Valerie Wilmer's 1970 classic, Jazz People, has long been considered one of the three or four finest books ever written on jazz. Featuring extensive interviews with fourteen jazz geniuses, including Art Farmer, Cecil Taylor, Big Joe Turner, Billy Higgins, Babs Gonzales, Jackie McLean, Buck Clayton, Randy Weston, Howard McGee, Clark Terry and Archie Shepp, Wilmer captures the essential qualities of each artist in her interviews, providing deeply moving portraits - in words and in photographs - of the often troubled lives of the musicians who changed the shape of jazz in the fifties and sixties.

CONTENTS:
In the Beginning there was Herbie; The Art of Perception; Each Man His Own Academy; Lock the Fox; Round About Monk; A Lesson In Lovemaking; A Policy of Noncompromise; Back to the African Heartbeat; Jester to the Court of King Diz; The Sweet Smell of Success; A Question of Influence; One For Buck; Maggie's Back In Town; The Boss of the Blues; The Fire This Time; The One That Got Away

VALERIE WILMER is one of England's leading jazz commentators. Her books include The Face of Black Music, As Serious As Your Life, and Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This.

"This is one of the best books on jazz…She has an unusual talent for bringing unapproachable musicians out of their protective shells to talk about what has affected them - jazz club owners, the availability of studio work, narcotics…The beauty of Jazz People is that it is evocative and yet avoids the unfaithful sensationalism of so much jazz literature…Furthermore, Miss Wilmer is a photographer as well as a journalist, and a number of her studies of musicians at rest and play are quite superb." - TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

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