American Music Is

Hartford Courant 03/18/04
"Showcases the insightful writing...that prompted the NEW to say: 'No writer has been a greater friend to jazz.'"

New York Sun 03/30/04
"Heard through the ears of one of our most essential writers, the rainbow of American music is wonderful indeed."

Jazziz June 2004
"The thread of continuity that Hentoff weaves...hints at why the [NEA] recently named him among its "Jazz Masters."

The Weekly Standard 5/17/04
"If the divide between music critics and...players...can ever be bridged, it will be through works such as this."

All About Jazz May 2004
"[Hentoff] writes with great knowledge and affection."

Jazziz June 2004
"Hints at why the National Endowment for the Arts recently named [Hentoff] among its 'Jazz Masters.'"

Jazzbeat Fall 2003
"This book is a neverending joy-good jazz writing is increasingly rare."

Jazzwise August 2004
"Always interesting...A compelling collection."

Paste February / March 2005
"The by-now venerable music critic Hentoff has always written perceptively and sympathetically about jazz. He does so again."

"Thank God for Nat, who places the soul of the musician above that of his art." --Dizzy Gillespie

Writing in a passionate and streetwise style all his own, Nat Hentoff transports us into the diverse worlds of musicians that hold one thing in common: America. In over sixty pieces Hentoff has assembled a mosaic that creates a vivid picture of the music scene as it leaps into the twenty-first century. From sweeping surveys of the roots of American music to vivid assessments of individual performers (including John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Joe Williams, Doc Pomus, Duke Ellington, Willie Nelson, and many more) Hentoff demonstrates once again why he is lauded as "a critic par excellence" (Publishers Weekly). American Music Is compiles the best of his essays into a potent reader, collecting his most illuminating writing on a broad range of topics. For those who love jazz, blues, country, gospel, or folk, American Music Is provides eloquent and powerful insights. For those who love all of them, it is required reading.

From Publishers Weekly
Few of today’s music critics can recall chatting with jazz legends like Louis, Billie or Duke in their dressing rooms, and the rarity of hearing about those experiences may be the single greatest pleasure of reading a Hentoff column. The "jazz master" has been reviewing the American music scene for half a century and brings that wealth of experience to the 60 recent columns gathered here. Although he devotes the lion’s share of pages to his first love, jazz, he also covers the pioneers of blues, country and folk, delving into the experiences and rhythms of Willie Nelson, Charlie Parker and Bob Dylan, among many others. Aside from a pithy autobiographical introduction to the ensemble, the author does not situate the columns—there are no publication dates or names. Despite this lack of context, fans will savor Hentoff’s robust prose and his original window onto the world of American music.
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From Booklist
Jazz critics of two generations weigh in with a career retrospective from the younger one, a collection of recent pieces by the older.
Davis says the 25 years he has been writing about jazz have been a period of artistic and popular decline that he blames on "the entrenched tastes of the jazz faithful"--a statement the first part of which will draw the ire of young avant-garde enthusiasts while the second rouses the wrath of the elders whose patronage keeps mainstream jazz alive. Davis obviously isn't afraid to make waves but deserves to be read because, like the late Martin Williams, he writes about music for nonmusicians without substituting purple prose for audibly verifiable description and because, like venerable New Yorker jazz writer Whitney Balliett, he communicates musicians' personalities pungently and believably. In this collection, he does both for the music and the persons of figures ranging from old Sonny Rollins to young Don Byron, from young traditionalist Wynton Marsalis to old avant-gardist Charles Gayle. His critical acumen shines brightly, too, in the three pieces on musical theater and the commentaries on movies and comedians that conclude the book.

Before becoming everybody's favorite civil libertarian, Hentoff was a jazz critic, whose Jazz Life (1961) introduced the music to many baby boomers. Lately proclaimed the first nonmusician jazz master by the National Endowment for the Arts, he now writes on jazz not for erstwhile haunts Down Beat and the Village Voice but, judging from the provenances of most of his new book's contents, for the Wall Street Journal. In line with the Journal's status as a newspaper, these pieces are news-story short and, in line with the journal's market orientation, contain consumer guidance to recordings, books, and music organizations. Most focus on particular musicians, though some are topic driven, such as "Testosterone Is Not a Musical Instrument," on the continuing resistance to women in jazz except as singers and pianists. Unfaithful followers of Hentoff on music may be surprised, but very pleasantly, by the pieces on his other "American Music" passion, hard country--by the likes of Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and Delbert McClinton. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Nat Hentoff began writing for the Village Voice in 1960. His weekly column is syndicated to over 250 newspapers across the country. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, Commonweal, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker (where he was a staff writer for more than twenty-five years), and many more publications.