Jazz from the Beginning

Jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, and bassoonist Garvin Bushell (1902-1991) performed with many of the twentieth-century's greatest jazz musicians - Fletcher Henderson, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Eric Dolphy, Gil Evans, and John Coltrane - during a remarkable career that spanned from 1916 to the 1980s. Although best known as a jazz soloist and sideman, Bushell also played oboe and bassoon with symphony orchestras and was a highly regarded instructor of woodwinds. In Jazz from the Beginning, Bushell vividly recounts his musical experiences, featuring candid assessments of the legends with whom he performed as well as eye-opening recollections of the early days of jazz and the racism that he encountered on the road. Based on a series of interviews conducted by jazz scholar Mark Tucker, these memoirs provide a colorful account of Bushell's extraordinary life and career as well as an important record of seventy years of American jazz history.