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Bezig met laden... As Though I Had Wings: The Lost Memoir (1997)door Chet Baker
Books Read in 2017 (1,240) Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Alguien dijo que Chet Baker hizo tres cosas en la vida: "tocar música, amar a las mujeres y chutarse". Estas memorias agridulces nos dejan entrever sus años de juventud, su pasión por el jazz, las mujeres... y las drogas. Chet Baker, legendary musician of the California Cool jazz scene left notes about his life that his widow, Carol Baker published to portray his personality better than any one-dimensional biography could possibly create. He met and played with all the celebrated jazz musicians but his collaboration with Gerry Mulligan generated a unique style. Instead of playing identical melody lines in unison they complemented each other with counterpoint, anticipating what the other would play. The result is outstanding. Baker's life was at times heartbreaking, mostly self-inflicted via heroin, but he kept on going often losing all he owned in the process. After his trumpet was stolen in the 1960s a friend loaned, and eventually gave him, a flugelhorn that he loved and played from that time on. Listening to him playing while reading his words heightened my enjoyment of the book. Baker died mysteriously in an apparent fall in Amsterdam. Like his life, this slim book ends suddenly, leaving me longing for more. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. When Chet (first name terms seems appropriate somehow. I think Chet was that kind of guy) says, "probably less than 2 percent of the public can really hear. When I say hear, I mean follow a horn player through his ideas, and be able to understand those ideas in relation to the changes," I place myself in the more-than-98-percent category. I've got stacks of Chet's recordings and his music is some of my very favourite, but I'm not sure that I 'get' jazz. The things I like, I really enjoy listening to, but I can't say that I know what the musicians are doing, what's in their heads or hearts while they're playing, or what message they're trying to send me. I love Chet's stuff, and really like his contemporaries, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck from the'50s and '60s 'Cool Jazz' West Coast scene, but "legends" like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane leave me cold, though Alice Coltrane is stratospherically amazing in my estimation. Is my tepid response to these 'giants' just a matter of musical taste, or a lack of comprehension and feeling for the music? I'm not yet sure. Maybe my feeling for Chet and Cool Jazz is a visceral thing that resists cognitive examination and I should just let it be. Reading this book of Chet's diary entries/memoir hasn't really got me any further on. They pick up with the 16 year old Chet joining the army, then meander back and forth between his early childhood (briefly), then the late '40s, '50s and early '60s, with the barest of threads connecting each chapter. There are a couple of running motifs, of course, those being music and drugs. The entries end abruptly, as if Chet put his journal down and decided he'd had enough of that project, or probably just more concerned with the need to score some 'stuff'. While in some respecst this is thin fare, the interesting stuff cut with lists of largely unknown musicians and itineraries of place names, in others it is strong stuff where Chet tells us things we'd otherwise have no knowledge of. Is it all true? Is Chet, so often zonked or strung out, a reliable narrator? Does it matter, if this is his truth? I'm left wanting more, but this is as much as Chet wanted to give or, maybe, could give, so I just have to be satisfied with what he's supplied. More importantly, he left his music. I'm sure there's more of him in there for me to find if I can just open myself to it. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
The writings and musings of the jazz trumpet-player Chet Baker. A seminal figure in postwar jazz, Baker started his career in army bands, before meeting Charlie Parker and moving into the world of jazz, and the establishment of the infamous California Cool scene of the 1950s. His reticent interpretation of My Funny Valentine brought him instant fame, but by the 1960s his drug addiction had put his career on the line. Back fron the brink in the 1970s and 1980s, he reinvented himself and was the subject of the Bruce Weber documentary, Let's Get Lost, in 1987. He died in mysterious circumstances in 1988. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)788.92165092The arts Music Wind Instruments Brass instrumentsLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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