JJA Nominees for Best Book About Jazz of the Year

Earlier this week, I highlighted the Jazz Journalists Association nominees for the 2012 JJA Jazz Awards. I failed to include the nominees for Best Book About Jazz of the Year. A couple of these focus on artists that this blog highlights.

• Coltrane on Coltrane: The John Coltrane Interviews (Chicago Review Press), edited by Chris DeVito. This collection of every known interview with Coltrane is the closest we'll ever get to an autobiography of the legend, who never wrote one. DeVito has included several new transcriptions, articles, reminiscences, and liner based on interviews with Coltrane. Some of Coltrane’s personal writings and correspondence are also included. Ashley Kahn, the author of A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album said that "Coltrane on Coltrane is a winning idea made accessibly real, revealing the gentle, thoughtful, deeply modest man behind the jazz genius and tenor titan.” (Purchase the book at Amazon.com.)

• Nica's Dream: The Life and Legend of the Jazz Baroness (W.W. Norton & Company), by David Kastin. Kastin's biography of Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild de Koenigswarter, the baroness who was a patron of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker, among others, has been called "a stunning cultural biography of New York City and a riveting portrait of one of the most fascinating figures of the 20th century" by Robin D. G. Kelley, the author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. (Purchase the book at Amazon.com.)

In addition, the following titles have also been nominated:

• Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice (University of California Press), by Tad Hershorn, which includes a foreward by Oscar Peterson (Purchase the book at Amazon.com.)
• Here and Now! The Autobiography of Pat Martino (Backbeat Books), by Pat Martino with Bill Milkowski (Purchase the book at Amazon.com.)
• Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones (University of Minnesota Press), as told to Albert Murray, edited by Paul Devlin, afterword by Phil Schaap (Purchase the book at Amazon.com.)
• Monument Eternal: The Music of Alice Coltrane (Wesleyan), by Franya J. Berkman, about the composer, improviser, guru, and widow of John Coltrane, who was an outstanding jazz musician in her own right (Purchase the book at Amazon.com.)

Congratulations to these nominees.

Robert
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