Jazz Life

Antonio G. Pereira  ©  2026  Antonio G. Pereira

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Jazz Life

       https://www.archive.org/details/jazzlifejourneyf0000clax/mode/2up https://www.amazon.com/Jazzlife-Journey-Jazz-Across-America/dp/3836542935 by Music Photographer William Claxton and German Musicologist Joachim E. Berendt. Though this book was done more than 70 years ago, it is a timeless piece of work. And well worth reading. 

        There is one thing I find questionable about this book that is never addressed, and which I find open to question. In William Claxton's Preface, he mentions stopping off with co-author and 'Jazz Expert' Joachim E. Berendt, at a hamburger and malt shop on Highway 101 in California. The middle aged man and his wife, who own the place and speak English and German , are very friendly at first, until they hear Berendt speak to them in German; and the atmosphere turns to ice. It transpires that the man and his wife are Holocaust survivors, and the husband has numbers tattooed along the entire length of his forearm. The icy atmosphere continues until they leave the shop. We find out throughout the book, that Joachim E. Berendt, the 'Jazz Expert', served in the German Army during World War 2 at the Russian Front, and also served time in a Prisoner of War camp after the war. There is a blank area here about him, which is never addressed. Now aside from the obvious frauds like openly racist trumpeter Nick La Rocca in New Orleans (a complete moron if there ever was one), and Gunther Schuller (a Symphonic composer) who made a laughing stock of himself with his so-called creation of  'third stream music', this book belongs in the personal music library of every Jazz fan. It is that good. There are trumpeter Clifford Brown (his album 'Clifford Brown With Strings' is just gorgeous) and bassist Scott LaFaro (the very  inventive musician who played with Bill Evans), and who both died young in automobile accidents, and left a legacy of recordings of wonderful music, that will last forever. Wardell Gray, the very innovative Be Bop saxophonist, who was murdered in the desert of Las Vegas as an example to the integrated (and at the time successful) Moulin Rouge Hotel (the only integrated one on the Strip) by the Cosa Nostra. This book is an incredible archive of photographs, and a picture of America just before the Civil Rights Movement went into full swing and changed the face of America forever; dragging it kicking and screaming into what became a decade of change. As Miles Davis would have put it, "All Them Great Motherfuckers Are Here". Everyone from Miles himself, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Gil Evans, Sarah Vaughn, John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, Mary Lou Williams, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Bell Evans, Gerry Mulligan, Nina Simone, Peggy Lee, you name 'em, they're here. The collection of photographs taken across the country in 1960 will blow your mind! I was astounded to see a picture of a teenage Billy Preston playing piano, that was taken in Hollywood. The photographs that were taken near the end of the book, that finished the author's journey across America in 1960, of a cross section of Folk Musicians playing together in Washington Square Park, is a marvelous ending to Jazz Life. A prediction of what was to come. This is quite a masterpiece. And worth the money!