The best jazz biographies & autobiographies (from a jazz lover)

Terry Gibbs played vibes (vibraphone) with several of the most famous big bands during the Swing Era, than formed his own small groups, then led big bands himself starting in 1956. Steeped in Swing, he also held his own with the modernists. Perhaps his most amazing accomplishment was putting together his Dream Band, which recorded at least 68 selections, arranged by all the best arrangers in the business, in four different clubs in Hollywood, mostly in 1959. It was a 'dream band' because although the big band era was over, all the best musicians on the West Coast wanted to play in this one because the music was so much fun. Gibbs was in his 90s when his book came out; he knew how lucky he had been, and his book is full of joy and love.

Phil Woods left these acerbic notes behind when he died, his personality in every word, hard on himself as on anybody, also sometimes very funny. He was known for having married Charlie Parker's widow after Parker died, and for possessing Parker's alto sax, but Woods was such a master of the instrument that he became almost as influential as Parker. At a Billy Joel recording session in 1977, he casually tossed off a solo on "Just The Way You Are" that made the record a hit. He also recorded with Steely Dan and Paul Simon, toured the world with Quincy Jones, Russia with Benny Goodman, toured with his European Rhythm Machine, then with his own quintet for 20 years. The book has an elegiac tone because the incredibly rich mainstream jazz scene in New York that Woods had known in the 1950s-60s was gone forever.

By the time he became a producer of reissues for Verve Records, Pullman had been immersed in Bud Powell's life and recordings for decades, and produced the best life we have of one of the most important and prodigiously talented pianists who ever lived, and who was one of the inventors of modern jazz. Powell led a chaotic life, complicated by what we would now call a bipolar personality as well as addictions and mistreatment by the law, but Pullman captures it almost day by day, including the club gigs and recording sessions, without ever bogging down in pathos.

This classic, first published in 1955, collects the memories and anecdotes of a hundred or so members of the jazz world, talking about themselves and each other, and how they admired and learned from each other. The material was culled from over 20 book publishers, magazines, and record companies in the USA and Europe (where jazz was taken seriously from the beginning), starting with New Orleans and coming all the way up to bebop. One of the best bits, from trumpeter Jimmy McPartland about Bix Beiderbecke: "People used to ask Bix to play a chorus just as he had recorded it. He couldn't do it. 'It's impossible...I don't feel the same way twice. That's one of the things I like about jazz, kid, I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you?'"

Back when jazz was popular and popular music was jazz, Andy Razaf was born in Washington DC, a member of the royal family of Madagascar: one source says his name was Andriamanantena Paul Rezafinkarefo, his father a nephew of Queen Ranavalona III. Andy became one of the most successful lyricists of his era. By the time he and Fats Waller co-wrote the black broadway show Hot Chocolates in 1929, Louis Armstrong singing "Ain't Misbehavin'" from the pit, he was at the top of his game. He and Waller wrote "Honeysuckle Rose", "Keepin' Out Of Mischief Now", "Blue, Turning Grey Over You", "The Joint Is Jumpin'", and more; in the early years, they would sell their lead sheets to as many publishers as they could, knowing that the publishers were cheats too. But Razaf also wrote with Eubie Blake ("You're Lucky To Me", "Memories Of You"), James P. Johnson ("A Porter's Love Song To A Chambermaid"), and many others, about 800 songs altogether, some of them still sung around the world. A gentleman to the end, he never had the personal fame he deserved. The book would be worth reading just for the examination of the craft of songwriting.