Jazzmatazz Review - The Art Pepper Companion

Todd Selbert, ed.

The Art Pepper Companion
(Cooper Square Press)

Who was the greatest post-Parker alto saxophonist? The question may be unanswerable, as there are too many categories within jazz to designate one player as being overall best. Ornette Coleman re-imagined Parker's bop, and turned jazz in a new direction (if not on its head); Cannonball Adderley brought emotion (read 'soul') to the instrument; Anthony Braxton coaxed and wrenched more sounds form the instrument than any living musician; Bobby Watson proved himself to be eloquent and articulate in every genre.

One new book proposes an answer—that Art Pepper "is generally considered the greatest alto saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation." That book, The Art Pepper Companion (Cooper Square Press), edited by Todd Selbert, makes a compelling case for that finding.

Pepper had at least two "periods," his early years as a bopper and his post-drug treatment years as a Coltrane-influenced adventurer. He also grabbed the public's imagination with his compelling autobiography Straight Life, a story of jazz triumph and addiction's travails and tragedies.

This collection has thirty essays, a revisiting of writings from across Pepper's career. With authors of the calibre of Leonard Feather, Martin Williams, John Litweiler and Dan Morganstern, the essayys are intelligent and convincing as they assay Pepper's role as a white musician, a drug-afflicted musician, a musician who changed with the times, a musician whose recordings (wonderfully analyzed if not dissected) were almost always exceptional.

This collection's value is as a splintered mirror for viewing Pepper's work. The cracks in the mirror re-figure Pepper as heard by the writers—a musician who gained from emulating Trane or who diverged from a golden path to a brief Trane infatuation; a musician indebted to alto saxophonists, or to Lester Young; a bird-lover or bird-hater; a player whose greatness was rooted in his past, or who grew as he aged; a white man in a black jazz world or a white man who bridged race in jazz. All of these perspectives provoke one to hear Pepper better, even as the musician's own memories (contained in various interviews) refract the picture again because of their own, drug-afflicted murkiness.

You will hear jazz better, and appreciate Pepper more, from just thumbing through the pages. The writing is erudite, impassioned, and on a par with a musician about who, in the concluding work, Gary Giddins opined that "he made you know that...no one else could ever play like that." Maybe Pepper was the best. He was certainly a giant, one whose every note deserves attention with this book at the listener's side.

— Jules Epstein, December 2000

Release Date: 6 Dec 2000

please send comments to jazzmatazz@att.net

last update 21 December 2000