Stan Getz - A Life in Jazz By, Donald L.Maggin
Bud Powell - Dance of the Infidels by Francis Paudras
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Chet Baker
Click here to buy - - As Though I Had Wings
West Coast Live
by Chet Baker, Stan Getz
I've read three books and have one coming,
dealing with the agony and destruction of drugs on great American
jazz musicians. Incredibly, these are some of the greatest
contributors and most original players to the music: Art Pepper, Stan
Getz, Miles Davis and Chet Baker. Having recently finished the Chet
Baker book, which is made up of random diary entries, I came away
perplexed as to how, in being so sick, was this artist able to
function no less create original and beautiful expressions. The diary
entries made by Baker are almost innocent sounding accounts of his
rampant drug taking.
Growing up as a poor kid from Oklahoma and later moving to Los Angeles, I sensed a nice kid quality from him as he slowly became exposed and infiltrated into the scene and begins to methodically ruin his life. Unlike the Art Pepper book, there is little focus on Baker's music in this book, it is instead random accounts of drug experiences in the United States and abroad and the troubles that were connected with it.
Today's young musicians are well schooled compared to the musicians of Baker's era. Technically, they are playing incredibly. The only criticisms coming from the Jazz Sector it that they are not playing enough of life; they don't have an original voice. What baffles me is the question: Should the life of a jazz musician be one of pain and masochistic torture to one's body and soul in order to produce the art? Are all of today's Young Lions left out in the cold because of their clean ways?
The Chet Baker Book is sad and I came away wondering why pain and agony must be prerequisites to Art?
Bud Powell - Dance of the Infidels by Francis Paudras
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