Sitting in: Selected Writings on Jazz, Blues, and Related Topics

Poet, critic, novelist, editor and professor of English at Bucknell, Carruth, like the late Philip Larkin, is a devoted, knowledgeable aficionado of jazz, and in some of his best writing he relates black music to English and American literature, Afro-American culture and the nature of artistic imagination. In these reprinted essays and poems, he explores the origins, forms and influences of jazz and the blues, the principles of improvisation and spontaneity, the nature of expressiveness and the contributions of Earl Hines, Bessie Smith, Maxine Sullivan, Joe Turner, Ben Webster and other musicians. Some jazz fans may find this book scholarly, but the more literate will be enthralled by Carruth's comparing the playing ofPee Wee Russell with the poetry of Alexander Pope and William Butler Yeats. (October