At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene

For more than half a century, Hentoff has deftly chronicled the lives of jazz musicians, the rise of jazz music in America, and the intimate relationship between jazz and civil rights, weaving intricate rhythmic prose around themes of loss, triumph, and musical virtuosity. In this collection of 64 interviews, essays, and recollections (many of them previously published), Hentoff ranges widely over numerous topics, from the meaning of jazz and the elements of a perfect jazz club to profiles of Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Oscar Peterson, and Anita O’Day. Hentoff vividly recalls hearing Artie Shaw’s "Nightmare" while walking past a record store in Boston when he was 11 and being touched as viscerally by Shaw’s haunting music as by the passionate and mesmerizing singing of his synagogue’s cantor during the High Holy Days. In a paean to Louis Armstrong and the trumpeter’s recognition of the healing power of music, Hentoff discusses the development of the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at New York’s Beth Israel hospital, which focuses on medical treatment for patients with asthma and chronic pulmonary disease. Because the author realizes the power of jazz to educate young people about civil rights as well as music, Wynton Marsalis becomes, in Hentoff’s eyes, the Leonard Bernstein of today. Although the collection is repetitious and uneven (as such collections often are), Hentoff’s essays often generate thoughtful insights into this uniquely American musical form. (July)