The Quotable Musician From Bach to Tupac - Book Review

Black Issues Book Review, July-August, 2003 by Joy Duckett Cain

by Sheila E. Anderson Allworth Press, March 2003 $19.95, ISBN 1-581-15263-9

Every now and then, you stumble upon a reference book that you just don't want to put down. Sheila E. Anderson's The Quotable Musician: From Bach to Tupac is such a volume, chock-full of insights about music, musicians and the craft of making music. Any book that can lay down a quote from Aristotle and Maya Angelou on one page, then toss in comments from John Phillip Sousa, Suge Knight, a Dixie Chick, Yolanda Adams, Ulysses S. Grant and Eve later on--well, that's the type of book that you simply don't come across every day.

Open it to any page and odds are you'll come across a quote that will surprise or delight you. To wit: On page 154, Billie Holiday says: "I don't think I'm singing. I think I'm playing a horn. I try to improvise like Lester Young, like Louis Armstrong or someone else I admire. What comes out is what I feel. I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know."

Anderson knows how to package these musical morsels to their best advantage. She breaks Quotable Musician into 30 chapters, and each one deals with a particular topic such as rejection and failure, spirituality, business or the nature of music. Hostess of a Sunday morning jazz show on WBGO radio in Newark, Anderson also includes excerpts of her interviews with legendary bassist Ron Carter, composer/arranger/tenor saxophonist Benny Golson, and drummer T.S. Monk, son of jazz icon Thelonius Monk.

I found myself wishing that Anderson also' included an interview with someone outside of the jazz world, perhaps a contemporary singer or rapper. Overall, she has done a wonderful job in bringing the wisdom, irony, humor and eccentricity of the musician's world a little bit closer to the reader, thus allowing us to glimpse the people behind the performances. And for that, all of us--musician and non-musician alike--should be grateful.

--Joy Duckett Cain is a New York-based writer who penned last month's story on Whoopi Goldberg.