Pee Wee Russell: The Life of a Jazzman
Jazz clarinetist Charles Ellsworth "Pee Wee" Russell was a revolutionary musician, Hilbert argues here with conviction. "His intense improvisations only began to sound 'right' to most critics during the last decade of his life. The groans and creaks he elicited from his instrument were thought to be the result of not knowing the correct way, but he chose to play his own way." But racism, Russell's alcoholism and other problems, the author maintains, have forestalled wider appreciation of the only musician to have played with both Bix Beiderbecke and Thelonius Monk. Russell was born in St. Louis in 1906, played in a Dixieland band when only 12, and worked with Bix by the mid-1920s. He moved to New York City in 1927, playing with Red Nichols and others, and Hilbert ably describes the bohemian milieu Russell found there. Hilbert movingly chronicles Russell's struggles with his career, club dates, marriage, recordings and image. By his untimely death in 1969, the 62-year-old Russell was finally gaining a broader audience. In this book, Hilbert gives the late clarinetist fitting tribute.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.