Wynton Marsalis: Skain's Domain: A Biography
Award-winning trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis has garnered more  credit and criticism than any other jazz artist of his generation. InSkain's  Domain, the first biography of Marsalis, author Leslie Gourse provides a  fast-moving overview of Marsalis's highs and lows. Gourse, a jazz biography specialist  who also pennedStraight No Chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonious  MonkandSassy: The Life of Sarah Vaughan, focuses more on Marsalis  as a pop icon rather than as a musical figure. At her best, Gourse reveals  Marsalis's conventional, post Civil Rights-era upbringing in the South--along  with his quirky relationship with brother Branford, and his duels with Miles  Davis and jazz critics--adding a needed dimension to his public persona.  "Whether as a result of his New Orleans environment, his natural indications,  his family upbringing, his early successes and the terrific attention he was  accorded, or all those elements," she writes, "Wynton drove himself relentlessly  to achieve his twin goals of establishing himself as a masterful musician and  elevating jazz in its rightful place." Though Gourse often focuses more on the  man than on his music, her portrait of Marsalis will be of interest to the  general reader, and it serves as a solid starting point for future works on this  celebrated artist.--Eugene Holley Jr.--This text refers to an alternateHardcoveredition.