Straight Life: The Story Of Art Pepper by Art Pepper, Laurie Pepper
|
List Price: Our Price: $15.17 You Save: $6.83 (31%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $9.99 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Straight Life: The Story Of Art Pepper
Book Review: Riveting book, sometimes painful to read
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is unforgettable as is Art Pepper's music. I'ts hard to believe that such clear beautiful tones came from such a tortured soul. Thank you to Laurie Pepper who got him to put his story out there for his fans and got the book published. I recommend this book to all fans of jazz of this "Birth of the Cool" era. I do wish he had spoken in more detail about the music and what the other jazz performers of the time were doing. I did find the book intense and painful to read as he slipped deeper into his dark world, but it's certainly fascinating and it's hard not to feel deep regret that he was not able to find the right help to enable him to break the addition for good.
Book Review: Reading Straight Life 4 times over the last 10 years finally
Summary: 5 Stars
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...
Book Review: King of Jazz/Crime/Junkys
Summary: 5 Stars
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...Book Review: Powerful!
Summary: 5 Stars
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.Book Review: Stunning Book!
Summary: 5 Stars
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.