BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Music
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Desperado
Tomasz Stanko is arguably the greatest jazz musician Poland has ever produced. His career spanned almost 60 years until his death in 2018. A visionary trumpeter and composer, a protege of Krzysztof Komeda and a colleague of musicians from Poland, Sweden, Norway, Britain, Cuba and the USA, his impact...
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Hidden Man
Everybody knows John Altman's music, but not so many people know his name. Yet he is one of the most prolific composers, conductors and arrangers in history and his saxophone playing has been heard live and on record with many great names. In this vivid account of over fifty years in the world of po...
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This is Bop
If any man could be defined as the epitome of the modern jazz singer, it would surely be Jon Hendricks. His contributions to jazz as a whole were colossal: a hipster, a bopster, a comic and raconteur, a wordsmith par excellence, and a fearless improviser who took the arts of scatting and vocalese to...
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Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett is one of the great pianists of our times. Before achieving worldwide fame for his solo improvisations, he had already collaborated with Art Blakey, Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. His 'Koln Concert' album (1975) has now sold around four million copies and become the most successful sol...
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Komeda
Komeda: A Private Life in Jazz is the biography of Krzysztof (Trzciński) Komeda (1931-1969), composer of no fewer than 40 soundtracks, including film scores to all of Roman Polański's early films such as Knife in the Water and Rosemary's Baby; and revered figure in the world of jazz, which regards h...
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The Godfather of British Jazz
This is the first book about the life of jazz pianist and composer Stan Tracey CBE (1926-2013). Drawn largely from his personal diaries and some of his many interviews, his son Clark Tracey pieces together what made the late Stan Tracey a unique character in jazz music. Stan's wit and wisdom also co...
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The Long Shadow of the Little Giant
Over forty years have elapsed since the death of the British jazz legend Tubby Hayes and yet his story still continues to captivate. Beginning as a precociously talented teenage saxophonist, he took first the local and then the international jazz scene by storm, displaying gifts equal to the finest...
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The Beatles
Of all pop music's icons, the Beatles have attracted more attention and generated more discussion than any other performers. The group's transformation from a semi-professional skiffle group in Liverpool to one of the twentieth century's key historical and cultural events has been told and re-told i...
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Do You Want to Know a Secret?
When Billy J. Kramer's "Do You Want To Know A Secret?" by Lennon and McCartney topped the charts in 1963, he was the first singer in the world to have a number one hit with a Beatles song, apart from the Fab Four themselves. This propelled the teenage Kramer into the fast lane, and he followed it wi...
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Falco and Beyond
Falco and Beyond is devoted to the most popular Austrian song-writer, singer and rapper of the twentieth century and one of the most successful European singers of all time. Falco was born in 1957, reached the peak of his popularity in the 1980s with songs such as "Der Kommissar", "Rock Me Amadeus"...