Mark Tucker
Mark’s Contributions
September 1999 Books
Reminiscing in Tempo: A Portrait of Duke Ellington
Stuart Nicholson
No one can say that the hundredth anniversary of Ellington’s birth has passed unnoticed. A lavish outpouring of tributes has marked the occasion, from concerts and recording projects to multi-part radio series, lectures, symposia, and conferences. Ellington...
April 1999 Books
The Jazz Cadence of American Culture
Robert G. O’Meally
“Jazz,” writes editor Robert O’Meally in the preface to this hefty anthology of essays, interviews, and reportage, “is a massive, irresistibly influential, politically charged part of our culture.” It represents not only “the definitive sound of America...
November 1998 Books
Spreadin’ Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880-1930
David A. Jansen and Gene Jones
The achievements of white songwriters active during the heyday of Tin Pan Alley—Berlin, Kern, Gershwin, Porter Rodgers, et al.—have received lavish attention over the years. Less well known is the story of how their accomplished African-American contemporaries...
October 1998 Books
New Dutch Swing
Kevin Whitehead
Europeans have been faithful, even fanatical chroniclers of jazz in the United States. Few American writers, by contrast, have taken the trouble to study the developments of jazz across the Atlantic. The critic Kevin Whitehead decided to buck this trend...
June 1998 Books
Monk
Laurent de Wilde
Must be Monk’s time. After a long dry spell, three books on this musician have appeared in the U.S. within the last year: Thomas Fitterling’s introductory study, Thelonious Monk: His Life and Music, first issued in Germany in 1987; Leslie Gourse’s trade...
March 1998 Books
Straight, No Chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonious Monk
Leslie Gourse
“Beyond the music, what else is there?” So replied Nellie Monk when asked by writers for information about her famously reticent husband Thelonious. It’s a question all biographers of musicians have to confront. In the case of Monk, who spoke mainly in the...
January/February 1998 Books
The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music
Don Micheal Randel
Most of the 6,000 musicians in this reference volume are Western composers of the art-music variety, but sandwiched among them are theorists, educators, and performers. Nearly 300 jazz figures get covered, all but a few with short capsule biographies. Faced...
September 1997 Books
Thelonious Monk: His Life and Music
Thomas Fitterling
This translated and updated edition of Fitterling’s 1987 study makes a welcome addition to the slight body of English-language writing available on Monk. It represents not a full-scale, life-and-works biography but rather an inviting introduction to the...
September 1997 Books
Irving Berlin
Songs from the Melting Pot: The Formative Years, 1907-14
Charles Hamm
Composer Alec Wilder called Irving Berlin “the best all-around, over-all song writer America has ever had.” Berlin was certainly prolific and successful, dedicating himself ferociously to the art of songwriting for over 50 years—from his first published...
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