Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie

Rating:
Summary: How Did They Do It?
Review: How did Albert Murray and Dan Morgenstern manage to write an uninteresting and at times boring book about the great Count Basie? This is a sanitized and unemotional look at Basie's career. It is full of details that can only be of interest to a Basie historian- and that's about the only good thing you can say about it. I guess The Count wanted it that way. If you want to read everything about Basie that's ever been written, then buy this book. Otherwise, skip it.



Rating:
Summary: For Basie aficionados only
Review: If you expect some spectacular insight how Basie and his music came into being, you're in for a slight letdown. The book has a somewhat sedate pace, doesn't feature to many anecdotes or details about Basie and his musicians. There are certainly some interesting facts but on the whole it's rather dry. The book covers Basie's career from its beginnings. I found the chapters on his early life the most interesting ones. From about 1940 onwards Basie structures his memories along his recording sessions; and this gets a bit tedious. I can only recommend this for true Basie aficionados who want to pick up the odd piece of new information.

Rating:
Summary: Good Morning Blues, Blues How Do You Do?
Review: This book contains a wealth of historical information, and is written in a calm, mellow style. Murray perfectly captured the laid-back elegance of Basie's voice and tells his story in a smooth, graceful manner. This book contains no sensational or scandalous materials about Basie's many associates, including Lester Young, Billy Holiday, Frank Sinatra, or Benny Moten, and that's the way Basie wanted it. Basie was a gentleman who believed in proper decorum, and he never revealed any secrets about his many friends. There are no bombshells in this book, but if you are looking for a comprehensive life story of one of the 20th century's most important and succesful musicians (both commercially and artistically), this is the book for you. This is an absolute neccesity for students of jazz and is essential to any collection of jazz biographies. The information on the music alone (where they were touring, what they were playing, when they recorded what, etc.) is vast.