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Summary: Straight Life - The Story of Art Pepper
Review: An apt title, as Art Pepper tells in his own words what he did, and how he felt about it. Pepper was one of the finest alto saxophonists of all time but also a tortured individual who found escape from the reality of living through heroin. This book is not a fluffy piece of a read and not for anyone looking for such.
Pepper tells the raw truth about his drug use, prison time and even sexual activities ( some of the latter criminal). One is struck by how much time he wasted in prison and being so stoned he was unable to function. If that time could only have been spent recording and playing how much more of a legacy he would have left us!
If you wish to read a searing portrait of the life of a jazz musician and drug addict then read this book for there is probably no finer written example. I found it difficult to put down. Mesmerizing! Highly recommended.
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Summary: Another junky story with jazz as a sub-text
Review: I discovered jazz music by listening to Willis Conover's jazz program on the Voice of America. But at midpoint in "Straight Life" I found myself wondering about the music that I'd been listening to all these years. To be sure, Art & Laurie Pepper have collected a telling and troublesome account of jazz music from just before WW II until Art Pepper's death in 1982. But it's the jazz musician Art Pepper's own words that provides the most troublesome stuff. Booze consumed his life as much as he consumed it. Soft drugs like marijuana lead to hard drugs like smack (heroin). Pepper even wrote a tune about smack. He recorded the tune on an album called "Smack Up" not too long before he got busted and ended up in San Quentin. Pepper felt so strongly about smack (according to a story he relates early on in the book) that it was the first thing he went looking for when he got out on his first parole. And his second. And then there are all the other people who are junkies or who become junkies because Pepper introduced them to the monkey on his own back. It's the same story, page after page, until I began wondering about the music that had led me to buy the book in the first place, and not because I was that innocent in the first place. I lived through the 60s and had seen my share ruined & curtailed lives. But page after page of smack and the resulting criminal process that supported it for Pepper was just a little too much. I kept waiting for someone to provide intervention. When that one person does show up in Art Pepper's life, he turns her on to cocaine. In the end, and even at the end of his life, the saxophonist who'd played with Stan Kenton and who'd worked in music clinics with high school kids couldn't find anything within himself to keep away from drugs. When Pepper's third wife and co-author, Laurie, tells him that the doctor is going to order some pain killers for his last moments, Art's last words were "It's about time." Time enough to look for the last fix, time enough to run out of time at the age of 57. Which is a time too damn soon in a life, a creative life, too sadly wasted. Reading "Straight Life" was enough to make me think about putting away the alto sax that my son had given me last Christmas. Not to mention the records & tapes (and later, CDs) that I'd collected since I first heard Willis Conover's voice and the music he played on the Voice of America all those years ago. That's because this book is not for the faint of heart. This is a very troubling book to read. Should you buy it? Yes, if you want to get to the belly of the beast, if you want to learn about the basest nature of the human ability to delude oneself, if you have enough guts to say "Enough!" Yes if you want to know about the music. But if you have the least twinge of pain from reading about drugs & sex & a man who simply couldn't look himself in the mirror and say "enough," find something else to read.
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Summary: Brutally honest self-portrait
Review: I have read this book twice now. The first time I read it, being a fanatical fan of Art Pepper and having seen him at his best, and worst, I was looking for reasons why Art had such a difficult life. I was impressed by his compelling and brutal self-appraisal. The book underscores Pepper's music, which is brutally self-revealing, and helps us see the connection between life and art. The second time I read it, I tried to find out whether it would help me understand the music, and it failed there. There is little of the music in this book. It does not go much into his musical life; it is mainly about Art as a man, not a musician. And remember Art did not write the book, his wife Laurie did, but of course she taped Art's comments on his life and edited them. It is revelatory, of course, but one would have wished that she had asked him more pointed questions about the music. Otherwise, as an autobiography, it ranks up there with the best in history. Hail, Art Pepper, the greatest saxophone player of our day!
