Duke Ellington plays “Heaven,” a movement from the Second Sacred Concert:

“A man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

Samuel Johnson (quoted in James Boswell’s Life of Johnson)

Kirkus Reviews has just written about Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington in a way that I wouldn’t have had the nerve to do myself.
Here’s part of the review:

With this exhaustive, engaging study of the greatest jazz composer of his era, Wall Street Journal drama critic Teachout solidifies his place as one of America’s great music biographers.
Many have cited jazz as America’s only true indigenous art form, so it is at once surprising and disheartening that major publishers are seemingly hesitant to champion books that tackle the subject–especially considering that when an author is allowed the freedom to dive into the life and music of a jazz titan, the results are often brilliant, something that Teachout demonstrated with his justifiably revered Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (2010). After Armstrong, chronologically speaking, bandleader/composer/arranger/pianist Duke Ellington was jazz’s next game changer. Aside from his undeniably astounding ear, Ellington, like Armstrong, was a personality, one of the rare jazzmen who was able to combine heady music with showbiz panache without diminishing his art. With his vibrant prose and ability to get into his protagonist’s head and heart, Teachout captures this essence and charisma in a manner worthy of Ellington’s complex yet listenable classic “The Queen’s Suite.”….
Finally, as was the case in Pops, Teachout’s musical analysis is spot-on, at once complex and accessible….Hopefully, the brilliance of Teachout’s treatment will compel the industry to let authors take a crack at the lives of, say, Ornette Coleman, Count Basie and Charles Mingus….
Teachout’s in-depth, well-researched, loving study of this American treasure is an instant classic.

I’m stunned.

…but at my Barnes & Noble bookstore appearance on Monday, Dexter Gordon’s widow brought a copy of Duke for me to sign so that she could send it to Clark Terry as a present. (Yes, I got choked up.)
Moments like that make the other kind of moment more than worth putting up with. And then some.

In the immortal words of Truman Capote, a boy must peddle his book, so starting at precisely eight a.m. today, I’ll be making sixteen consecutive radio appearances from the New York studios of Gotham Books, some of them live and others taped for broadcast at a later date. (I get a free breakfast and a ten-minute bathroom break at nine.) It’s a good thing I love radio!
Here are the stations and cities on which the appearances will air, plus the starting times of the live programs:
• “The Marc Bernier Show,” WNDB-AM, Orlando, Florida
• “Coastal Daybreak with Ben Ball,” WTKF-FM, Greenville, North Carolina (live, 8:15 ET)
• “Steve Fast Show,” WJBC-AM, Bloomington, Indiana
• “Indiana in the Morning,” WDAD-AM, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (live, 8:45 ET)
• “Lanigan and Malone,” WMJI-FM, Cleveland, Ohio (live, 9:10 ET)
• “Good Morning Hudson Valley,” WLNA-AM, New York City (live, 9:20 ET)
• “Dean and Don,” KMA-FM/AM, Cedar Rapids, Iowa (live, 9:45 ET)
• “Metro Networks,” Westwood One, national syndication
• “The Jordan Rich Show,” WBZ-FM, Boston, Massachusetts
• “The Jim Engster Show,” WRKF-FM, Baton Rouge, Louisiana (live, 10:40 ET)
• “Around Cincinnati,” WVXU-FM, Cincinnati, Ohio
• “The Charlie Brennan Show,” KMOX-AM, St. Louis, Missouri (live, 11:15)
• “Roundtable,” WAMC/Northeast Public Radio, regional syndication (live, 11:35 ET)
• “Inside the Arts,” WWNO-FM, New Orleans, Louisiana
• “John Carney Show,” KTRS-FM, St. Louis, Missouri
• “Weekend Indiana,” WIBC-FM, Indianapolis, Indiana
Most of these shows can be heard live on the web via streaming audio, and many of them will also be archived so that you can listen at your convenience. For more information, check the individual websites of the various stations and/or programs.
If you’d like to have me on your show (or podcast) to talk about Duke, get in touch with Beth Parker at Gotham Books…but not today!

The opening of Duke Ellington’s Second Sacred Concert, filmed in 1969:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

Duke Ellington plays “Rockin’ in Rhythm” at the 1964 Sanremo Jazz Festival. The band includes Lawrence Brown, Harry Carney, Paul Gonsalves, and Johnny Hodges:

“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden