Afbeelding van de auteur.
23 Werken 976 Leden 11 Besprekingen

Over de Auteur

John Szwed is the John M. Musser Professor of Anthropology, African American Studies, Music, and American Studies at Yale University.

Bevat de naam: John Szwed

Werken van John F. Szwed

So What: The Life of Miles Davis (2002) 159 exemplaren
After Africa (1983) 10 exemplaren
Folksongs and their makers (1979) — Medewerker — 10 exemplaren
Black America 9 exemplaren
So what Miles Davis élete (2005) 1 exemplaar

Tagged

Algemene kennis

Leden

Besprekingen

I grew up in Baltimore. Sun Ra was based in Philly during alotof of my adult yrs there. He played in Baltimore fairly often. There was a club on N Charles St called the Famous Ballroom. Sun Ra & the Arkestra played there. It was dark, w/ one of those "disco balls" - those multi-faceted things that spin & have light reflecting off them. It wasn't a big place but the stage cd manage to hold the Arkestra. I have a very fond memory (that must be around 30 yrs old by now) of sitting at the Ballroom at a round table witnessing the Arkestra playing in full force - w/ dancers & whatnot. At the end, Sun Ra came out into the audience (it was up-close & personal) leading a snake-dance & tilting a "rain-stick" by people's ears so they cd hear the sand pouring from one end to the other of the bamboo tube. He did it to me. If I didn't love him for 10 zillion other reasons I think I might just love him for that alone. They sold records at the concerts - white ones w/ hand-done covers of their more 'far-out' stuff & black ones of the more traditional stuff. Lardy knows I was dirt-poor in those days but I still managed to buy one of each - as I recall, they weren't that expensive. What an incredible person! What incredible music! What incredible philosophy! What incredible imagination! What incredible humor! When I think of all the sadness & trouble that the people I respect have gone thru it makes me ever so angry. Sun Ra, I wish there were a paradise for you to go to where yr immense creativity cd flourish even more than it did on this shithole of a human cesspit that some people have the audacity to call "society". If ever a person has deserved bliss in my bk, it's certainly you & yrs!!… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
tENTATIVELY | 2 andere besprekingen | Apr 3, 2022 |
Lady Sings the Blues Extended
Review of the Penguin Books paperback (2016) of the original Viking hardcover (2015)

February 2022 became a Billie Holiday discovery month for me, starting from when I first listened to the podcast Billie Was a Black Woman (2021), which was excellent on the present day inspiration and influence of the singer, but had very little biographical content. That led me to read the interview collection Billie Holiday: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (2019), her own autobiography Lady Sings the Blues 50th Anniversary Edition (orig. 1956) and now this combination biography and musical analysis book by John Szwed.

The Musician and the Myth is best read as an addendum to Holiday's autobiography as it is not a complete biography in itself. It does provide some excellent context and clarification about the censored passages in the 1956 book. These were primarily due to Hollywood lawyers and agents who threatened to sue if their clients names were left in the book. There were also passages about Holiday's bisexuality which were deemed to be too revealing for that era. It is actually somewhat surprising that a complete uncensored edition has not appeared in the present day, as Szwed is able to quote entire lengthy passages of the original censored content, so it presumably all exists in the vaults of the original publisher Viking (or those of whomever owns that imprint these days).

Szwed divides his material into a front half discussing the "myth" and then a very detailed back half on the "musician". The latter isn't a full sessionography, but it does provide quite a lot of information about which other bands and session musicians Holiday worked with over her career. It breaks this down into what are now the conventionally accepted 3 periods of Holiday's recordings: roughly the early Columbia (& associated labels) years of the 1930s, the middle Commodore & Decca recordings of the 1940s and finally the Verve recordings of the 1950's. Szwed makes a case that the final 2 recordings for Columbia constitute a 4th period in themselves, regardless of how brief. This is especially so for the controversial Lady in Satin (1958) with its mostly non-jazz string arrangements, yet which many listeners still regard as their favourite Holiday album.

Soundtrack
These were the main Billie Holiday albums that I was listening to while reading Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth:
1. Billie Holiday - 5 Original Albums A bargain priced 5 CD box set of 5 original LPs from 1956 to 1958 in mini-LP cardboard sleeves including original liner notes and session musician details.

Box set cover image sourced from Discogs.

2. Lady in Satin: The Centennial Edition (orig 1958/reissue 2015), the second last album in an extended 3 CD edition with previously unreleased tracks and takes. Released to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Billie Holiday's birth in 1915.

Disc image sourced from Discogs.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
alanteder | 1 andere bespreking | Feb 26, 2022 |
"His first UK performance... was one of the most spectacular concerts ever held in this country. Not spectacular so much in terms of effects, which were low on budget but high on strange atmosphere; spectacular in terms of presenting a complete world view, so occult, so other, to all of us in the audience that the only possible responses were outright dismissal or complete intuitive empathy with a man who had chosen to discard all possibilities of a normal life, even a normal jazz life, in favor of an unremitting alien identity." -David Toop

"Don't have nothin' to do with that. Stand your ground." -Sun Ra

Such an exciting, literate, well-researched and beautiful biography.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
uncleflannery | 2 andere besprekingen | May 16, 2020 |
The quintessential Billie Holiday biography that focuses on the musician, not the tragic life.
 
Gemarkeerd
AntonioPaola | 1 andere bespreking | Jan 27, 2018 |

Lijsten

Prijzen

Misschien vindt je deze ook leuk

Gerelateerde auteurs

Statistieken

Werken
23
Leden
976
Populariteit
#26,389
Waardering
3.8
Besprekingen
11
ISBNs
63
Talen
3

Tabellen & Grafieken