Oscar Peterson Tops the List--of Books

The compact-disc era brought a surge in the number of jazz album releases and seems to have led to a proliferation of books on jazz as well.

“Oscar Peterson: The Will to Swing” by Gene Lees (Prima: $19.95, 294 pages) fills a longstanding gap in the literature of musical legends. Lees, a Canadian writer and lyricist, was the ideal choice as Boswell to his compatriot, whom he has known for decades.

The first chapters provide a revealing, sometimes startling picture of racism and even slavery in Canada, and of the odyssey of Peterson’s father, a merchant seaman, who made his way from the Virgin Islands to Halifax to Montreal, married a young domestic from the Caribbean and made his living in one of the few jobs open to blacks as a sleeping car porter.

Lees offers graphic examples of the unconscious racism his subject endured as a teen-age prodigy; typically, the scripts of early radio programs reveal an embarrassing patronization. Peterson’s first employer, Johnny Holmes, had problems keeping him as the only black in a Canadian band.

The pianist is portrayed as a proud man, an insatiable reader, politically aware, given to endless practice of both classical music and jazz. There are lighter chapters about Peterson the practical joker, and entire segments analyzing in sensitive detail his partnerships with Ray Brown, Herb Ellis and others. (In one glaring omission in this otherwise carefully researched work, guitarist Joe Pass is almost totally ignored.)

One wishes that the same diligent preparation had been applied to “The Woodchopper’s Ball: The Autobiography of Woody Herman,” by Woody Herman and Stuart Troup ( Dutton: $18.95, 162 pages). Begun a few years ago and completed after the bandleader’s death in 1987, this could have been an in-depth examination of Herman’s entire Zeitgeist and of the role his early bands played in launching the careers of dozens of gifted musicians.

The first few chapters deal with Herman’s dues-paying years as a sideman, and the beginnings of his career as a leader. Later passages rely more heavily on quotes from sidemen, who seem to have been chosen arbitrarily.

Troup, the jazz critic for Newsday, deals most effectively with the period when Herman, reduced to poverty and enormous indebtedness to the IRS as a result of mismanagement, finds himself gravely ill and under the threat of eviction from his home. He lived out his final days in tragedy. “You know,” he tells Troup, “Stravinsky was right. Growing old is just a series of humiliations.”

“The World of Gene Krupa” by Bruce H. Klauber (Pathfinder Publishing, Ventura: $14.95, 214 pages) is less a biography than a collection of interviews with or about Krupa, quotes from old magazines, photographs, chronology, filmography and lists of personnel. From a literary standpoint, the best (arguably the only) passage of value is the foreword by Mel Torme, which reminds us that Torme’s forthcoming biography of Buddy Rich is eagerly awaited.

“Jazz Anecdotes” by Bill Crow (Oxford University: $19.95, 350 pages) was assembled by the veteran bassist, who for years has been stockpiling stories, variously whimsical, amusing, even hysterical. As a gift book that guarantees up to a thousand laughs, it is recommended without reservation.

Though they deal with many topics not directly connected with jazz, two recent releases will be of interest to anyone concerned with the African-American experience. “Tuxedo Junction” by Gerald Early (Ecco: $19.95, 334 pages) takes its title from the old Erskine Hawkins hit record. Early, a teacher of African-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, brings his perspective to bear on everything from Miss America to prize fights, but the final segment focuses on jazzmen, sometimes in the form of book reviews. Early’s recollections of Monk, Hines, Armstrong, Basie and others leave no doubt about the depth of his concern for the music, though his facts are occasionally shaky (Louis Armstrong was born in 1901, not 1908).

Along identical lines, “Notes of a Hanging Judge” by Stanley Crouch (Oxford: $24.95, 275 pages) is an even more provocative and iconoclastic series of essays. Crouch, who was a jazz critic for the Village Voice for 10 years and is at present working on a biography of Charlie Parker, is a writer of exceptional brilliance, powerful enough to command respect even when one disagrees totally with his premise. Whether reporting on a jazz festival in Italy, examining Count Basie’s biographer, Albert Murray, or lashing into Amiri Baraka (whom he refers to only as LeRoi Jones), Crouch is a formidable proponent or opponent.

Note: “American Musicians: 56 Portraits in Jazz” by Whitney Balliett (Oxford: $10.95, 415 pages) is a paperback reissue of the New Yorker magazine critic’s nonpareil dissertations on jazzmen and jazzwomen of every stylistic stripe, living and dead. Imperative reading, particularly at this inviting price.