Goodbyes and Other Messages: A Journal of Jazz,
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Balliett, Whitney, PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press, USA, Whitney Balliett's new book contains many of the shorter pieces he has done for The New Yorker during the past ten years. (The pieces on the pianist Bill Evans and on the classic CBS television show, "The Sound of ong>Jazzong>," have not been published before.) Balliett gives brilliant final summings-up of many of the irreplaceable musicians who died in the eighties, among them Count Basie, Earl Hines, Thelonious Monk, Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughan, and Cootie Williams. But he also offers penetrating assessements of young turks ong>likeong> Michael Petrucciani, Warren Vache, Howard Alden, and Wynton Marsalis. ong>Jazzong> is passing through a recollective period, and Balliett takes long looks at the great ong>Blueong> Note, Keynote, and Commodore reissue programs, the new ong>jazzong> repertory groups, and the ambitious and wayward Grove Dictionary of ong>Jazzong>. He puts his elegant glass on a Caribbean ong>jazzong> cruise, on several different festivals, on the sad dissolution of the marvelous Gene Bertoncini-Michael Moore duo, and on the strange career of Miles Davis. And he gives us definitive essays on Bunny Berigan, Duke Ellington, John Hammond, Benny Goodman, Ben Webster, and the early lyrical ong>jazzong> writer Otis Ferguson. ong>Jazzong> fans and ong>jazzong> musicians read Balliett because of his unrivalled ability to convey in words the very sound of their music. But people who don't know beans about ong>jazzong> read him simply to relish his elegant and beautiful prose.