Innovative bass player Coleridge Goode, known as a 'prince' among bassists, has contributed to many of the most exciting jazz developments in the past half century. Here he recalls his Jamaican childhood and arrival in Britain in the 1930s, the lively wartime London club scene, and his career with Ray Ellington, Joe Harriott, Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli, George Shearing and others.

Always among the innovators, he has helped blend jazz with Indian music, serial compositions, choral works and poetry and he tells candidly about the challenges and rewards of the jazz life as well as the destructive aspects he has seen - especially racial discrimination and drugs. A fascinating and thoughtful insight into the world of the jazz life.

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