I can’t imagine going through a day without listening to music. I remember buying my first Beatles album at eight years old. I saw Elvis on his last tour, Whitney Houston on her first, and Barbra Streisand on her comeback tour—twice. I remember listening to “Kind of Blue” the first time. I remember seeing Ella Fitzgerald late in her career at a club in Houston; her body was failing her—she had to sit in a chair to sing—but her voice was as beautiful as ever. Of all the artists I’ve admired over the years, the one whose work has consistently spoken to me most profoundly is Billie Holiday.
Billie Holiday’s musical soul mate was Lester Young, the iconoclastic tenor saxophone player who had a sound like no one else in his generation. His sound was so unique he had a profound influence on future saxophonists; he called his disciples “my children.”
In this book, Douglas Henry Daniels has written a well-researched, beautifully rendered portrait that captures the essence of Young, the musician with whom Billie Holiday most loved to sing. The end of the book, showing the culmination of a life of substance abuse and societal conflict, is especially poignant.
The acclaimed biography of the legendary tenor saxophonist
"Lester Leaps In jumps off the page with authenticity and insight. The Prez was an amazing creator with a uniquely wicked sense of humor, and this book captures it all." —Quincy Jones
"Twenty years in the making, this is the most thorough and penetrating book on the President of the Tenor Saxophone to date." —Publishers Weekly
"A provocative book, presenting Lester Young in a novel, even controversial light while opening new avenues of possible investigation into one of the most tantalizingly enigmatic of all…
Throughout her career, Billie Holiday always gave credit for her unique singing style to Louis Armstrong, not just the way he played the trumpet, which clearly influenced her, but the vernacular approach he had to singing.
Armstrong’s musicality allowed him to enjoy a one-of-a-kind career in show business, which Ricky Riccardi lovingly captures in his book, at least the part covering the final years of Armstrong’s life. Riccardi is particularly good on “Hello Dolly!,” Armstrong’s swan song.
Prodigiously researched and richly detailed, this is a comprehensive account of the remarkable final twenty-five years of the life and art of one of America’s greatest and most beloved musical icons.
Much has been written about Louis Armstrong, but the majority of it focuses on the early and middle stages of his long career. Now, Ricky Riccardi—jazz scholar and musician—takes an in-depth look at the years in which Armstrong was often dismissed as a buffoonish, if popular, entertainer, and shows us instead the inventiveness and depth of expression that his music evinced during this time.
One of the treasures of American show business is Hazel Scott. A child prodigy on piano who attended Julliard, a headliner at Café Society thanks to Billie Holiday’s mentorship, and eventually the wife of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., she was the first African American to host her own television show, “The Hazel Scott Show,” in 1950.
A confrontation with the House Un-American Activities Committee prompted the cancellation of her network show, which led her to go into a kind of exile in Paris where she set up a salon that saw as guests everyone from Lester Young to the Beatles.
Karen Chilton vividly documents the life and times of the singer in this book. I love the book because it captures the artistry of a true original. In the future, more attention should be paid to Hazel Scott, who has become show business history’s forgotten genius.
Hazel Scott was an important figure in the later part of the Black renaissance onward. Even in an era where there was limited mainstream recognition of Black Stars, Hazel Scott's talent stood out and she is still fondly remembered by a large segment of the community. I am pleased to see her legend honored. ---Melvin Van Peebles, filmmaker and director""This book is really, really important. It comprises a lot of history---of culture, race, gender, and America. In many ways, Hazel's story is the story of the twentieth century."" ---Murray Horwitz, NPR commentator and coauthor ofAin't Misbehavin'""Karen Chilton has deftly woven…
Starting in the 1930s and going through the 1950s, one of the centers of jazz in the United States was in Manhattan on 52nd Street between Fifth and Seventh avenues. Clubs like the Famous Door, Three Deuces, Onyx, Kelly’s Stable, and Club 18 would become legendary in jazz circles. Jazz royalty, from Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie to Coleman Hawkins and Billie Holiday, played in these clubs.
In his chronicle of 52nd Street, Arnold Shaw provides a fly-on-the-wall account of what it was like to play and visit the clubs based on interviews (some of them quoted at length) from musicians who worked the clubs to entertainment figures who frequented them. Billie Holiday is a presence throughout the book from her early beginnings when she was not accepted because of her singing style to eventually becoming one of The Street’s main draws.
"Shoddy, bawdy and boozy,"" 52nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, before the strip joints and the concrete office buildings, was New York's answer to Bourbon Street, Beale Street, Sunset Boulevard and Montparnasse. Shaw, songsmith and musician's friend, was a devoted habitue who knew the passwords to the speakeasies (the street had 38 during Prohibition); the hot horns from the cool; and who dined with whom at Jack and Charlie's 21. From the Onyx, to Leon and Eddie's to Kelly's Stable, Jimmy Ryan's and the Famous Door he offers a guided tour and brings on former customers, proprietors, performers --…
One of the important figures in the world of jazz for many years was Leonard Feather. He started his career as a jazz writer—writing the first profile of Billie Holiday—but eventually became a songwriter and producer. He produced Billie Holiday’s highly successful 1954 European Tour called Club USA.
Well into his career, he collected this book of essays about the jazz figures he knew well: Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Ray Ellis, among others. I really like his essay on Billie, whom he knew so well she became his daughter’s godmother because he was able to relate events about which he knew because he was in the room with her when they happened.
If you want to meet jazz luminaires first-hand, trust Leonard Feather to provide the introduction.
Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Norman Granz, Oscar Peterson, Ray Charles, Don Ellis, and Miles Davis,these are the dozen jazz figures whom Leonard Feather chose to describe the development of jazz. This is the first Feather book to examine in-depth the innovative figures who have led the way throughout the music's history. As composer, producer, and for almost half-a-century one of its leading critics, Feather has a unique perspective of these jazz immortals. He has worked with and known all of them. "These are portraits of human beings first, analyses of…
After listening to her music for years, I wanted to document what I felt about Billie Holiday. My book is not a conventional biography but an intimate portrait that allows the reader to spend time with her in the rooms in which she lived and worked so that by the end of the book, you feel as if you know her. Flashbacks provide necessary background material.
The goal of the book, which is why I focus on her last year, is to create a close-up depiction of Billie to reveal who she actually was: An ambitious, formidable woman who overcame challenges—an impoverished youth, brushes with authorities, and substance abuse—to become the consummate jazz singer and, over time, an American icon.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
