend to accept Jamison's ideas without really examining them carefully. The thing is, there's some good (if older) literature on the subject of "mad artists" out there that covers similar ground, but far more carefully. (Like Born Under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists, by the late Rudolf and Margot Wittkower. Schlesinger cites them, but the book has been around for over 40 years and is something just about anyone who studies art history - which I did - ends up reading at some point or another.) To be fair to Jamison, she may be right in guessing that some artists, writers, composers (etc.) were bipolar, but I think that one of her biggest limitations is that she sees everything through that lens. (She is herself bipolar - see her book An Unquiet Mind for more.) fwis, anyway...

Hey, thanks, although I have to say my tastes don't run much to pop, so it's kind of hard for me to give you a good answer on that. But you might check out this thread, for starters...

I know Judith and while I don't necessarily agree with everything she writes (in this article or elsewhere), I think she knows what she's talking about. (From multiple angles.) And she's absolutely on target re. Kelley's misunderstanding of terminology. Seems like some commenters would be better off starting a thread about her article over on AAJ... where she can respond directly. (It would be fairer to her, imo.) ** It's possible to leave comments on the article itself (as opposed to on the AAJ board), so...

I somehow missed this, too - very sad news. My impression of her singing isn't that she was "cool" in her delivery - if anything, I think the emotion was always there, in her interpretations. "Understated" is probably a better word to describe her.

Well, but... Baby Consuelo and Os Novos Baianos were more on a rock/MPB tip, with strong influences from forró, frevo and some other northeastern Brazilian musical styles. (One of my Brazilian friends says that they were the 1st band to combine those styles with rock, though other people were doing similar things back in the late 60s-early 70s.) Nice clip - dates back to the early 70s, most likely. fwiw, Céu's name means "sky." (There's another youngish MPB singer named "Céumar," aka "sky sea." She's said that her parents were hippies; I bet that's true of Céu's as well.) * I have to say that Céu's music leaves me feeling fairly indifferent. She's good, but there are better young singers out there who aren't getting half the PR she is (outside of Brazil, at least). Her stuff seems to be mainstream MPB, to my ears - well-made, but a bit too "pop" for my taste.

I've gotta agree with you, JS. Carpe diem indeed! (I'm a year younger than you; I think we all start becoming more aware of our mortality once we hit middle age...) * Re. the bio. itself, am enjoying it very much, while simultaneously feeling a bit KO'd at all the background research Kelley did for the opening chapters alone - the background on the San Juan Hill neighborhood is great. He's a very diligent researcher, and I think anyone who reads this book will be hard-pressed to find much fault with what he did. (Re. the drug abuse, etc., I honestly think more detail would have put the book in tabloid territory, and appreciate Kelley's discretion.)

I'm so sorry to hear this, TTK. Losing a family member is tough, no matter whether they're animal or human.

Maybe. But the tux and/or black pants/skirt and white shirt thing actually makes it fairly easy for musicians to have a few things in the closet that are "work clothes." I've always liked the idea, and actually like wearing the clothes. Black is very practical... and it doesn't show stains or marks in the way that most other colors do. Putting on "gig clothes" tends to get me int a frame of mind where I'm thinking mainly about the music I'm going to be playing... which isn't a bad thing at all, for me personally. (I should add that I've never had to deal with full-dress formal attire, which means that I've never had to spend the money on a women's "monkey suit" equivalent, though I have found some nicely-tailored tux jackets in thrift shops that have worked well for theatre gigs where I've been seated near a stage runway and need to be heard but not seen...) I also wonder if a lot of the formalwear thing is more about custom than about ideology. My guess is that that's often the case, but it seems that I have a slightly different perspective on it, overall.

Agreed (for the most part), Allen. These things are (imo) intertwined in ways that we'll never fully understand, or figure out. Though by no means would I limit this to musicians or people involved in popular music. Still, a biographer is making leaps of faith when going beyond actual data. (Speculation being human and all that.)

I bet Kelley would absolutely agree re. Monk's music. But that's not the focus of his book, after all. He wrote a "straight" biography, not a critical examination or survey of Monk's music in the context of his life. To me, it's kind of a foregone conclusion that actual biography doesn't allow much room for discussion of creative works, no matter who's making them, or in what medium they exist. Bios. of writers have a little more room for that, but not much. It's always wise to have stuff by the person being "biographied" on hand when reading, I think - whether it's recordings by Monk, poems by Hughes, reproductions of Rembrandt's paintings - whatever. As for the Kitty Kelly-like approach you mentioned (re. Leslie Gourse), that's really not Robin D.G. Kelley's aim, imo.

I agree with you guys, but at the same time, believe that there are serious ethical dilemmas facing any decent biographer, unless their subject has been dead for 500 years or so. (Questions of not wanting to abuse the Monk family's trust have got to be a major thing, for Kelley and the publishers, too.) At the same time, this isn't a bio. of Bud, Nica, or even of Nellie Monk, so.... But, by way of contrast, it's possible to go too far in the other direction (cf. Arnold Rampersad's multi-volume bio. of Langston Hughes, where he scrupulously avoids any mention of Hughes' sexual orientation, along with some other important things about Hughes' life - though it may well be that he chose the right course there, given the time in which he was writing and the lack of clarity about certain details).

IIRC, this was clearly stated by T.S. and others in Straight No Chaser...

I haven't played out in a while, but ... I have to say that I'm not a big fan of people looking sloppy. (Though much depends on the venue.) it's not that hard to run a comb or brush through your hair, or to put on a halfway-decent looking pair of pants, shirt, skirt - whatever. (My compromise, re. jeans, is normally to wear black ones that are pretty new - they usually look black in stage lighting.) I do think performers (and imo, anyone who's on a stage or a bandstand is one) owe an audience some respect. I realize some of you might not agree, but hey, this is opinion, not a rule. Always wise to have a spare pair of khakis and black pants, white shirt/blouse, I think. You never know when you might need them.

I think this is the rule rather than the exception now, unfortunately. btw, I'm not Canadian, but i used to live close to the Ontario border and picked up a few quirks of speech that way. * You doubters can always check this thread on editing/proof-reading horror stories...

Well, OK.... I'm seeing my own equivalents of "solfeggio" now that I'm a bit further into the book. Not sure I understand the carelessness on either Kelley's part, or that of his readers and editor, but then, I *know* it's not easy to deal with things as they are in the publishing world. A number of years ago, Oxford U. Press issued a revised edition of a book by someone I know, but the "revisions" weren't really as stated. They said they would not pay to re-typset the original book, so all errors/typos in the main body were reproduced verbatim. The only "revision" was in OUP's wanting a couple of new chapters to tack on at the end - which were printed in a different font than the rest of the book. This kind of thing isn't - as far as I know - uncommon.

BTW - I like the way you used cursive on the word "read"! or maybe "italics," eh? Yes, I agree that "solfeggio" (in book) is wrong, annoying, etc. But.

Proofing (etc.) is very hard, as Allen and others have said. Try writing (even 500-word reviews) and you'll see... it's so easy to miss your own typos, etc. (I do it all the time.) I also think it's a bit weird to criticize someone for one mistake when (here it comes) you haven't even read the danged book. Kelley's bio. is a tome - 100 pp. of endnotes, just for starters. The amount of research he did is just unbelievable - I ca see why it took him 14 years to research and write this thing. So, could we get back to actually discussing content?