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Jazz Is
"A beautifully written, evocative tribute to an elusive art... Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Teddy Wilson, Gerry Mulligan, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, and Gato Barbieri." - Performing Arts
Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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About the author
Nat Hentoff
119 books41 followersNathan Irving "Nat" Hentoff was a historian, novelist, music critic, and syndicated columnist. As a civil libertarian and free-speech activist, he has been described by the Cato Institute—where he has been a senior fellow since 2009—as "one of the foremost authorities on the First Amendment" to the U.S. Constitution. He was a staff writer for The New Yorker for over 25 years, and was formerly a columnist for The Village Voice for over 50 years, in addition to Legal Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, and The Progressive, among others. Since 2014, he has been a regular contributor to the conservative Christian website WorldNetDaily, often in collaboration with his son Nick Hentoff.
Hentoff was a Fulbright Fellow at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1950 and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in education in 1972. The American Bar Association bestowed the Silver Gavel Award in 1980 for his columns on law and criminal justice, and five years later his undergraduate alma mater, Northeastern University, awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Law degree. While working at the Village Voice in 1995, the National Press Foundation granted him the W.M. Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism Award. He was a 1999 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary, "for his passionate columns championing free expression and individual rights," which was won by Maureen Dowd. In 2004 he became the first non-musician to be named an NEA Jazz Master by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts.
Hentoff lectured at many colleges, universities, law schools, elementary, middle and high schools, and has taught courses in journalism and the U.S. Constitution at Princeton University and New York University. He serves on the Board of Advisors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (F.I.R.E.) and is on the steering committee of the Reporters' Committee for the Freedom of the Press.
Hentoff was a Fulbright Fellow at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1950 and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in education in 1972. The American Bar Association bestowed the Silver Gavel Award in 1980 for his columns on law and criminal justice, and five years later his undergraduate alma mater, Northeastern University, awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Law degree. While working at the Village Voice in 1995, the National Press Foundation granted him the W.M. Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism Award. He was a 1999 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary, "for his passionate columns championing free expression and individual rights," which was won by Maureen Dowd. In 2004 he became the first non-musician to be named an NEA Jazz Master by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts.
Hentoff lectured at many colleges, universities, law schools, elementary, middle and high schools, and has taught courses in journalism and the U.S. Constitution at Princeton University and New York University. He serves on the Board of Advisors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (F.I.R.E.) and is on the steering committee of the Reporters' Committee for the Freedom of the Press.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 20, 2019
If you don’t know Nat, you don’t have much of jazz’s history at the ready. Nat died less than two years ago, at age 91. He wrote about jazz and did his best to keep the genre in front of the public, first in the Village Voice and later in the Wall Street Journal.
This book focuses on a handful of jazz greats and brings others in to tell a more complete story of how jazz arrived at the 1970s, fractured, complex and (for those still listening to it, rather than rock) relevant to what was happening in the world. Having said that, I will note that Hentoff did not limit himself to writing about the music but (in other books and articles) wrote about Vietnam, presidential politics, individual freedom, social rights and justice.
In this book, he teases some great observations out of his interactions with musicians. This is where Hentoff excels because there is no chasm of understanding between them and him. They speak the same language; they share many of the same values; to him they are people and friends, not just jazz musicians.
This book gives us some amazing insights into Ellington, Armstrong, Parker, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Gato Barbieri and Teddy Wilson. Here’s a sample from his Wilson piece:
“…Tatum was essentially a solo pianist, not a rhythm-section player. Fats Waller and Count Basie, on the other hand, were rhythm-section pianists, but they didn’t have Teddy Wilson’s sense of inner voices. He always had a definite, clear melodic line going on top and a powerful but controlled rhythm line on the bottom. Between top and bottom, however, there was so much going on --- harmonic colorations and continually inventive countermelodies. In one sense, the essence of what he was doing was contrapuntal, but those inner voices never detracted from the principal melody or got in the way of the swinging.”
Among the things that did not impress me were the less than stellar photographs used. Though the photographer, Bob Parent, is one of the greats, most of the few photos scattered through the book are more stock than illustrative. Parent had developed a special technique of shooting inside clubs without using flash that captured some extraordinary expressions on the musicians. That was what I had hoped for. Also, Hentoff is much better at explaining jazz than predicting where it is going. For instance, he enthusiastically notes that big band swing is on the rise and may compete with the “young crowd’s love of rock music.”
