Books about jazz and drama, plus Boys at War by Russell
Margerison
Available
from bookshops (distributed by Central Books and wholesalers)
or by
mail order from Central Books: www.centralbooks.co.uk
or from
the Wendover Bookshop: www.jazzscript.co.uk
or in
North America from Parkwest Publications: www.parkwestpubs.com
or
contact Northway Books to place an order or to receive details of events and
special offers:
Forthcoming:
Forward Groove: Jazz
and the Real World from Louis Armstrong to Gilad Atzmon
by
Chris Searle
Flying High: A Jazz
Life and Beyond
by
Peter King
The Jazz Composer
–
Moving Music off the Paper
by
Graham Collier
New
Workout
– The Music of Hank Mobley
by
Derek Ansell
Hardback, 192 pages, £13.99,
April 2008. ISBN 978 09550908 8 2.
The first full-length book to be published about Hank
Mobley.
Among the great American modern jazz
saxophonists, Mobley had been the most unjustly neglected – the truly
forgotten man. Yet he played and recorded prolifically with the greatest
legends of his era such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Lee
Morgan, Johnny Griffin and Art Blakey, helping to create some of their finest
work.
His best recordings
are classics, characterized by an instantly identifiable sound and style, and
constant musical inventiveness. But his loner personality made him his own
worst enemy, many of his records remained unissued in his lifetime, and he died
forgotten and destitute.
Now, at last, most of
his recorded legacy is available on CD and he is recognized as one of the major
figures of modern jazz. This book provides a detailed introduction to the music
and a reassessment of Mobley’s contribution to jazz.
The Little Giant –
The Story of Johnny Griffin
by
Mike Hennessey
Hardback, 256 pages, £19.99, May
2008. ISBN 978 09550908 5 1.
Includes photos (with a special photo
selection by David Redfern).
Foreword by Orrin Keepnews.
Johnny Griffin, the Little Giant from the South Side of
Chicago, has remained a top jazz saxophonist throughout his 62-year playing
career. He has spent 42 years in Europe and is recognized internationally as a
major jazz star with a readily identifiable style, an immense improvisational
flair and an unfailing capacity to swing.
As jazz writer Brian
Priestley has observed: ‘Griffin is one of the fastest and most accurate
ever on his instrument.’
Griffin is an
articulate, witty and entertaining conversationalist with an unending flow of
anecdotal reminiscences about his days with Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey,
Thelonious Monk, Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis, the Clarke–Boland Big
Band and the variety of small groups he has fronted over the years.
The Little Giant is a
light-hearted, irreverent and uninhibited look at the life of one of the most
consummate musicians in jazz.
Author Mike Hennessey
is a jazz critic, producer, broadcaster and pianist. Other books by him include
a biography of the late drummer, Kenny Clarke, Klook, and a history of Ronnie
Scott's Club, Some of My Best Friends Are Blues. He has covered the
international music scene for Billboard magazine for 27 years and he has
written more than 500 album notes and hundreds of articles for a wide range of
jazz magazines in North America and Europe.
Also
available now:
Carr’s
profiles and in-depth interviews with leading musicians and composers document
the range of their ideas, their influences, their enthusiasms and their often
heroic efforts to continue working in jazz.
The musicians interviewed include Mike Westbrook, Jon
Hiseman, John Stevens, Trevor Watts, Evan Parker, Mike Gibbs, and Chris
McGregor with the Brotherhood of Breath.
Ian Carr is well-known as an imaginative and ground-breaking
jazz trumpeter and bandleader, the author of acclaimed biographies of Miles
Davis and Keith Jarrett and co-author of The Rough Guide to Jazz.
See
Ian Carr website: http://www.iancarrsnucleus.net
ISBN 9780955090868.
Hot
Jazz, Warm Feet, John
Chilton
April 2007, 268 pages
plus 8 pages gloss photos, £11.99
John
Chilton has gained an international reputation as a jazz biographer, having
written acclaimed books on Sidney Bechet, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins, Bob
Crosby, Louis Jordan, Henry ‘Red’ Allen and Roy Eldridge. His
lively autobiography not only reveals the fascinating background to his jazz
researches but also shines a bright light on his many years as a professional
jazz musician. For thirty years he led the Feetwarmers backing singer George
Melly, sharing escapades that took them all over the world. Before working with
George, he was in Bruce Turner’s Jump Band and also led the Swing Kings
which backed many visiting American jazz stars.
He has dedicated his life
to jazz, both as a player and as an author – in 2000 he was voted
‘Jazz Writer of the Year’ – and his story is full of
anecdotes and revelations about the many British and American musicians he has
known.
George
Melly has described him as ‘an anecdotalist of genius’.
