Jazz infuses every aspect of American cultural life, not only music, but dance, art, poetry, literature, fashion, graphic style, and even common speech. Civilization would be much poorer without its beauty and soul. Now we have Peter Zimmerman’s book of interviews: Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight, a celebration of the music and the men and women who created and transformed it. In the twenty-one conversations contained in this engaging and highly accessible book, we hear from the musicians themselves, in their own words, direct and unfiltered. Zimmerman’s interviewing technique is straightforward. He simply turns on a recording device, poses questions, and allows his subjects to improvise, similar to the way they do at concerts and in recording sessions. Topics range from their early days, their struggles and victories, to the impact the music has had on their own lives.
In an intrepid multi-year quest, Zimmerman tirelessly sought virtuosi whose lives span the 20th and 21st centuries. The reader is rewarded with an intimate look into the past century’s extraordinary period of creative productivity. The eldest two of his interview subjects were born in 1920, twenty-five years after the cornetist Buddy Bolden formed the first jazz band in New Orleans. All of his interviews come from professional musicians who worked in jazz music for at least five decades, with a few enjoying careers as long as seventy-five years. The aggregate 1,400 years of experience yields a chronicle of incredible depth and scope. The focus on musicians who are now emeritus figures is deliberate. Some of them are now in their nineties; six have passed since 2012, when Zimmerman began researching The Jazz Masters. Five of them have already received the NEA’s prestigious Jazz Masters award: Sonny Rollins, Clark Terry, Yusef Lateef, Jimmy Owens, and most recently, Dick Hyman. More undoubtedly will one day, and the balance are likewise of compelling interest to the author, all of whom he views as talents deserving of wider recognition.
This book is a labor of love celebrating the vibrant style of music that the irrepressible Dizzy Gillespie once described as “our native art form.” Zimmerman’s deeply knowledgeable, unabashed passion for jazz brings out the best in the musicians. Filled with personal recollections and detailed accounts of their careers and everyday lives, this engaging and highly readable work succeeds in capturing their stories for present and future generations of aficionados. Lively, eminently readable, an important addition to the literature of music, The Jazz Masters goes a long way toward “setting the record straight.”
“Zimmerman has coaxed noteworthy insights from seasoned jazz musicians for this book, which will appeal to fans of the genre.” – David P. Szatmary, Library Journal
Published by Peter C. Zimmerman and University Press of Mississippi
