Buddy Bolden and the Last Days of Storyville
Danny Barker author Alyn Shipton editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:1st Sep '01
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

In 1986, jazz guitarist, banjoist, singer and composer Danny Barker (who died in 1994) published the first volume of his memoirs "A Life in Jazz," which was widely praised as an addition to the history of jazz. This is a further selection of Barker's writings (beginning with a long portrait of Buddy Bolden, the "first man of jazz") drawn from conversations and interviews with the generation of jazzmen that invented the music. Many of those interviewed were musicians Danny Barker knew and worked with. The book also contains Barker's own recollections of Storyville in its dying days, plus more material dating from his pioneering period of work in the big bands, with a memoir of trombonist Charlie Green, and of life on the road with Cab Calloway
"All in all this is an immensely entertaining book, although you have to make an effort to seperate fact from fiction...it's one of the few books I have picked up and found difficult to put down again. Thouroughly recommended." -Eddie Cook, Jazz Journal Interantional
"Barker was one of the first African-Americans to record recollections of [New Orleans'] musical and social heritage. Much of it involved his own family; his relations had first-hand knowledge of legendary figures like Buddy Bolden, the cornettist reckoned to be the key figure in the emergence of jazz." -The Economist
"...it is the story and the manner in which it is told that makes this book an entertaining read." -Mike Hazeldine, New Orleans Music
ISBN: 9780826457028
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 290g
184 pages