ISBN 9780955090837
All This
and Many a Dog, Jim
Godbolt
April 2007, 208 pages
plus 26 pages of photos, 2nd edition, £12.99
A jazz book by a man
who understands that jazz is struggle not perfection, Mike Zwerin,
International Herald Tribune.
His book gives us the
whole spectrum of post-war pop music – the explosion of the Beatles and
the demise of the big bands, written in an easy conversational tone, Spike
Milligan, Mail on Sunday.
Highly intelligent and
articulate . . . He has an
excellent eye and ear for the quirks of others . . . irresistible, George
Melly, Guardian.
More than a chuckle
guaranteed, Financial Times
ISBN 9780955090844
I Blew
it My Way: Bebop, Big Bands and Sinatra, Vic Ash
with Simon Spillett and Helen
Ash. Preface by Michael
Parkinson
October 2006, 185 pages plus 8 pages gloss photos,
£11.99
A highly readable
autobiography . . . photographs are plentiful; there’s a discography and
a fair sprinkling of rewarding anecdotes, JazzUK.
There are numerous
good tales and insights in this book, and it is nicely written with plenty of
good photos . . . A good read, Crescendo & Jazz Music.
ISBN
9789550908 2 0
2006, 212 pages, with illustrations
by the author, £6.99
Described by the author as: ‘memoirs
of a jazz-crazed playwright – some of the stories are
autobiographical and some of them are true.’
A very, very, readable
book, Michael Parkinson.
Terrific price, terrific
read. It kept me turning pages like mad, Campbell Burnap.
Masterly in its
knowledge and poetic communication . . . Don’t hang about, go out and buy
it, Jazz Journal
ISBN
9789550908 0 6
Joe
Harriott – Fire in His Soul, Alan Robertson
a detailed assessment
of a seminal but long neglected artist, Independent on Sunday; a wonderful
read, Jazzwise.
Bass
Lines: A Life in Jazz,
Coleridge Goode and Roger Cotterrell
2002, 208 pages plus 8 pages gloss
photos, £9.99
rich with anecdotes
and one man’s observations on the music he loves, Jazz Review.
Notes
from a Jazz Life,
Digby Fairweather
2002, 183 pages, with drawings by
Humphrey Lyttelton and Peter Manders, £7.99
thoroughly
entertaining and yet thoughtful …
a fascinating look at the last 30-odd years of a big slice of the British jazz
scene, Musician
see author’s website: http://www.digbyfairweather.com
Gold,
Doubloons and Pieces of Eight, Harry Gold
2000, 207 pages plus 16 pages gloss
photos, £10.99
a vivid picture of a
musician’s life through much of the jazz century, Jazz Rag.
A
History of Jazz in Britain 1919-50, revised edition, by Jim Godbolt
2005, hardback, 299 pages including
many photos throughout, £16.99
as breezy as a
riverboat shuffle, ever on the lookout for the preposterous detail and the
opportunity for raffish reminiscence, Times Literary Supplement.
Some of
My Best Friends Are Blues, Ronnie Scott with Mike Hennessey
2004, 125 pages with cartoons by Mel
Calman, £6.99
one of the best books
about jazz, and its characters, ever written, Music Week.
Nat
Gonella – A Life in Jazz, Ron Brown with Digby Fairweather
2005, 206 pages plus 8 pages gloss
photos, £9.99
Gonella had a
remarkable feeling for American jazz – a fascinating book, Sunday
Express.
ISBN
9789537040 7 1
Soloists
and Sidemen: American Jazz Stories, Peter Vacher
2004, 233 pages,
large format, numerous rare photos, £14.99.
this
scholarly book… excellent
photographs… well written,
Crescendo.
ISBN
9789537040 4 0
Boys at
War,
Russell Margerison
a minor classic of the
Other Ranks’ war, Daily Mail
he describes himself
as an ordinary working-class lad from Lancashire, but there was nothing
ordinary about the courage he and his comrades displayed night after night over
occupied Europe... This is a
fascinating wartime memoir that deserves a wide readership, Mail on Sunday.
amid the plain prose,
he produces arresting images. A stricken bomber ‘reared up till it was
standing on its tail, as if having received an uppercut from Popeye’;
another ‘shuddered violently, like a dog which had just emerged from
water’. Margerison’s account of his own behaviour – which,
when he was starving and desperate, was not always selfless – is
similarly unaffected. His candour increases one’s admiration for him, Guardian.
ISBN
9789537040 8 8
see author’s
website: www.boysatwar.co.uk/book.htm
Northway supports equal
opportunities and our publishing policy recognises and welcomes diversity in
the population of authors and musicians.