October Doings

 

Instead of writing the blog post last weekend, I spent

much of my time preparing documents for SUNY Press

for the forthcoming paperback edition of the Pepper

Adams biography. The publisher required a bunch of

forms, including a Marketing Questionnaire and

Photograph Spreadsheet, that took about twenty hours

to complete. Fortunately, all of them are now done,

submitted, and in their hands for processing. I've been

told to expect the book to hit Amazon.com and other

booksellers late next year.

For those of you who are adverse to buying or reading

ebooks, or those awaiting the paperback edition, let me

remind you of a few things. The paperback edition is

greatly abridged, maybe as much as half of the original

text. Moreover, all of the 450 music links are removed.

Also deleted are all of the incredible photographs. My

suggestion is to grab the ebook, if for no other reason

than to hear all of the great music. I carefully chose my

favorites, half of which have never been released! See:

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

Yesterday was Pepper Adams’s 92nd birthday. Also,

baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber, arguably Pepper’s

first disciple, passed away yesterday. It reminded me of

Harry Carney’s death. He too died on Pepper’s birthday.

How weird is that?

A few announcements. Several updates have been

made to https://www.pepperadams.com/. Three musician

roundtables that I hosted about Adams are now far more

visible on the site's homepage:

https://www.pepperadams.com/PanelDiscussions.html  Second, new transcriptions have been added:

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

I’m also pleased to announce that Noah Pettibon is the

new co-author, along with John Vana, of the third book

on Pepper Adams. Intended as a complement to my

biography, this will be a musicological study of Adams’s

style. Their intention is to write it in two parts, one for the

lay reader, the other for musicians. Vana and Pettibon’s

expected publication date is 2030, Adams’s centennial.

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

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

Pepper Adams Doings

 

It’s been a while since I posted here. I’ve been dealing with some health issues that kept me away, but now, thankfully, I’m doing better and on the rebound. Since December, I’ve conducted two Zoom roundtables regarding Pepper Adams. Each included 14 musicians and were extremely informative. Here are the links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK5g4CRToFA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FrWGp2EyJw 

As for Reflectory, my full-length Adams biography, the First Edition ebook has been on sale since October. It includes 450 tunes, half of which have never been heard before, plus photographs from the Adams Archive, housed (or soon housed) at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey.

My Revised Edition will be available in a week or so. It corrects errors, improves readability, and includes some additional music links that were somehow overlooked.

As for https://www.pepperadams.com/index.html, many new transcriptions have been added here by John Vana:

https://www.pepperadams.com/Transcriptions/index.html At last count, there are 98 solo transcriptions to check out, and we’re in the process of adding each Adams performance so that a musician can easily hear the solo they’re attempting to read.

Here’s where you can buy Reflectory and hear all this fantastic music: https://www.pepperadams.com/Reflectory/index.html 

Adams Biography Now Available

  

Reflectory has been available for a month at this site:

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

I want to thank those of you who were the first to

purchase my 37-year labor of love. I certainly hope

you’re enjoying it: the text, the photographs, and the

incredible music links. Please let me know what you

think of it. Laurent Briffaux in France did (see below),

and Glenn Wilson emailed me to say that he’s digging

the info about Detroit. There’s a lot of it!

I’m just about done correcting those pesky typos that

surfaced in the First Edition. The Revised Version will

soon replace the First Edition, and I’ll be using it for

future sales and reviews, and for what I’ll be reading on

the audiobook version that I expect to tackle this Spring.

I recently hired a PR firm to promote Reflectory. Word of mouth, and Facebook and Twitter posts only go

so far. As a result, I’m expecting a flurry of reviews in the

next few months, which I’ll share with you as they get

published.

I did an hour-long interview with Andrew Hadro at

jazzbarisax.com that should be posted soon. Also, I’ve

organized a panel discussion about Adams with fourteen

musicians from the U.S., Canada, and England that will

take place on Sunday, December 12. You can watch it live

at 2pm Eastern Time and send chat questions, or wait for

it to be posted on YouTube. I’ll post information about it in

early December. 

