The first C he should save Jackson from is his own concupiscence. The Best of Jackson Payne is a riff on the short, intense life of a jazz musician. This novel amounts to a sort of musical-literary love affair. It's refracted and collaged. He pieces together Payne's life with interviews, and interprets them through Payne's recordings.
Voices vary, attitudes shift, and stories morph.
The pastor's housekeeper sets Jackson onto the route to sexuality and heightens it with drugs, and the map is drawn for the rest of his life. Jackson goes to Korea, earns two medals, and meets new drugs. He then hooks up with a piano, bass and drummer, and sets out to make his own way in the jazz world. He starts with standards, but Payne soon begins to test convention. He experiments with new harmonies, pushes himself and his group to new technical heights, and gains fame.