Here are 83 books that Before John Was a Jazz Giant fans have personally recommended if you like
Before John Was a Jazz Giant.
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I have been writing and illustrating books for fifteen years, and I am passionate about the art of making picture books. I love music and dance too. While making this list, I was amazed by how different visual artists that I admire—and who have very different styles—were able to capture movement, rhythm, and energy. I was also fascinated by how the different authors crafted their stories and yet all of them managed to celebrate Black culture and resilience.
I love Gregory Christie’s artwork. His naïf style illustrations may seem crude and simple at first glance, but I think they are incredibly rhythmic and powerful.
His images pair seamlessly with the book's lyrical text, which depicts the awful hardships that enslaved people in New Orleans endured and the joy they felt on Sundays when they were free to play music, dance, and spend time together in Congo Square.
Winner of a Caldecott Honor and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2016 A School Library Journal Best Book of 2016: Nonfiction Starred reviews from School Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and The Horn Book Magazine A Junior Library Guild Selection
This poetic, nonfiction story about a little-known piece of African American history captures a human's capacity to find hope and joy in difficult circumstances and demonstrates how New Orleans' Congo Square was truly freedom's heart.
I have been writing and illustrating books for fifteen years, and I am passionate about the art of making picture books. I love music and dance too. While making this list, I was amazed by how different visual artists that I admire—and who have very different styles—were able to capture movement, rhythm, and energy. I was also fascinated by how the different authors crafted their stories and yet all of them managed to celebrate Black culture and resilience.
Bryan Collier’s watercolor and collage illustrations are amazing. They are warm and joyful, just like Troy Andrews’s story.
In the book, Andrews, aka “Trombone Shorty,” recalls growing up in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans. He remembers playing non-stop a broken trombone he found on the street and eventually—as a young kid—getting to play on stage with the legendary Bo Diddley at the city’s Jazz Festival. This is an inspiring story and a visual delight.
Hailing from the Treme neighborhood in New Orleans, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews got his nickname by wielding a trombone twice as long as he was high. A prodigy, he was leading his own band by age six and today this Grammy-nominated artist headlines the legendary New Orleans Jazz Fest. Along with esteemed illustrator Bryan Collier, Andrews has created a lively picture book autobiography about how he followed his dream of becoming a musician, despite the odds, until he reached international stardom. Trombone Shorty is a celebration of the rich cultural history of New Orleans and the power of music.
I have been writing and illustrating books for fifteen years, and I am passionate about the art of making picture books. I love music and dance too. While making this list, I was amazed by how different visual artists that I admire—and who have very different styles—were able to capture movement, rhythm, and energy. I was also fascinated by how the different authors crafted their stories and yet all of them managed to celebrate Black culture and resilience.
Christian Robinson is one of my favorite illustrators. His images are very free and childlike while also being incredibly poignant and strongly designed. His artwork pairs beautifully with Hruby Powell’s exuberant text.
The book recounts Josephine Baker’s extraordinary life, from growing up poor in Missouri to becoming a beloved dancer and star in Paris. Both text and images denounce with wit and force the cruel segregation that Black people, including Josephine, experienced in the United States for a large part of the twentieth century.
An emotionally powerful biography told in verse of a dancer, singer, comedienne, and enduring figure - Josephine Baker - from her birth in the slums, her fantastic success, and her fight against racial prejudice.
I have been writing and illustrating books for fifteen years, and I am passionate about the art of making picture books. I love music and dance too. While making this list, I was amazed by how different visual artists that I admire—and who have very different styles—were able to capture movement, rhythm, and energy. I was also fascinated by how the different authors crafted their stories and yet all of them managed to celebrate Black culture and resilience.
Brian Pinkney’s scratchboard and oil pastel illustrations are full of energy. They capture Alvin Ailey’s movement and grace. Both the art and the text are thoughtful and very well-researched.
