A dizzyingly complex musical journey

Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie; Donald L. Maggin;

Harper Collins: 422 pp., $26.95

The image of Dizzy Gillespie that may have survived longer than any other is the photograph -- many photographs, actually -- showing the great trumpeter’s cheeks puffed up into enormous, bullfrog-like globes filled with air.

Other images, dating back to his high visibility in the ‘40s as a bebopper, display him in full zoot-suit regalia, with pegged pants, wide-shouldered jacket, wearing a beret, his chin adorned with a stylish goatee.

He was, in other words, a serious jazz musician who didn’t mind having a little fun with his image and with his audience. One of the art’s most compelling, influential musical revolutionaries, he also was a witty, often sardonic but always engaging entertainer.

That’s a combination that suggests complexity, and Gillespie -- who died in 1993 at the age of 75 -- was indeed a complex personality.

Maggin provides an enlightening view of that complexity, framed by the intimate details of a fascinating life in jazz.

He has done extensive research, interviewing -- among others -- Max Roach, Joe Wilder, Ray Brown, Lalo Schifrin and Arturo Sandoval as well as Gillespie himself. And he has scoured every other imaginable source of material.

Fortunately, the book reads as something far more compelling than an aggregation of research. Maggin uses his data to create a foundation of time, place and attitude for every stage of Gillespie’s journey -- from his contentious days with the Cab Calloway band through his musically revelatory relationship with Charlie Parker to his later years as a much-honored international artist and global ambassador for American music.

Along the way, the warts are not overlooked. Maggin contrasts his insightful views of the musical Gillespie with inner views of his addictions, his search for a meaningful spirituality and his efforts to resolve his relationship with his out-of-wedlock daughter, Jeanie Bryson.

Writing about music -- an abstract aural medium -- in words (a literal, verbal art) can be a thankless task. Maggin makes a gallant effort to describe the technical complexities associated with the transition from swing music to bebop, with Gillespie’s adaptation of Latin rhythms to jazz. Some of his descriptions are too technical for the average reader; others don’t precisely describe what is happening musically.

But the complete package is persuasive, for the musical as well as the nonmusical reader, in part because of Maggin’s apparent desire -- rare in biographers -- to remain out of the picture as much as possible, allowing his extraordinary subject to take center stage.

The Verve Record Group is releasing a CD by the same title in conjunction with the book, including tracks, selected by Maggin, that range across Gillespie’s career.

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The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz;

Jeffrey Magee;

Oxford University Press: 322 pp., $30

Bandleader, composer and arranger Fletcher Henderson is an elusive figure, his talent never fully acknowledged during his lifetime. And there is irony in the fact that, since his death in 1952 (at the age of 55), he has largely remained little known, even to fairly well-informed jazz fans. Henderson was a primary architect of swing music, even though he did so from behind the throne of “King of Swing” Benny Goodman.

It was Henderson’s remarkable works -- “King Porter Stomp” among them -- written for his own band, and sold to the Goodman Orchestra in the mid-’30s, that ignited the Swing Era and Goodman’s extraordinary successes. Earlier, Henderson’s ensemble incubated the talents of such major instrumentalists as Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Buster Bailey and others.

Magee’s book offers an invaluable survey of Henderson’s life and music. Detailed analyses of numerous musical scores are juxtaposed against a view of the roller-coaster progress of Henderson’s career in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance. Perhaps most important, Magee deals with the complex issue of Henderson’s identity as both a creative facilitator of other musicians’ efforts and the frustrated composer-arranger of music that was a foundational element in the Swing Era -- bringing triumphs that had eluded his groups to leaders such as Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers and Isham Jones.

*

To a Young Jazz Musician: Letters From the Road;

Wynton Marsalis with Selwyn Seyfu Hinds; Random House: 118 pp., $16.95

In the opening pages of this new book, Wynton Marsalis writes, “I love the intimacy of letters, the warm communication that flows between two people.... It reminds me of the dialogue on the bandstand.”

As, in fact, do these chapters, which take the form of letters to a young musician named Anthony. Each explores a different area of musicality, history, social relationships and morality in essays bearing such titles as “Talking Rules, Singing Freedom,” “Arrogance of Position,” “Music and Morals” and “Moving It Forward: The New, New Thing.”

Many of Marsalis’ comments remind me of an evening a few years ago when he was appearing at Book Soup in West Hollywood to autograph copies of an earlier book. At the close of the signing, he had a conversation with a very young musician, calmly and insightfully offering life lessons in the form of instructions on how to play the trumpet.

In the course of “Letters From the Road,” Marsalis uses phrases such as “Freedom lives in structure” to underscore his belief in the fundamental roots of jazz in improvisation, the blues and rhythmic swing. But he also displays the same sort of omnivorous open-mindedness that has come to characterize his programming at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Noting the importance of not being limited by one’s own perspective, he writes, “Corruption creeps in when you pander to your own deficiencies” and “Jazz represents the best of what comes out of us -- a human thing.”

Despite Hinds’ credit line, the language of the book is very much Marsalis’ own, the unique verbal gumbo of musicians’ slang and surreptitious intellectual insight that makes him such a powerful presence in contemporary American culture.

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Straight Ahead: A Comprehensive Guide to the Business of Jazz; Marty Khan; Outward Vision Books (available exclusively at www.outwardvisions.com): 432 pp., $60 incl. shipping

The subtitle to Khan’s primer on the too-often-overlooked problem of how to make a living in jazz is “Without Sacrificing Dignity or Artistic Integrity.” And that, of course, is the rub. But if anyone can offer useful, competent advice, it’s Khan, who has been producing concerts since the late ‘60s and managing and producing some of the jazz world’s thorniest artists.

“Straight Ahead” is a musician’s lifesaver, a vehicle to aid safe passage through the shark-infested waters of the music business. Khan covers everything in detail, carefully illuminating each aspect of the process: the artist’s team (manager, agent, attorney, publicist, etc.); the business (the labels, the executives, the staff); performance (clubs, concerts, bookers, etc.); contracts; publishing; funding; strategies.

The list goes on. This compendium should be on the bookshelf of every musician (and not just jazz musicians), a guide that will fascinate anyone who retains the belief that all it takes to get to Carnegie Hall is practice, practice, practice.