"American Music Is" by Nat Hentoff

I really like reading the Wall Street Journal. I don't read very much of it. Not the stock charts, I get that from my AG Edwards online account, not much of the news or editorial pages, but I do look at headlines and sometimes a little more.



I LOVE the Personal Journal section. Today's features:



downloading music gets more expensive

Walter Mossberg reviews digital video cameras

Scion xB ranked as one of 10 hottest cars (yep that is a cool ride)

airlines don't want you to buy (cheaper) roundtrip tickets and not use the more expensive one way fares



and lots more



There is also a book review (well really it is kind of an ad) for a Nat Hentoff collection of columns on jazz music. Nat is a great writer no matter the topic (Amazon link) and this is sure to be a great read.



Summer vacation coming soon? This would be the perfect book. Even if you don't know the music (I'm sure I don't know all his references) it is the story of the people in jazz that make it so great.



Can't wait to get it. Will do so tomorrow.



from today's paper:



OpinionJournal: American Music Is



"There are those who know Nat Hentoff foremost as a First Amendment crusader and a longtime columnist for the Village Voice. In such roles, his opinions are political most of the time. Which is not to say 'party line': He is happy to attack both left and right when they get in the way of his principles.



But at The Wall Street Journal his beat is cultural: For years he has written about jazz and occasionally other forms of American music, celebrating the performers, recounting the history, judging the latest recordings and reminiscing ('One afternoon,' begins a column, 'I went to a Frank Sinatra rehearsal at the Copacabana in New York').



'American Music Is,' which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore, collects some 60 Hentoff columns, mostly from the Journal and JazzTimes."



Here is part of the book from the "review" (ad) at the link:



"Trumpeter Clark Terry once said of Duke Ellington: "He wants life and music to be always in a state of becoming. He doesn't even like to write definitive endings to a piece. He'd often ask us to come up with ideas for closings, but when he'd settled on one of them, he'd keep fooling with it. He always likes to make the end of a song sound as if it's still going somewhere."



It's their constant state of becoming that draws me to people I write about, especially those who make music that I can hear whenever I need to connect again to the life force of these sounds of direct experience."