Gene Lees

An intimate biography of the great songwriter, this is also a deeply affectionate memoir by one of Johnny Mercer's best friends."Moon River," "Laura," "Skylark," "That Old Black Magic," "One for My Baby," "Accentuate the Positive," "Satin Doll," "Days of Wine and Roses," "Something's Gotta Give"--the honor roll of Mercer's songs is endless. Both Oscar Hammerstein II and Alan Jay Lerner called him the greatest lyricist in the English language, and he was perhaps the best-loved and certainly the best-known songwriter of his generation. But Mercer was also a complicated and private man.A scion of an important Savannah family that had lost its fortune, he became a successful Hollywood songwriter (his primary partners included Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern), a hit recording artist, and, as co-founder of Capitol Records, a successful businessman, but he remained forever nostalgic for his idealized childhood (with his "huckleberry friend"). A gentleman, a nasty drunk, funny, tender, melancholic, tormented--Mercer was a man immensely talented yet plagued by self-doubt, much admired and loved but never really understood.In music historian and songwriter Gene Lees, Mercer has his perfect biographer, who deals tactfully but directly with Mercer's complicated relationships with his domineering mother; his tormenting wife, Ginger; and Judy Garland, who was the great love of his life. Lees's highly personal examination of Mercer's life is sensitive as only the work of a friend of many years could be to the conflicts in Mercer's nature. And it is filled with insights into Mercer's work that could come only from a fellow lyricist (whose own lyrics were much admired by Mercer). A poignant, candid, revelatory portrait of Johnny.From the Hardcover edition.

"For more than half a century, jazz writer and lyricist Gene Lees has been the friend of many in the world of jazz music. In this book he offers minibiographies of fifteen of these friends - some of them jazz greats, some lesser-known figures, and some up-and-comers. Combining conversations and memoirs with critical commentary, Lees's profiles will captivate jazz fans, performers, and historians alike."--Jacket.

"In this book, an eminent jazz chronicler writes of his encounters with four great black musicians: Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Milt Hinton, and Nat "King" Cole. Equal parts memoir, oral history, and commentary, each of the main chapters is a minibiography, weaving together conversations Gene Lees had with the musicians and their families, friends, and associates over a period of several decades.". "Lees begins the book with an essay that tells of his introduction to the world of jazz and his reaction to racism in the United States when he emigrated from Canada in 1955. The underlying theme in his book is the impact racism had on the four musicians' lives and careers and their determination to overcome it. As Lees writes, "No white person can even begin to understand the black experience in the United States...All [of the four jazz makers] are men who had every reason to embrace bitterness - and didn't.""--BOOK JACKET.

Singers and the Song, which appeared in 1987, is being rereleased in an expanded edition. The new edition retains a number of famous pieces from the original volume, some in expanded form, such as Lees' classic profile of Frank Sinatra. Lees has also retained his essay on lyric writing, his piece on the art of Edith Piaf, and his admiring look at the genius of songwriter Johnny Mercer. The expanded edition offers seven new essays that are no less accomplished. Here readers will find a tribute to "the sweetest voice in the world," Ella Fitzgerald; a moving interview with Jackie Cain and Roy Kral; Lees' account of his involvement with Bossa Nova music and his collaboration with Antonio Carlos Jobim. We also read about Julius La Rosa, another of the great singers, the lyrics of Yip Harburg, Henry Warren's unforgettable compositions, and the elegant Arthur Schwartz, composer of "Dancing in the Dark" and many other masterpieces of the great period of American songwriting.

Now comes the book that jazz lovers (and Lees's fans) have been waiting for - Leader of the Band, a vivid, full-scale biography of Woody Herman. Asked by Herman in 1986 to write his biography, Gene Lees has spent close to a decade working on it, interviewing many of Herman's childhood friends and lifelong acquaintances as well as numerous musicians.

It was Louis Armstrong who said, "These people who make the restrictions, they don't know nothing about music. It's no crime for cats of any color to get together and blow." "You can't know what it means to be black in the United States--in any field," Dizzy Gillespie once said, but Gillespie vigorously objected to the proposition that only black people could play jazz. "If you accept that premise, well then what you're saying is that maybe black people can only play jazz. And black people, like anyone else, can be anything they want to be." In Cats of Any Color, Gene Lees takes a look at the pervasiveness of racism in jazz's past and present--both the white racism that long ghettoized the music and generations of talented black musicians, and what Lees maintains is an increasingly virulent reverse racism aimed at white jazz musicians. In candid interviews, living jazz legends, critics, and composers step forward and share their thoughts on how racism has affected their lives. Dave Brubeck, part Modoc Indian, discusses Native Americans' contribution to jazz and the deeply ingrained racism that for a time made it all but impossible for jazz groups with black and white players to book tours and television appearances. Horace Silver looks back on his long career, including the first time he ever heard jazz played live. Blacks were not not allowed into the pavilion in Connecticut where Jimmie Lunceford's band was performing, so the ten-year-old Silver listened and watched through the wooden slats surrounding the pavilion. "And oh man! That was it!" Silver recalls. Red Rodney recalls his early days with Charlie "Bird" Parker, and pianist and composer Cedar Walton tells of the time Duke Ellington played at the army base at Ford Dix and allowed the young enlisted Walton to sit in. --From publisher's description.

From Bix Beiderbecke to Dizzy Gillespie, from swing to be-bop, from the 1920s to the 1990s, Lees provides portraits of some of the most important and beloved figures in jazz history.-Derived from book jacket.

In 1949, from relative obscurity, Montreal-born Oscar Peterson blazed on the scene with a Carnegie Hall debut. He was 24 and offered a unique "swing" style punctuated by the dazzling virtuosity that no one had seen before. Lees recounts Peterson's childhood and what it meant to be black and talented in 1940s Canada. He provides vivid description of his father, Daniel, a railway porter and severe taskmaster, anxious for his children's future and opposed to his son choosing jazz over classical music (Peterson's brother and sister both being accomplished musicians, themselves).

A collection of biographical essays focusing on major jazz instrumentalists and bandleaders.