Here’s Briffaux’s lovely review, one of my first buyers:

Le titre lui-même par sa mise en abime est l'essence du

livre. L'auteur, ami du saxophoniste Pepper Adams à la

fin de sa vie, lui avait promis de compléter et de publier

son histoire. Carner a fait bien mieux: pièce par pièce,

morceaux par morceaux, il lui construit un monument.

Livre-monde, on retrouve au fil des pages les stars et les

passants, les anecdotes et les aventures de toute une

scène. Impossible de ne pas y voir des personnages déjà

rencontrés, et de pas entendre l'écho de mélodies familières.

Chaotique et brillante, c'est la vie de celui qui cherche,

doute et parfois éclaire un instant votre propre vérité

intérieure. Reflectory pose un nouveau standard pour les

livres qui voudront traiter d'un musicien.

 

The title says it all, and works as an infinite mirroring device.

The author, a friend of saxophonist Pepper Adams in the last

years of his life, had promised to complete his story and publish

it. Carner did much better: piece by piece, track by track, he

built him a monument. In this meta-book, we meet throughout

the pages the stars and the passers-by, the anecdotes and the

adventures of a whole scene. It is impossible not to connect with

characters already seen, and not to hear the echo of familiar

melodies. Chaotic and brilliant, this is the life of one who seeks,

doubts and illuminates for a moment your own inner self.

Reflectory sets a new standard for books on a musician's life.

Moreover, it tells the urgency, the beauty and the luxuriance of life.

 

60 Days to Publication

 

This past month has seen steady progress toward the

publication of Reflectory: The Life and Music of Pepper Adams. First, I’ve re-edited

for the last time before its September release Chapters 8-

12. I’ve also submitted final copies of Chapters 2-4 for

eBook formatting. Chapters 1 and 5-7 are still out for

review.

Also, most of the book is eBook ready, and that includes a number of photographs. All that remains is incorporating what my readers suggest, formatting the front- and end-matter, inserting new versions of most chapters in place of what’s there already, getting all the music links formatted, and finishing the Music Directory. Things still look good for its September release.

I recently received this wonderful blurb from John Gennari,

that will be added to the front matter:

“Gary Carner’s deep and painstaking research into the life

and music of Pepper Adams, coupled with his sure feel for

this underappreciated jazzman’s complex personality, has

yielded an absorbing biography that also reveals much

about the jazz life writ large. Carner’s nimble narrative

captures Adams as a man of reserve and sensitivity thrown

into the always bracing, sometimes exasperating tumult of

jazz’s post-bop Detroit-to-New York vector. Reflectory is

jazz history of the first rank.”

Gosh, I sure am gratified by this! If anyone in the world is

an expert on the history and literature of jazz, it’s Gennari.

I’m adding his last sentence to the book’s cover.

Speaking of Gennari, I now use three quotes as chief

epigraphs in the book:

Ya gotta be original, man

 – LESTER YOUNG

How many musicians out there are really different?

 – RAN BLAKE

Because jazz demands that musicians find their own sound

and stamp their performances with a singular individuality,

those who succeed in music tend to be distinctive, singular

individuals

– JOHN GENNARI

Homestretch

 

I’m in the homestretch before beginning to format the eBook. I only have two more readers remaining. The esteemed Brian Priestley just sent me about forty corrections regarding my second half of the bio. Although most are typos, a few are very astute historical corrections, such as the date Birdland stopped promoting jazz and identifying Kenton’s “Intermission Riff.” I'm awaiting one more critique, then I pass it on to my penultimate reader. Once done with any corrections, it’s passed to my final reader to double-check I didn’t screw up anything.

Priestley mentioned that my reverse chronology was a little hard to follow in Ch. 5. I’ve since reconfigured the chapter, subdividing it into two, and moving some of the text to another chapter. 

My webmaster is building a 450-tune directory for the final eBook. Half the tunes have never been heard; some amazing music. That’s hundreds of new Pepper Adams, mostly from audience recordings. About this, see: https://www.pepperadams.com/Reflectory/index.html