Deep Cuts

Deep Cuts: Six Tales of Struggle, Hope, and Joy Through the History of Jazz, by Higgins, Clark and Perez. graphic novel, 312 pages, © 2024

A coworker introduced this to me. I don't read a lot of graphic novels anymore but I loved the concept for this one. Deep Cuts features six separate stories about jazz musicians at different eras, starting in New Orleans in the early 1900s following a Louis Armstrong-level talent with a clarinet and ending in the late 70s with jazz dwindling in the public imagination. At first, it seems like each story is a separate tale, but by the end you realize the thread connecting all of them is the music. Portrayed in this manner, I think it did a really neat job of highlighting different jazz eras, from ragtime to free jazz, as well as some of the struggles later jazz musicians had with the feeling of selling out. Each story also features different artists so you're getting new stylized visuals in each tale--it's a really cool effect and makes me want to seek out more music related graphic novels. 

Chet: King Picker and Pioneer of the Nashville Sound

 Chet: King Picker and Pioneer of the Nashville Sound by Mark Ribowsky, 352 pgs. © 2026

    

Oh by jingo, this is the second! book about Chet Atkins that was published in the last year. It makes youwonder what's pushing the renewed interest--is there a viral Tik-Tok out there using Mr. Sandman in the background? Nonetheless, if you're a guitar geek or a country music afficionado, there's much to learn from this offering by Ribowsky, who published a spirited, researched bio on the legendary Hank Williams about a decade ago. 

    This book is the origin story of the original guitar hero--born in a holler in rural Tennessee, life was "Steinbeck-ian," living in a one-room country shack with a few siblings. He developed asthma early on (which kept him from entering the army during the draft), but fell in love with the guitar his older brother brought home--a beat-up Silvertone (interestingly, his older brother also had a fine career as a guitar player, performing with the Les Paul Trio for many years). He wanted the guitar so bad that all of his brother's chores in exchange for playing it, which he did until his fingers bled. He would sit at the radio and listen to broadcasts, trying to figure out what guitarists were doing in their playing. 

    His love for the music of Merle Travis influenced his unique thumb-picking style, which incorporated his other fingers to play the higher notes of a melody, something no one else was really doing at the time. He became known for lighting fast guitar licks and attention to detail. Fast-forward to his 20s and he's finally broken through in Nashville with RCA records and has become a highly-sought out producer, working with Elvis, Perry Como, Patsy Cline and countless more. His dedication to developing a "Nashville Sound" helped make Nashville the music capital is widely known as today. He was still working out licks on his guitar well into his 70s, right up until he passed away in 2001. 

A selection of February graphic novels

 Marie Curie: A Quest for Light by Anja C. Andersen and Frances Andreasen Osterfelt, with art by Anna Blaszczyk (2018) 136 pages

The writing is succinct. The art on every page looks like collages with paper cut outs of different colors and textures. Diary entries and letters make this biography very personal. I really enjoyed the creativity of this one.

 

 

 

 

Heartstopper: Volume 1 by Alice Oseman (2018) 288 pages

I'm working on the Hoopla challenge for 2025 while focusing on reading more graphic novels this year. February is Romantic Reads.  I flew through this first volume in one day. There is a lot of space between the panels on many pages and not much text in speech, thought, or mobile texts. Very creative how it tells the story visually as often as it does. I have not seen the TV series yet, and I'll probably wait to continue this comic series.

 

 

 

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell (2019) 289 pages

Compared to the one above, I liked the art and writing a bit better. The pages are denser with emotive visuals. Freddy Riley has her group of queer friends in high school. Laura Dean doesn't see their relationship as monogamous. Laura has so much extrovert energy and doesn't seem to care that she discards Freddy so easily when she wants attention from others. Freddy is so enamored with Laura's brief moments of attention that she doesn't notice her other truly good, close friends, or the new girl working several part-time jobs in town to pay for college. Freddy's eye opening journey is pretty special.

 

 

The Puerto Rican War: A Graphic History by John Vasquez Mejias (2024) 112 pages

I appreciate the timeline and interview with the author that is included at the end. It is a short story of Puerto Rican history that I was not familiar with before. The author makes prints from woodcuts. The text is challenging to read at times, but with concentration it could all be understood. The unique style is visually expressionistic and very detailed.

