A life in jazz …

… Never Missing a Beat. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) 

Reviewers are paired with books either because they know the subject, or they have an ax to grind. In the case of Shipton's On Jazz, I have both. I am a jazz musician, like my father and grandfather before me, and my brother beside me. As the black sheep of the family—they're all tenor saxophonists, while I play guitar—I have ground my ax into the ears of audiences from the Arctic Circle to the cellars of Paris and the dancehalls of San Francisco. So Alyn Shipton has my deepest sympathy—not the sympathy of pity, but the sympathy of fellow-feeling.