Sweet Swing Blues

the long version

From Wynton Marsalis, one of the most intriguing artists of our time, and award-winning photographer Frank Stewart comes a spellbinding interplay of word and image. For every fan who has ever dreamed of traveling with the band, for anyone curious about the current state of America's greatest art form, here is a book that delivers the full, heady flavor of jazz life at the end of the twentieth century. Wynton Marsalis's absorbing text and Frank Stewart's stunning duotones capture the smoky intimacy of a late-night club scene, the high-voltage excitement of a concert hall premiere, the unbuttoned byplay of the band, the communion of artist and audience in the intensity of performance, interactions with fans, red-hot debate on the tour bus, and the romantic alliances that mitigate the loneliness of the road. Here are jive-talking cat daddies in the Amen Cadence, gorgeous and mysterious women in the Sweet Refrain, exotic vistas in the Bridge, and in the Chorus musicians, like the J-Master on piano, who live the music the way they play it. Swinging as hard and true as the music itself, the result is like nothing else that has ever been published on or from the world of jazz, a book that redefines what it means to be hip in today's America.