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BOOKS

The worst thing about this basically decent book is that it could easily have been a whole lot better. Biographies of jazz musicians are almost nonexistent (well, there are a couple on Satchmo) and the few that have appeared so far suffer from either over-intellectualization (the recent Miles Davis book, which eschewed biographical detail completely for turgid musicology) or superficiality.

August 1, 1975

BOOKS

CHASIN" THE TRANE

BY

J.C. Thomas

(Doubleday)

The worst thing about this basically decent book is that it could easily have been a whole lot better. Biographies of jazz musicians are almost nonexistent (well, there are a couple on Satchmo) and the few that have appeared so far suffer from either overintellectualization (the recent Miles Davis book, which eschewed biographical detail completely for turgid musicology) or superficiality. Chasin' The Trane falls into the latter category.

Was John Coltrane the blazing genius people now make him out to be, or was he just one of a number of people who were changing the face of jazz at 6 the time? Thomas" reverential attitude towards the man makes it hard to tell. Still, in between the filler, we catch glimpses of a man thoroughly dedicated to his art, human enough to be terrified of dentists (which, according to Thomas, got him drinking and later taking heroin—any reedman whose teeth are in bad shape is going to be in some serious pain), and deeply interested in a multiplicity of ideas and ways of life.

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