Full name: But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz

Author: Geoff Dyer Year: 1991 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Music, Essays, Short Stories, Award winners, History Purchase/reserch links: Goodreads Barns&Noble Amazon eBooks.com LibraryThing ISBNs: 9780865475083 9780312429478 0865475083 0312429479

In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skillfully evokes the music and the men who shaped modern jazz. Drawing on photos, anecdotes, and, most important, the way he hears the music, Dyer imaginatively reconstructs scenes from the embattled lives of some of the world's greats: Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonius Monk creating his own private language on the piano. However, music is the driving force of But Beautiful, and Dyer brings it to life in luminescent and wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of each musician’s style. Similar books: Visions of Jazz: The First Century by Gary Giddins Who's Who in Jazz by John Chilton Chasin' the Trane by J. C. Thomas Coltrane by Ben Ratliff John Coltrane by Lewis Porter Improvising Jazz by Jerry Coker Really the Blues by Mezz Mezzrow A Love Supreme by Ashley Kahn Kind Of Blue by Ashley Kahn Mister Jelly Roll by Alan Lomax Early Jazz by Gunther Schuller West Coast Jazz by Ted Gioia Charlie Parker Played Be Bop by Chris Raschka Miles Davis by Ian Carr Satchmo by Gary Giddins Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan The Dustbin of History by Greil Marcus Otherwise Known as the Human Condition by Geoff Dyer Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad The Grey Album by Kevin Young