[bookshare-discuss] Fw: Book Review: Lullaby of Birdland
- From: "Shelley L. Rhodes" <juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 23:22:33 -0400
This sounds like a possible addition to the collection if anyone wants to
take it on. Sounds really great.
Shelley L. Rhodes and Judson, guiding golden
juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Guide Dogs For the Blind Inc.
Graduate Advisory Council
www.guidedogs.com
"We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can
spare.
And in return, dogs give us their all. It's the best deal man has ever
made" - M. Facklam
----- Original Message -----
From: "Leon Gilbert" <lwg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Blind News Mailing List" <blindnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2004 10:08 PM
Subject: Book Review: Lullaby of Birdland
May 16, 2004, Sunday
by Gene Santoro
LULLABY OF BIRDLAND By George Shearing with Alyn Shipton.
Illustrated. 259 pp. New York:
Continuum. $27.95.
CHARMING, smooth and flecked with insight, ''Lullaby of Birdland'' adeptly
captures the voice of George Shearing, the
84-year-old English-born blind pianist. These same qualities have garnered
Shearing's music both praise and disdain (mostly
from jazz fans who have found it too pat) ever since ''September in the
Rain,'' his first crossover hit in 1949. Neither Jack
Kerouac's calling him ''the great god Shearing'' in ''On the Road'' nor
Shearing's composing the much-covered theme for
bebop's flagship nightclub (whence the title of the book, which was written
with Alyn Shipton, an English jazz writer) could
dispel his enduring unhip aura. So it is disarming and a bit remarkable when
Shearing acknowledges here that the formulaic
nature of his ''locked hands'' technique (in which both of the pianist's
hands outline chord shapes in strictly synchronized
motion), and the tightly formatted piano-guitar-vibes lines that defined his
stylized quintets for decades, ultimately bored
him.
The last of nine children, George Shearing was born sightless in 1919. His
father delivered coal (he was not, Shearing
characteristically puns, ''a coal porter''), but his unshakable belief in
the English class system insisted that people
should stay in their places. His mother was an alcoholic who cleaned trains
at night and during the day tended her brood
between visits to the pub. As a result, their youngest son did not touch
alcohol until he was in his mid-40's; he also
speculates that his mother tried to abort him, thus causing his blindness.
The Shearings were what is now called the working poor. The pawnbroker and
collection agent were familiar figures. Shearing's
earliest attempts at music came when he threw bottles from an upstairs
window -- milk bottles for a ''classical sound'' and
beer bottles for jazz. The family had a gramophone and a piano, albeit with
only 85 working keys, on which young George
picked out songs he heard on the radio. He had £3 worth of formal lessons.
Along with his musical ear, Shearing apparently developed his thick skin and
breezy, pun-filled manner early on. Throughout
the book, he brushes off condescension toward the blind. He is winningly
self-confident and frank about his daily life
(dating, bicycle riding, getting around hotel rooms, eating, dealing with
well-intentioned if supercilious fans) while
lightly touching on difficulties -- how dauntingly massive short musical
pieces (and literature) become in Braille; how many
blind people fear cats because of their silence; how the pianist Lennie
Tristano, also sightless, tipped him to ''blind
prejudice'' on the part of booking agents and club owners. Typically,
Shearing wryly points out that he sidestepped racism
because he cannot see and thus does not prejudge people.
At the age of 12, Shearing began four years at a residential school for the
blind, where his world opened. Between playing
indoor cricket and dormitory pranks, the students were trained in music;
Shearing alternated classics with jazz. Soon after,
he played pop tunes on the piano at a pub and accordion in a
semiprofessional dance outfit. The turning point arrived when he
joined an all-blind band, led by Claude Bampton, that played
state-of-the-art jazz charts by Jimmie Lunceford and Benny
Carter. The 17-year-old pianist polished his chops and studied Mary Lou
Williams and Earl Hines, while nine months of touring
introduced him to the itinerant musician's life. In 1939 he first recorded
with Leonard Feather, another English jazz fan,
who a decade later in the United States became a prominent champion of both
bebop and his fellow expatriate.
When the military draft for World War II emptied England of sighted
musicians, Shearing quickly established himself through
appearances on the BBC and recordings for Decca, and encountered the likes
of Coleman Hawkins and Fats Waller. He met his
first wife, Trixie, at a bomb shelter during the London blitz; until their
divorce after 32 years of marriage, she doubled as
his chief handler and head cheerleader. This section of the book features
Shearing at his best, interweaving tales of wartime
straits with memories of practical jokes and quips Londoners used to keep
their spirits from collapsing like the buildings
around them.
In late 1946, he made his first trip to the United States, and he visited
52nd Street, the Swing Street of jazz legend, then
in its heyday. Shearing jammed at Minton's, the cradle of bebop in Harlem,
and joined Dizzy Gillespie backstage at the Apollo
Theater, where the trumpeter used a small harmonium to demonstrate the new
chords underlying bebop. Shearing carried this
then arcane knowledge back to England, where he helped transplant it.
A year later, Shearing and Trixie emigrated to the States. With $2,000 and a
baby daughter in tow, they followed his dream:
to make it in the land where jazz was born. Tristano found them an apartment
in Queens; Shearing met (and tells backstage
stories about) Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Sarah
Vaughan, Bud Powell, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Billy
Eckstine and Hank Jones, the subtle pianist he cites as his main mentor.
Gillespie often used Shearing as his opening act, to
introduce him to club owners. The George Shearing-Buddy DeFranco quartet
appeared at the Clique (later Birdland) opposite
Machito's swaggering Afro-Cuban big band.
In early 1949, at Feather's instigation, Shearing formed his first quintet;
that February he recorded ''September in the
Rain.'' It sold nearly a million copies and exemplified ''the Shearing
sound,'' a combination of Glenn Miller-style saxophone
voicings and the ''locked hands'' piano Shearing adopted from Lionel
Hampton's pianist Milt Buckner. Shearing became an
international star, and made an increasingly comfortable living from hits
that catapulted him into settings like Carnegie
Hall, the Cafe Carlyle, the Boston Pops and the White House. Ultimately he
abandoned his quintet for small, looser groups
with Mel Tormé, Joe Williams and Joe Pass that, he says, reinvigorated his
music.
Like Shearing's music, his autobiography is sometimes too relentlessly
smooth, controlled, self-congratulatory and
superficial. But also like his music, at its best, ''Lullaby of Birdland''
represents an unapologetic individual perspective
on jazz that is also broad enough to have an appeal beyond jazz fans.
Gene Santoro's most recent book is ''Highway 61 Revisited: The Tangled Roots
of American Jazz, Blues, Rock & Country Music.''
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05EFD71F3DF935A25756C0A9629C8B63
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