Straight Life: The Story of Art Pepper

Rating:
Summary: Powerful!
Review: This book is an honest account of a life which was anything but straight. Art Pepper succeeded in becoming one of the finest alto saxophonists of all time despite his hopeless drug addiction. His autobiography holds nothing back, and gave me a real sense of what a powerful grip his singular weakness had over him throughout his life. This is a book I will never forget, and I recommend it even to those who have never heard about Art Pepper. It goes beyond jazz biography, as a book about life as a heroin junkie, criminal, prisoner, and about a man who could not help but destroy all his successes. Read it.

Rating:
Summary: King of Jazz/Crime/Junkys
Review: This brutal portrait of jazz virtuoso Art Pepper reads like a Bosch painting of the infernal pits of Hell...from drug addiction to peeping tom to armed robbery ... and doin time in San Quentin Art Pepper's fall from grace and eventual comeback late in life is related in hard as nails prose...throw in some of the best accounts of Jazz biography with opinions and rants on Miles Davis, Coletrane, Louis Armstrong and others and you have a redemptive, brutal look into the tortured heart of a true criminal/addict/musician...for Pepper was all three and considered each elemental in the struggle of his existence...

Rating:
Summary: Stunning Book!
Review: This is one of the most powerful and moving autobiographies I have ever read, in any context. In the sphere of jazz, it is unsurpassed. Even someone who has never heard or heard of Art Pepper should read this book. If you like his music, it is indispensible. Just when you start to wonder where fact ends and fiction starts, the author keeps jolting you back to total belief with brutally honest criticisms of himself, his weaknesses and his talents. A superb book on and by a superb artist, and the wife who clearly gave him immense support, love and inspiration. All life is here.