Bio:
James Gavin is a writer, author of Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker (Knopf), Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne (Simon & Schuster), Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret (Grove Weidenfeld), along with numerous articles for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Time Out New York and other publications.
He has contributed liner notes to over 400 CDs, including reissues he produced for Verve, Blue Note, and Koch Jazz. His essay for the GRP box set Ella Fitzgerald – The Legendary Decca Recordings earned a 1996 Grammy nomination.
Jim has made over two hundred radio appearances, including multiple interviews with NPR, the BBC, and Australia's ABC Network. He has appeared on the Today show, Good Morning America, and the PBS NewsHour.
His latest book is Is That All There Is?: The Strange Life of Peggy Lee, published by Simon & Schuster.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
"James Gavin has captured the essence of the rich musical era that people like my dad, Nat King Cole, and Peggy defined. In his keenly observed, scrupulously researched biography he has also illuminated something very true and touching about the woman behind the glamour. I highly recommend this book."
-Natalie Cole
“Nobody writes as eloquently, knowledgeably, and page-turningly about the midcentury music heroes who sang - and lived - our American story as James Gavin. His biography of Peggy Lee immerses us in a singular life of radiant self-invention.”
-Sheila Weller (author of Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon - and the Journey of a Generation)
“Eminently readable ... fascinating, suspenseful, musically detailed and insightful.”
-Anita Gates, New York Times Book Review
“A killer biographer"
-Tim Appelo, Hollywood Reporter
FORTHCOMING: James Gavin's biography of GEORGE MICHAEL, to be published by Abrams.
Recommendations
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The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).