Whitney Balliett of the New Yorker made his reputation writing about jazz much as the best players played it: lyrically, individually, ecstatically, in prose that could sound like the music: the “vinegary, dissonant, Gothic” sound, as he described it, of Thelonious Monk; the “dry Boston tone,” he said, of the unearthly Lester Young; the suggestion of limousines and skyscrapers in the later recordings of the Count Basie band; the whooshing smears in the tenor saxophone ballads of Ben Webster “that give one the impression of being suddenly picked up by a breaker and carried smoothly to shore.”
Writing short squibs and long profiles in the New Yorker, Whitney Balliett has been the critic to lean on or contend with for more than 40 years-even as he changed his own mind about legends like John Coltrane, Stan Getz and Miles Davis. Join us for Whitney Balliett’s running history of what he calls “the sound of surprise.”
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Whitney Balliett, New Yorker magazine jazz critic, author of Collected Works : A Journal of Jazz 1954-1999