Jazz Books in Dutch

[Niko]

The dictionary may actually be my favorite of the two books... not everything is great about the alphabetical arrangement but it guarantees digestability, it's in French after all... key figures like Pelzer, Fud Candrix, Philip Catherine or Michel Herr get about four pages and many other artists including quite a few smaller names get their due as well, sometimes in only half a column, sometimes more...

https://www.editionsmardaga.com/shop/dictionnaire-du-jazz-a-bruxelles-et-en-wallonie-22980

[Niko]

Finally, regarding gossip about Pelzer and his pharmacy, the other two Baker biographies by Ruddick and Gavin have plenty of detail (as can be seen on archive.org), things did go wrong there for over thirty years... but that doesn't necessarily make them better Baker biographies...

Edited July 27 by Niko

[Niko]

On 7/27/2026 at 2:01 PM, Big Beat Steve said:

Interesting to read your comments, Niko. 
So the Baker bio apparently is one of some renown even compared to others. But the author fell into the "Luik" trap too? I'll cut him some slack there because as the author he may have taken things for granted that he shouldn't (the name of that town commonly used in the English-speaking world is "Liège" - never mind if some out there pronounce it like "Leech" or in other strange ways ). Let's hope he did better in other respects where cross-cultural/cross-national differences would have to be taken into account for a GOOD and fitting translation.  At any rate, I'll keep your endorsement of that biography in mind when I get around to reading it (hoping the German translator did not make too awkward a job of it).

 

regarding de Valk's books, I realized a few days back that Simon Spillett is blogging again, including a fairly negative review of de Valk's Webster bio, link. Now, curiously, in the opening post to this thread, I claim that I know de Valk's Webster book... no memories of reading it though, maybe I meant that I know about its existence... I do recognize some of the things Spillett mentions also in the Baker book - de Valk is fairly direct in his language, and he does make an attempt to classify Baker's discography into more and less worthy albums... it doesn't bother me at all, even if I disagree a little bit here and there... then again: maybe this approach makes more sense for Baker with his huge and uneven discography than for Webster... I actually want to read the Webster book now to see whether I share some of  Spillett's concerns... 

 

[Big Beat Steve]

Though I haven't read that book Spillett's review of the Webster biography is an interesting one and presents a lot of "food for thought". 

Opinions on how to present and (eventually) judge the life of Ben Webster will certainly differ, but strangely a lot of the examples that Mr Spillett mentions (apparently to highlight the inappropriateness of the author's portrayal of Webster) somehow echo the image of Ben Webster that transpires from the Don Byas "Sax Expat" biography by Con Chapman who does dwell on the not always so serene encounters and cooperations between Webster and Byas in the 60s. Was Chapman being just unsympathetic too?

"How much of a biographer's own voice is necessary within their work" is indeed a question many biographers ought to answer for themselves (preferably BEFORE writing the projected biography ). Certainly the author should not put himself constantly between the subject and the reader. However, this can be tantamount to walking a tightrope. Because if a biographer refrains from making his own voice heard too clearly the reviewers who will fault him for not providing enough of his own evaluation of the man and the music will only be a computer keyboard away, and he might just as likely be accused of only compiling and rehashing material previously written elsewhere. (It all has happened ...)

As for whether a biographer writing about a musician or band should be a musician himself, it all depends ... If in doubt, being a musician certainly helps, but it just seems to me that many excellent musicians usually are not particularly at ease with WORDS at any length, particularly if called upon to put them in writing. Art Hodes, Bill Crow and certain others are notable exceptions, but countless "oral histories" and autobiographies that even after having been "ghosted over" still read fairly "pedestrian" (certainly intentionally and understandably so in the name of down-to-earth authenticity but still stylistically ho-hum in the long run) are examples enough. So IMO you just cannot generalize there. 

However, Mr Spillett's claim that "de Valk’s first language is Dutch not English and consequently we’re reading a translation, a switch which suggests to me that what is clunky, awkward and poorly reasoned in a second tongue can only be much, much worse in the first" could not be farther from the truth. Assuming that De Valk translated his own Dutch original (as he did with his Chet Baker biography - as you said earlier, Niko), he may have been doing himself a disservice in that he may not be the consummate translator and possibly was blind to any weak spots of his OWN Dutch text. Which makes this an atypical case. Musician or music biographies should not be impossibly hard to translate well into English if you KNOW your craft (otherwise you can and will ruin a lot of what was good in the original text). Other target languages are more difficult (German is one of them, for example, and I've read far more mediocre and awkward translations of musician biographies than really good ones - into German - so am sensitive to that problem). But Mr Spillett's generalization that the weaknesses in the "second language" can only have been worse in the "first" (original) language means he is getting pretty far out on a limb. In an ideal world the translator will spot and eliminate most errors in the original text, but how often does this happen in the real world? And OTOH will he be immune from falling into traps of misunderstanding certain finer points and nuances elsewhere in the original text??

Like you, Niko, in the light of Simon Spillett's review I am almost curious enough to look for a (nice-price) copy of that book myself. 

 

 

 

Edited August 11 by Big Beat Steve

[Niko]

Also curious what you will say after reading the Chet book... de Valk is a bass player whether that makes him a musician I leave for others to judge  like I said, I really like the Chet bio... (off topic, now getting started with John Chilton's Coleman Hawkins bio after I really liked his Bechet book, imho that book is exemplary in terms of striking a balance between music and anecdotes, and also regarding the amount of own opinion)

[Big Beat Steve]

22 minutes ago, Niko said:

(off topic, now getting started with John Chilton's Coleman Hawkins bio after I really liked his Bechet book, imho that book is exemplary in terms of striking a balance between music and anecdotes, and also regarding the amount of own opinion)

My, aren't you nasty about Valk's status as a musician being open to debate because he is a bassist? 

You mean the Bechet bio is "exemplary" in striking the right balance between music and anecdotes and the author's own opinion? I tend to agree, though I am only about two thirds through the book. 
"The Song of the Hawk" is on my "to read" list too, and I'll probably tackle it BEFORE the "Saxophone Colossus" bio (a "fathers and sons" chronology thing, I guess ). 

As for the Chet baker bio, its time will come too. But when ...? German translations tend not to make me go overboard in excitement, but regardless of that "Luik" blunder I'll be glad to be proven wrong eventually. 

[Niko]

2 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

My, aren't you nasty about Valk's status as a musician being open to debate because he is a bassist? 

You mean the Bechet bio is "exemplary" in striking the right balance between music and anecdotes and the author's own opinion? I tend to agree, though I am only about two thirds through the book. 
"The Song of the Hawk" is on my "to read" list too, and I'll probably tackle it BEFORE the "Saxophone Colossus" bio (a "fathers and sons" chronology thing, I guess ). 

As for the Chet baker bio, its time will come too. But when ...? German translations tend not to make me go overboard in excitement, but regardless of that "Luik" blunder I'll be glad to be proven wrong eventually. 

Yes, that was the usual silliness about bass players... I even have a Chet tribute album (led by trumpeter Edu Ninck Blok) where de Valk plays bass next to drummer John Engels... Just got it off the shelf to play again... and yes, that's what I meant re the Bechet book, still struggling with his music but the book is excellent...