Northway Books

 

 

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:

write to 39 Tytherton Road, London N19 4PZ, UK 

email info@northwaybooks.com

or phone 00 44 (0)20 7263 9663 or in the UK 07956 821798

 

 

 

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:

 

Music Outside, Ian Carr

January 2008, hardback, 220 pages with photos throughout, £15.99.

Second edition of this classic book with a new postscript and a fresh selection of photos. First published in 1973 and out of print for many years. Available in bookshops now

Music Outside captures the spirit, optimism and creativity of contemporary jazz in Britain in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Carr was an important part of the action as well as a sharp observer of it and he wrote about his friends and colleagues, his jazz contemporaries, the people who made the jazz world come alive at one of the most exciting times in its recent history.

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

 

Doggin’ Around, Alan Plater

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

2003, 255 pages plus 8 pages gloss photos, £11.99

a detailed assessment of a seminal but long neglected artist, Independent on Sunday; a wonderful read, Jazzwise.                                                                 

ISBN 9789537040 3 7

 

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.

ISBN 9789537040 2 6

 

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

ISBN 9789537040 1 9

 

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.

ISBN 9789537040 0 2

 

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.

ISBN 9789537040 5 7

 

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.

ISBN 9789537040 6 4

 

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

2005, 209 pages, 2nd edition with sequel, £7.99                                                      

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.