3.5* but it will stay on my shelf
This book focuses on a handful of jazz greats and brings others in to tell a more complete story of how jazz arrived at the 1970s, fractured, complex and (for those still listening to it, rather than rock) relevant to what was happening in the world. Having said that, I will note that Hentoff did not limit himself to writing about the music but (in other books and articles) wrote about Vietnam, presidential politics, individual freedom, social rights and justice.
In this book, he teases some great observations out of his interactions with musicians. This is where Hentoff excels because there is no chasm of understanding between them and him. They speak the same language; they share many of the same values; to him they are people and friends, not just jazz musicians.
This book gives us some amazing insights into Ellington, Armstrong, Parker, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Gato Barbieri and Teddy Wilson. Here’s a sample from his Wilson piece:
“…Tatum was essentially a solo pianist, not a rhythm-section player. Fats Waller and Count Basie, on the other hand, were rhythm-section pianists, but they didn’t have Teddy Wilson’s sense of inner voices. He always had a definite, clear melodic line going on top and a powerful but controlled rhythm line on the bottom. Between top and bottom, however, there was so much going on --- harmonic colorations and continually inventive countermelodies. In one sense, the essence of what he was doing was contrapuntal, but those inner voices never detracted from the principal melody or got in the way of the swinging.”
Among the things that did not impress me were the less than stellar photographs used. Though the photographer, Bob Parent, is one of the greats, most of the few photos scattered through the book are more stock than illustrative. Parent had developed a special technique of shooting inside clubs without using flash that captured some extraordinary expressions on the musicians. That was what I had hoped for. Also, Hentoff is much better at explaining jazz than predicting where it is going. For instance, he enthusiastically notes that big band swing is on the rise and may compete with the “young crowd’s love of rock music.”
3.5* but it will stay on my shelf
January 18, 2010
The most valuable aspect of this book was being able to read what jazz musicians had to say about each other and accounts of how they interacted. Sometimes I felt that Hentoff's writing was a little overinflated -- what does "searingly influential" mean, for example? -- but for the most part it was spot on. I confess to skipping the chapters on Gato Barbieri and Cecil Taylor, simply because I know very little about their music.
March 1, 2015
I've probably had this book on my shelves for twenty years, and I'm not sure why I was never quite ready to read it. It's great. First and second-hand accounts of the greats of jazz. Very well written. Immediate, informative. Provides a real feel for the players who made jazz great.
January 24, 2014
An accessible introduction to the history of jazz told in stories of some of the most influential jazz artists of the US.
March 27, 2019
A series of essays on key figures in Jazz history, interspersed with linking sections full of quotes from musicians. Hentoff seems to have known almost all of the people he talks about personally, and his writing about them carries that knowledge through the critic/jazz historian elements to provide portraits that are enthusiastic but still thoroughly human. Similar to Leonard Feather's From Satchmo to Miles, except Hentoff has fully embraced the New Thing, which means that he slips past bebop and into free jazz full of a sense of wonder - mostly it seems, via Cecil Taylor having decided that he definitely was choosing to do this rather than a charlatan who couldn't play.
August 26, 2019
Jazz Is lays out the development of Jazz. Hentoff gives short biographies of the major musicians in Jazz's development and shows how each person moved jazz in a new direction. I was surprised at Louis Armstrong's ground-breaking changes, early in his career; I was also surprised how early his career began, because I didn't think he could possibly be that old.
I'm sorry I don't remember more details. My mind doesn't usually hold onto more than I liked, or disliked, a book, and a very general idea of why.
I'm sorry I don't remember more details. My mind doesn't usually hold onto more than I liked, or disliked, a book, and a very general idea of why.
April 8, 2017
Entertaining and insightful appreciation of jazz and select artists -- mostly criticism, a bit of autobiography, and all interesting. There was little that surprised me here until the end, when Hentoff chooses to round out a survey of luminaries (Armstrong, Ellington, Holiday, Davis, Coltrane. Mingus, etc.) with essays on Cecil Taylor and Gato Barbeiri, who don't seem quite in the same league. The most unexpected delight, though, was the essay on Gerry Mulligan, which cast him in a new light (for me) and will have me listening to him more in the future.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews