Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker
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Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker
US $4.04
ApproximatelyPHP 225.52
Condition:
Good
A book that has been read but is in good condition. Very minimal damage to the cover including scuff marks, but no holes or tears. The dust jacket for hard covers may not be included. Binding has minimal wear. The majority of pages are undamaged with minimal creasing or tearing, minimal pencil underlining of text, no highlighting of text, no writing in margins. No missing pages.
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Located in: North Smithfield, Rhode Island, United States
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eBay item number:146525775988
Item specifics
- Condition
- Release Year
- 2013
- ISBN
- 9780062005595
About this product
Product Identifiers
Publisher
HarperCollins
ISBN-10
0062005596
ISBN-13
9780062005595
eBay Product ID (ePID)
160094266
Product Key Features
Book Title
Kansas City Lightning : the Rise and Times of Charlie Parker
Number of Pages
384 Pages
Language
English
Publication Year
2013
Topic
Composers & Musicians, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Individual Composer & Musician
Genre
Music, Biography & Autobiography
Format
Hardcover
Dimensions
Item Height
1.2 in
Item Weight
21.8 Oz
Item Length
9 in
Item Width
6 in
Additional Product Features
Intended Audience
Trade
Reviews
Reads like a jazz record. . . Cradling Parker's past in the long and incredibly fruitful history of music in America, Crouch brings the alto saxophonist to life, his biography an amalgamation of the people who knew him, loved him, and, of course, played alongside him., Stanley Crouch's work is perhaps the most important writing on jazz today. . . This outstanding book is food for the soul for any serious listener of jazz music., A tour de force that is the print equivalent of a long, bravura jazz performance. . . Crouch has given us a bone-deep understanding of Parker's music and the world that produced it. In his pages, Bird still lives., Crouch's prose is, as usual, perfect-it takes a genius to write about one, perhaps--and Kansas City Lightning is a thoughtful, generous look at one of the country's most important artists., It takes a lifetime of passionate engagement to write with the intensity and depth of Stanley Crouch. . . The results are insightful, profound, and wholly original. . . This a must read, not just for jazz fans, but for anyone interested in American possibilities., Charlie Parker's story can't help but fascinate anyone interested in the most American music of the past century. . . I am eagerly awaiting [the] sequel., Will send you searching for recordings. And really, there's no more important litmus test for a music biography. Reading these books makes you want to listen., A portrait of the young Charlie Parker with a degree of vivid detail never before approached. . . [ Kansas City Lightning is] a deft, virtuosic panorama of early jazz. . . This is a mind-opening, and mind-filling, book., Strikes with enlivening insight, and will leave jazz fans hoping Crouch is as good as his word when he says Volume 2 will be out in the next two years., This first volume in the epic biography of Charlie Parker showcases Stanley Crouch's encyclopedic knowledge of jazz history and effusive prose., [Crouch's] great, indeed historic, glory is original research, its interviews with Parker friends from boyhood on about the first half of his life in Kansas City., Crouch writes in a heroic style. . . This 30-years-in-the-making biography of the saxophonist evokes Parker's life and times with visceral power, as well as real finesse., [Crouch] crafts lush scenes and crackling music writing. . . Jazz fans will want to read this book. . . This is a thorough and entertaining account of one of the greatest rises--and the prelude to one of the greatest falls--in jazz history., Crouch. . . is uniquely qualified to guide readers on this tour. . . A story rich in musical history and poignant with dramatic irony., 'Bird Lives!' his followers proclaimed, as if a man as brilliant as Parker could not possibly be mortal. But Charlie Parker was a man, and Stanley Crouch's enchanting biography returns him to the soil that nourished him before he took flight., Crouch captures with novelistic verve the excitement of [the] period. . . [Charlie Parker] has daunted even, perhaps especially, awestruck biographers. Crouch's eyes are wide open, and he lends his considerable talents to a jazz biography that ranks with the very best., An instant classic. . . . With a novelist's sensibility . . . Crouch portrays Parker's world more vividly than anything I have ever read previously. . . . Parker 'lives' in Crouch's telling., It is from Mr. Crouch, a novelist as well as a critic and essayist, that we come to see Charlie Parker in the context of his time and place in America. . . One comes away from Mr. Crouch's book wanting more., This is a memorable book. . . Stanley Crouch takes us deep into places most of us can only imagine—including into the heart of the mysterious split-second alchemy that takes place nightly on the bandstand., Stanley Crouch has a store of fresh information for you in his new book about Charlie Parker (1920-55), the genius of American music universally known as Bird, and invaluable insights to offer into the meaning of Parker's achievement. It is imperative that you come into possession of this material…, He tells Parker's story in vivid detail, with a historian's eye and Crouch's unwavering love of the art. All of these elements coalesce into one engrossing account of an American legend that is a must-read for music fans., [Crouch] crafts lush scenes and crackling music writing. . . Jazz fans will want to read this book. . . This is a thorough and entertaining account of one of the greatest rises-and the prelude to one of the greatest falls-in jazz history., ' Kansas City Lightning paints a profound portrait of a great American musician, but also features Crouch operating at the top of his game.' ( Eugene Holley, Publishers Weekly ), Social and cultural critic, columnist and MacArthur Genius Crouch offers a mix of impressionist strokes, historical facts and context in his masterful Charlie Parker bio. . ., Crouch. . . meticulously examines the musical mechanisms of Parker's genius and, in prose that veers toward lyrical rapture, conjures the inner life of the improvising artist. . . The book also unfolds, with remarkable personal nuances, a social history of black America in the Jim Crow era., It is from Mr. Crouch, a novelist as well as a critic and essayist, that we come to see Charlie Parker in the context of his time and place in America. . . . One comes away from Mr. Crouch's book wanting more., Stanley Crouch's soulful, poetic and often graphic Kansas City Lightning. . . reads like the jazz version of Batman Begins, with Crouch detailing the raw materials of culture, class, and race that forged Parker's musical identity., Crouch's prose is, as usual, perfect-it takes a genius to write about one, perhaps-and Kansas City Lightning is a thoughtful, generous look at one of the country's most important artists., From bravura sentence to serpentine paragraph, the book is a virtuoso performance of musical-literary mimesis. . . . Kansas City Lightning provides more ideas and better writing in its 365 pages than any other book about Parker., A tour de force that is the print equivalent of a long, bravura jazz performance. . . . Crouch has given us a bone-deep understanding of Parker's music and the world that produced it. In his pages, Bird still lives., Kansas City Lightning succeeds as few biographies of jazz musicians have. . . This book is a magnificent achievement; I could hardly put it down., In Crouch's hands, the phrase that used to be ubiquitous around New York rings true: Bird lives. I hope I'm not the only one out there who is waiting with bated breath for Crouch's next volume to see this Bird take flight., ' Kansas City Lightning succeeds as few biographies of jazz musicians have. . . This book is a magnificent achievement; I could hardly put it down.' ( Henry Louis Gates, Jr. ), This is a memorable book. . . Stanley Crouch takes us deep into places most of us can only imagine-including into the heart of the mysterious split-second alchemy that takes place nightly on the bandstand., Social and cultural critic, columnist and MacArthur Genius Crouch offers a mix of impressionist strokes, historical facts and context in his masterful Charlie Parker bio., Stanley Crouch has a store of fresh information for you in his new book about Charlie Parker (1920-55), the genius of American music universally known as Bird, and invaluable insights to offer into the meaning of Parker's achievement. It is imperative that you come into possession of this material..., Crouch's prose is, as usual, perfect-it takes a genius to write about one, perhaps—and Kansas City Lightning is a thoughtful, generous look at one of the country's most important artists., The soul of Stanley Crouch joins the soul of the legendary jazz legend. . . Crouch recreates 'the Bird' with his writer's talents at their peak and the result is magical., [A] riveting, long-awaited book . . . Here is Bird making his watershed discoveries before he fired his own lightning bolts., Capture[s] the excitement of a Charlie Parker performance, his incandescent swing, the way he took notes to places they'd never been before. . . Takes us as close as we are likely to get to the early years of a genius-in-waiting., Fans of Mr. Crouch have been waiting so long for him to complete this volume, which is the first installment in a two-part series, that it has taken on a kind of mythic status. It lives up to its aura., [Crouch] crafts lush scenes and crackling music writing. . . Jazz fans will want to read this book. . . This is a thorough and entertaining account of one of the greatest rises—and the prelude to one of the greatest falls—in jazz history., This is a memorable book. . . Stanley Crouch takes us deep into places most of us can only imagine--including into the heart of the mysterious split-second alchemy that takes place nightly on the bandstand., With the straight-ahead timing and the ethereal blowing of a great jazzman, Crouch delivers a scorching set. . . Crouch brings to life the swinging backdrop against which Parker honed his craft.", Kansas City Lightning paints a profound portrait of a great American musician, but also features Crouch operating at the top of his game., [A] meticulous biography of Parker. . . . In Crouch's passages, he very nearly invents a new language for discussing jazz., Stanley Crouch's Kansas City Lightning shoots out of the gate with the gale force of a Charlie Parker solo. . . [An] immersive chronicle, more than 30 years in the making.
Dewey Edition
23
Dewey Decimal
788.73165092
Synopsis
Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker is the first installment in the long-awaited portrait of one of the most talented and influential musicians of the twentieth century, from Stanley Crouch, one of the foremost authorities on jazz and culture in America. Throughout his life, Charlie Parker personified the tortured American artist: a revolutionary performer who used his alto saxophone to create a new music known as bebop even as he wrestled with a drug addiction that would lead to his death at the age of thirty-four. Drawing on interviews with peers, collaborators, and family members, Kansas City Lightning recreates Parker's Depression-era childhood; his early days navigating the Kansas City nightlife, inspired by lions like Lester Young and Count Basie; and on to New York, where he began to transcend the music he had mastered. Crouch reveals an ambitious young man torn between music and drugs, between his domineering mother and his impressionable young wife, whose teenage romance with Charlie lies at the bittersweet heart of this story. With the wisdom of a jazz scholar, the cultural insights of an acclaimed social critic, and the narrative skill of a literary novelist, Stanley Crouch illuminates this American master as never before., No musician has lived a more transformational, or more tragic, life than Charlie Parker, one of the most talented and influential figures of the twentieth century. From the start of his career in the late 1930s, Parker was a new kind of American artist: a revolutionary musician who internalized all of popular music and blew it back through his alto saxophone "at the tempo of emergency"-even as he wrestled with a drug addiction that would ultimately contribute to his death at thirty-four. Yet no writer has fully captured the arc and texture of Parker's personal story . . . until now. Kansas City Lightning, the first in a two-volume life of Parker by Stanley Crouch, draws on decades of original interviews with peers, collaborators, and family members to reveal Parker as he emerged from the landscapes-literal and artistic-that he inhabited. A precocious child, shy yet self-possessed, Charlie ventured early into the nightlife of wide-open Depression Kansas City, a veritable stomping ground for such bandleaders as Walter Page, Bennie Moten, and Moten's successor, Count Basie, the king of Kansas City swing. Inspired by saxophonists Lester Young and Chu Berry, trumpeter Roy Eldridge, and his mentor Buster Smith, Parker endured initial humiliation on the bandstand-yet persevered until he mastered the idiom and began to transcend it. Kansas City Lightning follows Parker from the "freak shows" and "spook breakfasts" of late-night Kansas City, to the segregated union halls of Chicago, and finally to New York's Harlem ballrooms. Most intimately, it brings us into young Charlie Parker's family circle, as he plunged headlong into a very adult world-lured by both music and drugs, torn between his oddly protective mother and Rebecca Ruffin, the impressionable young woman whose romance with Charlie is at the bittersweet heart of this story. With the musical wisdom of a lifetime jazz scholar, the cultural insights of an indispensable social critic, and the narrative skill of a writer at the height of his powers, Crouch brings Parker back to glorious, surprising, and deeply moving life.
LC Classification Number
ML419.P4C76 2013
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- g***m (520)- Feedback left by buyer.Past monthVerified purchaseBook condition is better than described. Fast shipping -great value.
- s***a (131)- Feedback left by buyer.Past monthVerified purchaseThank you 😊
- 1***0 (199)- Feedback left by buyer.Past monthVerified purchaseThanks
- r***r (898)- Feedback left by buyer.Past monthVerified purchaseSuper fast shipper A++++++