All That Jazz
Too many children must still identify books too closely with classroom curricula. Six months' hard reading would be the stiffest of sentences. But to these, and to others who hate emasculated folklore, home-county whimsy, romantic adven- ture and general middle-class fodder almost as much as they hate poetry, I recommend Jazz Country, by Nat Hentoff (Hart-Davis, 15s.): 'Your blues is like a new pair of shoes. all
glossy but no dirt on them because they haven't
been anywhere. You know. a lot of euys have written books trying to tell you what jazz is.
but Charlie Parker told the whole story in less than thirty seconds. He said. "Music is your own experience. your thoughts, your wisdom.
If you don't live it. it won't come out of your horn." He was talking about all kinds of music, but what he says applies most of all to jazz because when you're improvising, man, you're going inside yourself to dig out how you feel at that moment, and if you haven't lived enough to feel enough you're not telling any kind of story that's worth hearing.'
I couldn't just sit there and take it all with- out making some kind of defence. 'I'm only sixteen,' I said.
'That's not what I'm talking about . . . I've known twelve-year-olds w ho could hardly blow a scale right but who already were able to make you hear them talking through their horns.'
'Those were black twelve-year-olds; his wife said.
A white teenager, locked in music and am- bition, attempts to penetrate the New York jazz set-up, but discovers problems not only profes- sional. Boosted by Dizzy Gillespie, the narrative is from the inside, showing blacks and whites in their convictions, weaknesses, dilemmas, and on the job. Briskly entertaining, it is a moving reminder that, with or without jazz, a youth must grow up or 'like most people you'll grow sideways.'
'the tone here is exemplary. Nothing irritates me more than busy-minded Catos instructing us on others' preferences. 'God likes this, children like that.' But even I jib on the reader's behalf at Hitchcock's remarks scattered about his five stories, Alfred Hitchcock's Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries (Reinhardt, 21s.): 1 feel it is my solemn duty to warn you that there are a few long words in this story. I make this statement in the public interest. for the benefit of those who would rather go round the block than meet a long word face to face.
The stories themselves, liberally supplied with clues suitable for family discussion, are sufficiently ingenious, with bizarre flickers. From the present to the future : Starman Jones, by Robert A. Heinlein (Penguin, 4s. 6d.), is set two centuries ahead. Another galaxy is discovered inhabited by flying jelly-fish and centaurs who have enslaved men. Technically meticulous and with many imaginative suggestions, it will in- trigue those over-elevens who do not need to hold Mr Hitchcock's hand when face to face with 'anomalous intraspatial transition.'
Previous page