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Summary: GRIPPING
Review: Just an incredible book/life/story of a jazz genius who was hooked on heroin (and then later toward the end of his life on cocaine, etc.) Pepper pulls no punches in the telling. It's all here. While you appreciate the guy's honesty (and love him for it) you can't help but shake your head and feel so damn sad and awful at the hell he put himself through with all the drugs he shot up/used/consumed... Why? Why did he have to go that route? I'm not judging here; we all have our weaknesses, but you can't help but feel shocked at the toll all the smack he shot up took on this guy (you have never met, but feel that you know and give a damn about the same way you would any friend.) I also recommend the video. There is a scene there in the third act, where Art is playing a tune called Our Song on his record player (with his wife Laurie sitting also nearby listening to this beautiful piece of music that he had written for her, for the love that he felt for his lady) and Art is saying: "That's it; that's the best that I can do. It took 51 years to be able to do that..." And I have to tell you it hit me pretty hard as I sat in front of my set watching/listening to this music that Art had created... Art Pepper, an original. I wish he were around. Yeah, I know, there's the music he left behind...it isn't enough. I miss the guy, even though I never met him. I have a feeling you'll feel the same way after reading Straight Life.
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Summary: Reading Straight Life 4 times over the last 10 years finally
Review: Reading Straight Life 4 times over the last 5 years finally motivated me to listen to some jazz...Straight Life is one of those few books that I feel compelled to re-read every few years. I find its directness and apparent honesty moving. There is a sense of inevitability about the events that make it more of a classic tragedy than a jazz autobiography. Half way through my fourth reading I decided I ought to hear some of the music Art Pepper recorded. I did a web search, and ended up with Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section and The Return of Art Pepper. Maybe the book should be re-issued with these discs included...
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Summary: Best Jazz Bio ever published
Review: Straight from the heart, Art & Laurie Pepper chronicle one of the best Jazz Alto and Clarinet players of all time. Mind blowing, heart wrenching events that detail a life of misadventure, obsession and recovery. Thoroughly recommended.
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Summary: A Masterpiece!
Review: Straight Life is at once an all revealing portrait of man and musician. The battle for sanity, sobriety and identity. There is a little bit of Art Pepper in all of us. I could not put the book down. Well worth re-reading.
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Summary: A Troubled Life
Review: Straight Life is one of the most honest narratives I had ever read.This is an example to what alcohol and drugs can do to an individual.Art is & was one of the very finest Alto players that ever lived and thanks to his wife Laurie for her diligence and bravery to keep Art together, we have many fine recordings to enjoy .I also give Art credit for his honesty to give such an account.(VLS)
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Summary: FRIGHTENING
Review: THE ONLY TIME THAT I COULD PUT THIS BOOK DOWN WAS WHEN I HAD TO TAKE A BREAK FROM THE HORROR OF ART PEPPER'S LIFE. WHAT WAS THE MOST AMAZING THING WAS THAT HE HAD TO TAKE DRUGS UP UNTIL HIS DEATH, EVEN AFTER ALL HE HAD BEEN THROUGH. THE HONESTY IN THE TELLING OF THIS LIFE WAS BRUTAL AND BEAUTIFUL AT THE SAME TIME. AFTER READING THIS BOOK, I THEN VIEWED THE DVD, NOTES FROM A JAZZ SURVIVOR. TO SEE HIM AND LISTEN TO HIS MUSIC AFTER READING HIS WORDS BROUGHT IT ALL TOGETHER. WAS IT ALL WORTH IT TO HIM? I THINK IT WAS,TO HIM, AND THAT HE WOULDN'T CHANGE A THING.
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Summary: Intense and gripping as one of his late period sax solos
Review: There's no insight into Art's music here on a technical level, but it's very revealing on an emotional level. Once he started using heroin, his life became a self-destructive cycle of endless quests for the next fix. This is more of a junkie-prison memoir than a story of jazz music, although heroin was tragically a common thread in the lives of many jazz musicians of his era. Unfortunately for Art, he spent more time in jail than most of his peers did for those illegal pleasures. His experience appears to belie the gateway theory on marijuana, since he was only a casual user of pot before he started on heroin, and it was no more significant to him than alcohol. He relates little interest in marijuana or alcohol once he started on heroin, though he popped plenty of pills and even sniffed glue in his efforts to calm the monkey on his back and relieve his need for smack. If anything, tobacco might have been the real gateway drug for Art, since his inability to kick that habit was the thing that eventually forced him to leave the Syanon rehab center. I strongly recommend this book to any fan of Art's who'd like to have some idea of what might have been going on in his head during his different recording periods, or anyone else who might appreciate a brutal, unflinching account of an addict's life.
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