Meet Me at Jim and Andy's: Jazz Musicians and Their World

by Gene Lees and Graham Lees

Book Overview

Gene Lees, author of the highly acclaimed Singers and the Song, offers, in Meet Me at Jim and Andy's, another tightly integrated collection of essays about post-War American music. This time he focuses on major jazz instrumentalists and bandleaders.
Jim and Andy's, on 48th Street just west of Sixth Avenue, was one of four New York musicians' haunts in the 1960s--the others being Joe Harbor's Spotlight, Charlie's, and Junior's. "For almost every...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195046110
• ISBN13: 9780195046113
• Release Date: October 1988
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Revealing Vignettes!

Jim and Andy's bar, located at 48th Street and 6th Avenue in New York, was a home, restaurant, answering service, employment agency, bank, storage place, and general hang-out for some of the 60's most famous jazz musicians, including Gerry Mulligan, Clark Terry, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Eddie Davis, Al Cohn, and Zoot Sims--with visits from Belafonte, Bennett, Horne, and Vaughan.Here, the bar serves primarily as a backdrop for Lees' intimate conversations with musicians and observations on the idiom. Lee admonishes critics who question the status of jazz as a "serious" art form. The rest of the book, while somewhat overly-structured, includes chapters devoted to such icons as Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, Billy Taylor, and Art Farmer. The writing is uniformly lucid; the anecdotes humorous and illuminating.While the book doesn't return to a satisfying coda to either Jim and Andy's (now closed) or the new hang-outs, Lee's first person narrative conveys a singular warmth and sympathy, radiant with his love of jazz.