Jazz In 34 Volumes

One of my favorite reference books is the Random House College Dictionary. That book defines the word "discography" as "a descriptive list of phonograph records by category, composer, performer, or date of release."

Why am I talking about this word? Well, for one thing, I am a music lover, especially of jazz. Secondly,  I am interested in the minutest details about sound recordings. And thirdly, the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami told the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" column (November 20, 2022) that he owns The Jazz Discography, a 34-volume set compiled by Tom Lord.

"It takes up a lot of space," he said, "and I imagine most people would find it unnecessary to own, but for jazz collectors it's a real treasure, the painstaking result of years of work."

And no doubt the whole set would cost a jazz enthusiast a small fortune.

I would love to see one of these volumes, just to browse through its pages and immerse myself in its encyclopedic range and scholarship. Contained in those 34 volumes is presumably every, or almost every, jazz recording from the music's infancy to more recent years. That would include famous works, lesser known ones as well as those long forgotten. I would especially want to read the entries for Time Out by the Dave Brubeck Quartet (1959), one of my favorite recordings, and Miles Davis's Kind of Blue (1959), for example, to learn some little known facts about them.

The Jazz Discography, which is available in the New York Public Library, would allow me to finally gain enough jazz knowledge to be able to complete, with more ease and confidence, the esoteric crossword puzzle that appears each month in the New York City Jazz Record.

Black Movies That Should Be Made

I'm hoping that the following proposed black film projects will finally get made:

1. About thirty-two years ago, one of the New York tabloids announced that there was a proposed film about dancer/choreographer Arthur Mitchell under consideration. I think it was supposed to be a docudrama that followed Mitchell from his early life in Harlem to his ascendancy to becoming the first black male principal dancer with the New York City Ballet to his co-founding of the Dance Theatre of Harlem shortly after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

2. The Billy Strayhorn biopic, based on Lush Life, David Hajdu's biography of the composer and Duke Ellington collaborator (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996). The author's name is pronounced Hay-doo.

3. A film about Philippa Schuyler, the child piano prodigy and the biracial daughter of the Harlem Renaissance writer George Schuyler. She was later killed in May of 1967 in a helicopter crash while working as a journalist in South Vietnam. In the 1940s, Joseph Mitchell, a staff writer at The New Yorker, wrote a lengthy article about her when she was a child. It was included in his collection, Up in the Old Hotel, and Other Stories (Vintage Books, 1993). Alicia Keys, herself a piano prodigy, was chosen to portray Philippa.

4. Spike Lee's plan to film a story about the 1938 boxing match between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling.

5. The director Ryan Coogler (Black Panther and Fruitvale Station) and the actor Michael B. Jordan's  desire to make a movie about Mansa Musa, the king of Mali, who died in 1337.

A Literary Cure For Insomnia

The novelist Percival Everett was asked in the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" column (December 19, 2021) what books were on his nightstand. He gave an interesting, and somewhat humorous, response:

"On the table are the memoirs of [the Russian composer and pianist Dmitri] Shostakovich. I am not usually interested in memoir and I have to say that I am using this one as a sleep-aid."

Instead of taking an over-the-counter sleep-inducing medication when I have trouble falling asleep, a better solution might be reading a very dull book.

Another Use For Rejection Letters

We've all heard stories about writers who've received enough rejection letters from publishing houses to paper a wall. Well, there's a better use for these carriers of bad news.

A useful suggestion was found in an article by a very prolific writer named George Haddad-Garcia. He wrote an article for Writer's Digest (July 1982) that listed thirty cost-cutting ideas for writers. The one I especially liked was number ten: "Scratch pads are often free at hotels and motels; don't overlook these, either. The backs of rejection letters can be used for scratch, jotting down ideas, notes, phone numbers, or for rough drafts."

So those annoying rejection letters not only can make you more determined to succeed as a writer, they can be turned over to the blank side and used to help you create the next award-winning novel or short story collection (you hope).