ronfint Posted July 22, 2020 Share Posted July 22, 2020 I've been reading “Black Music” by Leroi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka). It is a book of essays/ reviews of jazz and jazz musicians in NYC in the 1960s. Jones' critical thinking is spot on if you think of jazz as an art form and not as soft background music. This book is especially meaningful to me since it covers a period when I was a college student in NYC and when Leroi Jones was a kind of hero to myself and many of my classmates. One nice thing about this book is that it has caused me to go back and listen to a lot of older recordings in my collection of people I don't listen to enough — Wayne Shorter, Bobby Bradford, the New York Art Quartet, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Denis Charles ... Link to comment
ronfint Posted July 22, 2020 Share Posted July 22, 2020 42 minutes ago, sphinxsix said: Thanks for your suggestion. I just love to read about jazz in those times. Will check it out. I think that you will enjoy it. The 1960s were exciting times for jazz. I wish that I had known about/ had made the effort to visit some of the places talked about — especially the loft scene. sphinxsix 1 Link to comment
Popular Post ronfint Posted July 23, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted July 23, 2020 2 hours ago, hopkins said: And you missed Coleman Hawkins 😭 Not to mention Duke Ellington at the Rainbow Grill. Must have been fun being in NYC at the time. I was living near Columbia; so the Village was a bit of a schlep. I did get there occasionally, but the famous clubs, Vanguard, 5-Spot, and the like, were expensive enough for a college kid that I didn't go often. On the other hand, the Apollo was walking distance, and I went more often. Two shows I remember well are James Brown and Patti LaBelle, not jazz, but exciting. I also really used to like the comedians who performed between the acts. sphinxsix, Solstice380 and Qhwoeprktiyns 3 Link to comment
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