The book shows Alvin Ailey leaving Texas as a young man, discovering dance in LA, and creating the first modern dance company that celebrated the heritage of African-American people. I especially love the illustration of Alvin Ailey arriving in New York with the buildings in the background as if “his dreams soared higher than the tallest skyscrapers.”
The book has a beautiful full-circle moment that shows how Alvin Ailey incorporated gospel traditions from his church in Texas into one of his company’s first suite of dances.
An informative and inspiring biography of Alvin Ailey, the great African-American dancer and choreographer, created by TheNew York Times bestselling and award-winning duo Andrea David Pinkney and Brian Pinkey.
Since he was a young boy in Navasota, Texas, Alvin Ailey loved to stomp his feed and clap his hands to the music of the True Vine Baptist choir. Later, he learned how to dance. He spent some time with the best teachers of the era and eventually started his own modern dance company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
This is the story of Alvin Ailey's life—a life that left…
Now it can be said: three decades ago, when Vanity Fair assigned me to write a profile of Miles Davis to accompany an excerpt of his about-to-be-published memoir, I presented myself as a jazz expert — when in fact my enthusiasm for the music far outweighed my knowledge. But in the years since I’ve learned a lot about America’s great art form, in part through researching my Frank Sinatra biography — Sinatra worked with many important jazz musicians — and now in working on my latest book, about Miles and two of the geniuses who collaborated with him on his historic album Kind of Blue, the saxophonist John Coltrane and the pianist Bill Evans.
Saxophonist, flutist, and jazz educator Dave Liebman (born in 1946) was the son of two
Jewish Brooklyn schoolteachers, who envisioned the same life for him — all the more so after he contracted polio at age nine. Much to their dismay, Liebman had different ideas.
Because he couldn’t play sports, he nourished a passionate interest in music, first taking
piano lessons, then moving on to his real interest, the saxophone. A strong student with an
interest in history, he might have followed his parents’ wishes and become a teacher — until
the night, at age 16, he took a date to the New York jazz club Birdland and heard the
saxophone giant John Coltrane for the first time, and realized the one and only thing he
wanted to do with his life.
Written in the form of a dialogue with the jazz writer and musician
Lewis Porter, What It Is…
Dave Liebman is one of the leading forces in contemporary jazz. Prominently known for performing with Miles Davis and Elvin Jones, he has exerted considerable influence as a saxophonist, bandleader, composer, author, and educator. In addition to his recent recognition as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, he has received the Order of Arts and Letters from France and holds an honorary doctorate from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland. He has mentored many of today's most notable young jazz musicians worldwide and is a prolific writer on jazz.
As a poet, my main gift is related to my first ambition, to be a musician. I like to talk, I like to listen, I like the sounds of words and I like to hear(for example) what Emily Dickinson and William Butler Yeats have to say.
An artist—a wonderful horn player—speaks his candid, clear-eyed, eloquent account of his life: self-destructive, immensely creative.
If the horn is broken, if the player is just out of prison, if he’s drug-riddled... all that might be bad for himself or others, but he improviseswith his back to the wall, to get out of it. And in speech as in music, a great improviser.
Art Pepper (1925-1982) was called the greatest alto saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation. But his autobiography, Straight Life , is much more than a jazz book,it is one of the most explosive, yet one of the most lyrical, of all autobiographies. This edition is updated with an extensive afterword by Laurie Pepper covering Art Pepper's last years, and a complete and up-to-date discography by Todd Selbert.
Where Are Your Boys is the book I always wanted to write. Watching emo bands like My Chemical Romance and Paramore soar from suburbs to stardom during my high school years inspired me to take writing seriously, that a kid like me growing up in New Jersey with few connections to the media industry could find a backdoor in, because those bands did, too. With its dense population, adjacency to New York City, and a multitude of record stores and all-ages shows, New Jersey was the setting for much of emo's 2000s boom and the home of My Chemical Romance and many other important bands.
