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• Current

Type: documentary

Status: —

Author: Gene Santoro

Tags: biography music jazz

Description: Charles Mingus was one of the most innovative jazz musicians of the 20th century, and ranksCharles Mingus was one of the most innovative jazz musicians of the 20th century, and ranks with Charles Ives and Duke Ellington as one of America's greatest composers. By temperament, he was a high-strung and sensitive romantic, a towering figure whose tempestuous personal life found powerfully coherent expression in the ever-shifting textures of his music. Now, acclaimed music critic Gene Santoro strips away the myths shrouding "Jazz's Angry Man," revealing Mingus as more complex than even his close friends knew. Written in a lively, novelistic style, Myself When I Am Real draws on dozens of new interviews and previously untapped letters and archival materials to explore the intricate connections between this extraordinary man and the extraordinary music he made....

2006-01-23

• Current

Type: documentary

Status: —

Author: Grosvenor Dawe

Tags: history biography library melvildewey

Description: Lake Placid Club, Essex CO, NY 1932

2005-12-09

• Current

Type: documentary

Status: now reading

Author: Wil Haygood

Tags: biography music entertainment

Description: His life appeared to be a fulfillment of the American Dream. From his rise to top billing onHis life appeared to be a fulfillment of the American Dream. From his rise to top billing on the nightclub circuit to his recording contracts, his featured roles on Broadway to his Hollywood stardom, his fame and fortune in Las Vegas to his Rat Pack heyday, Sammy Davis, Jr. seemed to have had it all and have done it all. Yet despite his successes, his celebrity friendships, and his untold romances, the entertainer was a roiling storm of contradictions and conflict. Admired and reviled by both blacks and whites, he was tormented by raging insecurities, never quite coming to terms with his own skin. In his award-winning biography, Wil Haygood takes Davis beyond the icon to explore the man trapped between a world of black and white, love and hate, identity and persona. Based on painstaking research and over 250 interviews, In Black and White transcends simple biography to provide a vast and vivid cultural history of the twentieth century as well as an intimate portrayl of one of America's greatest entertainers....

2005-11-28