So far in 2024, mediocrity reigns supreme in music book publishing. Only a few memorable books (many of them on jazz) have risen far above the remainder of the stacks. The standouts display eloquent prose, thorough research, and lucid insights that enlighten and delight readers and keep them returning to their pages. Here are some of my favorite music books from the first half of 2024.
Ann Powers, Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell (Dey Street)
With the dazzling lyrical energy of a Joni Mitchell song, NPR music critic Ann Powers (Good Booty) paints a colorful portrait of the iconic musician whose restless creativity animates her musical journey across the terrains of folk, jazz, rock, and soul. Not a standard biography, Powers reveals Mitchell’s penchant for constant journeying, for picking up and moving on when “she recognizes the circumstances that call for her to speak and makes them newly audible.” Powers’ vivid prose conveys the depth of Mitchell’s ceaseless musical ingenuity, her self-possession, and her brilliant intuition for knowing when to move on to the music that connects her and her audience.
(Read ND’s interview with Traveling author Ann Powers here.)
Alice Randall, My Black Country: A Journey through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future (Black Privilege Publishing/Atria)
In her stunning book, Nashville songwriter, producer and novelist Randall uncovers country music’s Black roots and reveals its future in the work of contemporary country artists such as Miko Marks, Rissi Palmer, Rhiannon Giddens, Mickey Guyton, and Allison Russell, among others. Randall produces an illuminating genealogy of country music: “DeFord Bailey is the papa, Lil Hardin Armstrong is the mama, Ray Charles is their genius child, Charley Pride is DeFord’s side child, and Herb Jeffries is Lil’s stepson.” My Black Country is essential reading.
Renée Fleming, ed., Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness (Penguin)
The late neurologist Oliver Sacks once wrote that “music and gardens” are two types of “non-pharmaceutical” therapies “vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases.” To vouch for the therapeutic impact of music, opera star Fleming gathers an enriching collection of essays by artists, musicians (including Rosanne Cash, Rhiannon Giddens, and Yo-Yo Ma), scientists, and health-care providers that provide personal and scientific insights. This collection belongs on the shelf beside Sacks’ Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Daniel Levitin’s This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, and Levitin’s forthcoming I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine.
Judith Tick, Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song (Norton)
Drawing deeply on archival research and interviews with relatives, friends, and close associates, music historian Tick provides a multilayered biography of Fitzgerald as well as a richly textured history of the evolution of jazz in the mid- to late 20th century. Proceeding almost year-by-year, Tick traces Fitzgerald’s life and career and illustrates that her recordings of a series of Song Books — her renderings of American standards by Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart, among others — showcased her willingness to reinvent herself as a singer. In a splendid biography, Tick’s careful research, passion for her subject, and verdant prose reveal a singer for whom music was transformative and whose musical diversity was at the center of her evolution.
Larry Tye, The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America (Mariner)
Weaving biographical threads through this expansive musical and cultural history, Tye conveys how that music lifted Ellington, Armstrong, and Basie onto the national stage. According to Tye, “Ellington’s soulful arrangements were Shakespearian. Armstrong, with a heart as big as Earth, a heavenly smile, and a suitcase full of nicknames including his favorite, Satchmo, became the Mark Twain of song. The Buddha-like Basie was our musical everyman.” Tye’s rhythmic writing holds a steady beat in his captivating portrait of this trio.
James Kaplan, 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool (Penguin)
In 1959, Davis, Coltrane, and Evans created the now-iconic Kind of Blue, an album that changed the nature of jazz, influencing generations of musicians. With painstaking detail, Kaplan traces the evolution of each musician’s career and provides a close look at the making of Kind of Blue. 3 Shades of Blue may be this year’s best book on jazz, examining the evolution of a musical form and its influence on other genres.
Tom Maxwell, A Really Strange and Wonderful Time: The Chapel Hill Music Scene: 1989-1999 (Hachette)
Maxwell, a former member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, captures the heady spirit of the indie rock community in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that produced such bands as Superchunk, Ben Folds Five, Flat Duo Jets, and Southern Culture on the Skids. Approaching the decade year-by-year and drawing on interviews with musicians, producers, record label personnel, and music journalists, he re-creates the artistic fervor and excitement that grew and flourished in the last decade of the 20th century, especially at Cat’s Cradle, the little club at the heart of the scene.
Elijah Wald, Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories (Hachette)
In this mesmerizing book, music historian Wald looks deep into the nature of how we preserve music and performs close readings of the cache of Jelly Roll Morton’s “hidden and censored songs” shelved in 1938 at the Library of Congress because of their content and “coarse language.” In rich detail, Wald recovers these songs and re-creates the vibrant, and sometimes dark, world out of which early jazz and blues emerged.