John Lurie makes me think of what it means to be an artist. It’s funny, though, because after watching three seasons of his TV show, I still wasn’t entirely sure who John Lurie was or why he had an HBO series.
Painting With John is hosted by a 60-something Lurie living in the Caribbean, slowed by chronic illness, musing on past misadventures with New York City icons like Basquiat and Bourdain while getting lost in his dreamlike paintings. Lurie's 2021 memoir fleshes out his story just enough: jazz saxophonist turned reluctant art house film star who side-stepped significant fame and money by unfortunate events and steadfastly chose creativity over compromise.
On the page, Lurie’s telling of these events is mystifying. I’m looking forward to a life of creativity with his voice in my head.
The quintessential depiction of 1980s New York and the downtown scene from the artist, actor, musician, and composer John Lurie
“A picaresque roller coaster of a story, with staggering amounts of sex and drugs and the perpetual quest to retain some kind of artistic integrity.”—The New York Times
In the tornado that was downtown New York in the 1980s, John Lurie stood at the vortex. After founding the band The Lounge Lizards with his brother, Evan, in 1979, Lurie quickly became a centrifugal figure in the world of outsider artists, cutting-edge filmmakers, and cultural rebels. Now Lurie vibrantly brings to…
I have written 60 books over the past 20 years. My titles include picture books, poetry books, and dozens of nonfiction books covering a wide range of history and social studies topics. My picture books deal with concepts such as counting and colors. I enjoy rhyming and wordplay and conveying ideas in simple terms.
A talented saxophone player, Sonny Rollins left a successful performing career at age 29. He believed he could improve his craft by constant practice, and he found a unique place to do so—the Williamsburg Bridge that connects Manhattan and Brooklyn in New York City. Inspired by the sights and sounds of the city, Rollins played his heart out. Gary Golio’s lyrical text captures the rhythm and flow of Rollins’ saxophone, while Ransome’s vibrant watercolor and collage artwork provides a perfect complement to the text. Back matter offers further information about Sonny Rollins’ life and career and about the Williamsburg Bridge.
James Ransome's glorious art celebrates jazz icon Sonny Rollins and how he found an inspired spot to practice his saxophone when his neighbors complained.
Sonny Rollins loved his saxophone. As a teenager, he was already playing with jazz stars and making a name for himself. But in 1959, at age twenty-nine, he took a break from performing-to work on being a better, not just famous, musician. Practicing in a city apartment didn't please the neighbors, so Sonny found a surprising alternative-the Williamsburg Bridge. There, with his head in the clouds and foghorns for company, Sonny could play to his heart's…
I’ve loved jazz ever since I learned to play the clarinet as a child. My two great loves in life have been music and books, so it made sense to combine the two things and write novels with a link to jazz. These books are some of my favourites with a jazz theme. I promise that even if you’re not a jazz fan, these are all excellent novels, to be enjoyed with or without music playing in the background!
I love untold stories – those that look at people who history has often ignored. There are a lot of novels set in WWII, but this is the only one I’ve read that looks at what it was like to be an Afro-German during that period.
Hiero Falk is a mixed-race jazz trumpeter, member of a band who has been banned from playing live under Nazi laws. After escaping with two of his African-American bandmates to Paris, Hiero is forced into hiding as the trio struggle to get out of occupied France. There was so much history here that felt new to me and I was fascinated by Hiero’s story.
Man Booker Prize Finalist 2011 An Oprah Magazine Best Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction
Berlin, 1939. The Hot Time Swingers, a popular jazz band, has been forbidden to play by the Nazis. Their young trumpet-player Hieronymus Falk, declared a musical genius by none other than Louis Armstrong, is arrested in a Paris café. He is never heard from again. He was twenty years old, a German citizen. And he was black.
Berlin, 1952. Falk is a jazz legend. Hot Time Swingers band members Sid Griffiths and…
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.
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…
