Archives for October 22, 2013

Yes, I still have another life! As I mentioned in this space in August, Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, will be publishing an excerpt from Satchmo at the Waldorf in its fall issue, which is devoted to the subject of American music. The issue, guest-edited by Gerald Early, Patrick Burke, and Mina Yang, is now out, and I’m happy to say that it’s full of good things, most particularly an essay by John H. McWhorter that delves into the all-but-unknown history of Early to Bed, the now-forgotten 1943 Broadway musical for which none other than Fats Waller wrote the score.
The publication of “Satchmo’s Shadow,” the excerpt from Satchmo at the Waldorf, marks the first time that any part of my first play has appeared in print, and I’m honored that no less prestigious a journal than Daedalus thought it fit to print.
Alas, you can’t read Daedalus for free on line, but you can download individual articles from the fall issue by going here, or purchase a Kindle edition by going here.

I’ll be talking about Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington today at eleven a.m. on NPR’s On Point. The host is Tom Ashbrook. To listen, go here.

From 2009:

I hasten to point out that I no longer own any long-playing records or cassettes, and that I spend more time listening to music on my MacBook and iPod than on my CD player. No doubt the time will also come when I spend more time reading books on a Kindle, or something like it, than reading the handsomely bound volumes shelved in my living room. Not for me the self-conscious posturing of those curmudgeonly poseurs who wail Change and decay in all around I see! at every opportunity. Nor would I surprised if my next book, whatever it happens to be and whenever it happens to come out, is published solely in electronic form–yet I can’t imagine that the thrill I get from downloading the first “copy” will be half so intense as the one I got last week when I held the first finished copy of Pops in my hands….

Read the whole thing here.

Duke Ellington plays “Bourbon Street Jingling Jollies,” a movement from New Orleans Suite:

“The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast Table