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Rating: 
Summary: Tedium, Thy Name is Larkin
Review: All What Jazz, indeed. While Philip Larkin was a poet of some note, I'm thinking it probably didn't pay real well. So he got a gig, doing a monthly jazz column for the Daily Telegraph. He used this gig to blather endlessly of the superiority of Dixieland and trad jazz, and the travesty and utter disgrace that is modern jazz, i.e., bebop, hard bop, and horror above horrors, the dreaded free jazz. Indeed, the book opens with a quote from Miles Davis, trashing Ornette Coleman's music. Nothing like hiding behind an icon, there, Phil. Miles, who was the Charles Barkley of his day, would regularly say outrageous things for effect and "press." In print, the words look harsh - the printed page does not capture Miles's raspy cackle following his "quote." But the printed page does capture quite well the clammy, pasty discomfort that Larkin feels for modern jazz. Yes, pip-pip, give me the old Dixieland bands that I loved as a lad in prep school! OK, fine. A nice remembrance piece, on occasion, is nice. A barbed attack on an artist or genre can also be thought-provoking. (I've been known to dabble in such things...) However, Larkin did it EVERY MONTH for 10 years. Talk about a one trick pony, in an era that spawned creative genius and obliterated musical boundaries, Old Frumpy Phil is pining for the syncopated rhythms of his past. He would allow for Duke and Basie, but he had little use for Bird or Monk, and if he wasn't outright trashing them, he was smugly doling out left-handed compliments. But don't get him started on Trane, or, God forbid, Ornette. Truly the only book that I have read in anger, and out of morbid curiosity. Bottom line: it wasn't worth it. Save your money, or better yet, go buy a Coltrane disk!
Rating:
Summary: Tedium, Thy Name is Larkin
Review: All What Jazz, indeed. While Philip Larkin was a poet of some note, I'm thinking it probably didn't pay real well. So he got a gig, doing a monthly jazz column for the Daily Telegraph. He used this gig to blather endlessly of the superiority of Dixieland and trad jazz, and the travesty and utter disgrace that is modern jazz, i.e., bebop, hard bop, and horror above horrors, the dreaded free jazz. Indeed, the book opens with a quote from Miles Davis, trashing Ornette Coleman's music. Nothing like hiding behind an icon, there, Phil. Miles, who was the Charles Barkley of his day, would regularly say outrageous things for effect and "press." In print, the words look harsh - the printed page does not capture Miles's raspy cackle following his "quote." But the printed page does capture quite well the clammy, pasty discomfort that Larkin feels for modern jazz. Yes, pip-pip, give me the old Dixieland bands that I loved as a lad in prep school! OK, fine. A nice remembrance piece, on occasion, is nice. A barbed attack on an artist or genre can also be thought-provoking. (I've been known to dabble in such things...) However, Larkin did it EVERY MONTH for 10 years. Talk about a one trick pony, in an era that spawned creative genius and obliterated musical boundaries, Old Frumpy Phil is pining for the syncopated rhythms of his past. He would allow for Duke and Basie, but he had little use for Bird or Monk, and if he wasn't outright trashing them, he was smugly doling out left-handed compliments. But don't get him started on Trane, or, God forbid, Ornette. Truly the only book that I have read in anger, and out of morbid curiosity. Bottom line: it wasn't worth it. Save your money, or better yet, go buy a Coltrane disk!
Rating: 
Summary: The Greatest
Review: Larkin was a great writer and an honest critic, and this is the best-written book of popular music criticism available.
The other reviews posted for this book on Amazon are wrong to imply that Larkin's tastes were timid or stuffy. In fact his heros were Henry Allen, Pee-Wee Russell, Bessie Smith, Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Jabbo Smith, Jack Teagarden and so on. These are among greatest musicians and innovators of jazz.
Yes, Larkin thought Charlie Parker was overrated; he couldn't stand Coltrane; he thought Miles Davis was a bore. But don't be afraid to read why he thought so and you may learn something about your own heros.
Rating: 
Summary: Diary of a sourpuss
Review: When a reviewer calls Coltrane's playing 'possessed continually by an almost Scandinavian unloveliness', and questions Thelonious Monk's sense of rhythm, you start to get a feel for what kind of jazz he'll go for. And you'd be right: nothing ever seems to please Larkin quite so much as old-school big band or dixieland, and he's not afraid to say so. Still, he's a good writer and all, so if you're looking for a collection of jazz reviews from the 60s written by a slightly stuffy guy who never really got over Woody Herman, this is the book for you.
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