Bluff Your Way in Jazz

Book excerpt: "Anon""It's a pretty safe bet, if an unfamiliar 1940s/50s name crops up in conversation, that you can easily get away with saying: 'Oh, yes. Parker roomed with him for a time.' Even if he didn't, nobody is going to be sure enough to say so. And it somehow makes the unknown musician seem a better player.""" "Louisiana""The decrepit state of their instruments and the decrepit state of the players who all drank heavily or smoked marijuana tended to give genuine New Orleans jazz the flavor of fried boots.""" "Jazz legends""Bolden's main claim to fame was the loudness of his playing; it being said, with the straightest of faces, that he could be heard "fourteen miles away on a clear night." As nobody who was fourteen miles away at the time has ever come forward to verify this, it is yet another jazz legend that has to be treated with a modicum of suspicion.""" "A state of mind""Anyone looking for a clear definition of the blues, even in the most scholarly books, will be told that blues are fundamentally a state of mind. The spirit of the blues inhabits all true jazz. It's what makes it "funky.""