Paperback Almost Done

 

Happy New Year! 2022 was a tough year healthwise for me,

dealing with C0V!D and its aftermath. So, I am happy to turn

the page.

Despite the inconvenience, I managed to abridge Reflectory:

The Life and Music of Pepper Adams for a paperback edition. It took four months of work to ready the manuscript for the

publisher, and prepare all of the documents they required to

issue me a contract. Once received, it took additional work to

find photographs and illustrations that SUNY Press would

accept, and then obtain permission forms for them. Then, it

took another few weeks of work to pore over the copyeditor’s

corrections. Now, finally, I’m in the last stage of production. I

recently reread the typeset proofs, proposing final tweaks,

and now it’s up to me to produce the index, a tedious but

curiously engrossing task that will take another two weeks to

complete. Once I submit the tweaks and index, all that’s left for

me to do is to make sure my changes were properly added

and review the index for errors. I think by around February 1

the book will be put to bed.

You can expect an upgraded Thad/Mel chronology (1964—1977) to be posted in the next few months. I recently searched

through eight years of Orkester Journalenmagazines and was able to both find new gigs that Pepper and

Jones/Lewis did and correct some old ones. The current

chronology, that was updated a month or two ago, is here:

https://www.pepperadams.com/Chronology/Thaddeus.pdf

For those who read Swedish or are curious, I also stumbled

upon a 1970 review by Lennart Blomberg that I hadn’t before

seen. It’s newly posted in the bibliography at

https://www.pepperadams.com/index.html :

https://www.pepperadams.com/Bibliography.html 

As a reminder, the ebook version will remain in print. That’s the

one with 450 music links, half never before available, and many

cool photographs besides. None of this is included in the

forthcoming paperback. 

I hope 2023 is a great year for all of you. I’ll provide an update on

the paperback edition in early February. I’m hopeful that the

project will be in the rearview mirror by then. I also hope to

provide news about newly discovered tapes of Adams and Chet

Baker from 1978. 

Paperback Edition

 

Not a post since May? Gosh, where did the time go? I hope

everyone had a great summer. I’ve been caught up getting

the paperback edition of Reflectory ready for publication,

plus satisfying my publisher’s requirements in order to

acquire their contract. It was quite a lengthy task.

I’m pleased to announce that SUNY (State University of

New York) Press has agreed to publish the paperback

edition of my Pepper Adams biography. As I mentioned in

the Author’s Note to Reflectory,academic presses limit jazz books to around 250 pages.

Thus, Pepper Adams: Saxophone Trailblazer, will be a

highly abridged version of Reflectory, quite a different book. 

Stripped down to its essentials, a great deal of detail has been deleted. Many photographs from the Estate of Pepper Adams have been removed, replaced by only a few photographs and documents. The most glaring difference is the removal of all 450 music links and discussion of much of that music.

Nevertheless, I’m excited to have a chance to get a hardcopy version out to the public. Plus, the ebook edition will remain in print and available. I see it as the best of both worlds; a great opportunity to get the word out about Pepper Adams

Cutting down the book was a fascinating exercise. I quickly

realized once again how much easier it is to delete text than

to write it. The mandate was to convert a 730-page book to

about 165 pages, leaving enough room for an index. The

first few steps were easy. I deleted all photographs, changed

the text spacing from 1.25 inches to 1.15, and omitted all

discussion of private and audience recordings. Then, I

deleted one of the forewords and combined some of the end

matter.  That left me with 452 pages. A nice start, but still far

from the required goal.

Getting the book shorter required additional spacing tweaks,

reducing the font of the end matter and block quotes, and

significant excisions as the end product of two complete re-

readings. The first one was cut, cut, cut. “Snoops” as Chico

Marx told Harpo in Duck Soup, after each snip they made of

the boat captain’s mustache. My second pass through

allowed me to cut further and smooth out some of the

transitions that were adversely affected by the deletions. In

some cases, it required moving paragraphs around,

sometimes to other chapters.

The paperback edition needs to be submitted by October 15.

Fortunately, the text is done, but I have a short window in

which to acquire new photographs and documents, get them

in high-resolution form, obtain written permissions for them,

and write captions. I also have to add a brief discography that

I’ll entitle Recommended Recordings. The index can be

submitted later, once the book is edited and typeset.

If anyone can recommend a better title, don’t hesitate to let me

know. I’d prefer something poetic, but was advised that having

“saxophone” in the title would increase sales. Please reply

below.

SUNY is an ambitious press, publishing more than 150 books a

year. Even with my submission in a few weeks, their lengthy

production queue will delay publication for some time. You can

expect the book to be available at Amazon and elsewhere

around this time next year. Meanwhile, check out Reflectory, and

dig the thousands of hours of great Pepper performances, taken

from broadcasts and audience recordings, that you’ve never heard!:

https://www.pepperadams.com/Reflectory/index.html