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Some Of My Best Friends Are Blues

open our order pageRonnie Scott & Mike Hennessey
Northway Publications, 2004 (originally published in 1979)
Paperback. 128pp. b&w cartoons by Mel Calman
£6.99

Ronnie Scott tells here of his life as a musician and bandleader and as the founder, with his partner Pete King, of the great jazz club which bears his name. Ronnie says of running their world famous venue, "It's made a happy man very old."

The book provides a humorous and shrewd behind-the-scenes account of the headaches and hysteria of running a club in the heart of London's Soho and coping with the capricious temperaments of some of the world's most celebrated jazz artists.

Co-author Mike Hennessey is one of Europe's leading jazz writers. He covered the international music scene for Billboard magazine for 27 years and has written hundreds of articles, reviews, album notes and biographical features for a wide range of jazz magazines. He is also the author of an acclaimed biography of drummer Kenny Clarke and of Tin Pan Alley, a book about the British music business.

Some of My Best Friends Are Blues includes contributions by Benny Green and Spike Milligan, and cartoons by Mel Calman.

This edition features a new foreword by Pete King. Ronnie Scott died in 1996 but his Club survives as a testament to the vision and determination of both Scott and Pete King.

CONTENTS:
Preface by Pete King
Four Bars In... by Benny Green
First Set: Who's Earning A Living?
Second Set: My Son, the Musician
Third Set: Geraldo's Navy
Fourth Set: The Joints were Jumping
Fifth Set: My Chef, the Gorilla
Sixth Set: Zoot Alors!
Seventh Set: So Far, Soho Good
Eighth Set: Bill And Ben
Ninth Set: Miles Gets the Brush
Tenth Set: The Old Routine
Coda: All That Jewish Jazz by Spike Milligan

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>>READ Simon Spillett's REVIEW OF THIS BOOK

read Simon Spillett's essays on the major British saxophonist stylists after 1950

FURTHER READING

A Fine Kind of Madness by Rebecca Scott
Bass Lines by Coleridge Goode
Jazz In Revolution by John Dankworth
Who's Who of British Jazz by John Chilton
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