Deep Cuts by Kyle Higgins and Joe Clark with various artists (2024) 312 pages

I loved this! #1 in New Orleans 1917, the art and story are amazing, looking at the roots of modern jazz. #2 in Chicago 1928, a novice Broadway songstress has an adventure that references The Wizard of Oz. You begin to see that there are threads that connect the stories. #3 in Kansas City 1940, Alice, a young black girl, tries to solve the mystery of why her dad stopped his music career. This includes research at her local library! #4 in New York City 1956, is documentary-like looking at the jazz scene and the influence of harder drugs. #5 in Los Angeles 1968, shows threads connecting some of the previous stories, but is more countercultural and the art took me longer to embrace. #6 in multiple locations 1977, ties all the issues together. Characters and themes return. Jazz history comes full circle. Oh, and the lead sheets at the end are a cool bonus. I, too, wonder if there are audio tracks somewhere of this music.

The Ballad of Perilous Graves

The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings, 480 pages

Music = magic in this amazing book of dual New Orleanses. (Is that the plural of the city? I'm going with yes.) I first read and blogged about this creative debut novel last summer, and I just reread it for Orcs & Aliens next week. While I have a couple reservations about the timing of this read and discussion (the giant cosmic storm in the book seems a bit ill-timed with Helene and Milton hitting the southeast right now, but how was I to know that when I scheduled the discussion), my thoughts on the overall book haven't changed at all. In fact, discovering the existence of the book's companion Spotify playlist (thanks, Regan!), greatly enhanced my reading of it this time around. Can't wait to see what the Orcs & Aliens think of it on Monday.

The Jazzmen

 The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America by Larry Tye, 393 pages

You could probably get more out of an official bio of any one of these jazz greats, but the author does a brilliant job of tying everyone's careers and history together in a way that shows each bandleader coming into their own and carving out an indelible space in the jazz age. Each of the three are treated to an in-depth examination of their early lives, the hardships they endured and the excitement they brought to their individual styles. Basie was the country's foremost dance enthusiast, while Ellington brought a sense of refinement and sophistication to a much maligned genre, composing over 100 original works. And Armstrong was the man with the golden trumpet whose chops rivaled Gabriel at the gates--he would eventually become a symbol for American greatness. But with his daily marijuana habit, it's no wonder the man was always smiling.  

Charlie's Good Tonight

Charlie's Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Stones: the Authorized Biography of Charlie Watts by Paul Sexton  344 pp.

I never had the chance to see the Rolling Stones with Charlie Watts playing drums. He died just one month before the "No Filter" tour resumed after being postponed for Covid. St. Louis was the the first date of the revived tour. The concert opened with photos of Charlie throughout his career with the Stones and the crowd in the Dome went wild. After that, the Stones came out and expressed their thanks for our response saying they weren't sure what the reaction would be. That being said, here is my review of the book.

Charlie Watts was born during World War II. After the war his family lived in Wembley in one of the prefab houses that was built after the Blitz (the origin of his nickname "The Wembley Whammer").  He began drumming at thirteen when he became a big fan of jazz. His first snare drum was a banjo head he removed the neck. After working various odd jobs, he began training and working in graphic design all the while drumming for various groups in his free time. Even though he was the most unlikely musician to be a Rolling Stone, Charlie finally joined them in 1963.

Watts, who was known for his OCD, kept his possessions, including his many collections of vintage items, and his wardrobe in perfect order. While the rest of the band could frequently be found in jeans and t-shirts, Charlie wore his impeccable, custom made suits which he laid out in his hotel room at every stop on whatever tour they were doing. He made the most of the millions he earned with the group, owning real estate, investing in thoroughbred race horses which was his wife, Shirley's passion, and collecting classic automobiles which he didn't drive but liked to sit in. (Charlie had no driver's license.) 

When the Stones were not touring or recording, Watts spent his time performing jazz with other musicians for special events and occasional tours. He also survived a bout of throat cancer in 2004. His cause of death was not announced but Keith Richard mentioned cancer.

Sexton's biography covers all the important parts of Charlie's life but is occasionally dry. I listened to the audiobook read by the author who really needed someone to tell him to slow down. I sounded like he was trying to finish as fast as possible.

Living with Music

 Living with Music: Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings, Edited by Robert O' Meally, 336 pgs. 

    This was the second book in our Rhythm N' Books music book club. One of my favorite works by Ellison, and probably his most well known, is Invisible Man, which is a classic piece of African-American fiction and highly recommended reading. Ellison's prose is, as always, equal parts erudite and eloquent and no less so here. In Living with Music, the editor compiled a terse collection of 'some' of Ellison's writing related to music. I say 'some' because as a reader you might think this is a collection of jazz criticism or music analyses from Ellison ( as I was led to believe). But there are only a few essays which fit that description. 

    The first half of the book starts out with jazz criticism--his essays about Charlie Christian and Charlie Parker are illuminating and useful in sussing out some of the major changes that were taking place in jazz at the time.  For the remainder of the book, the editor pulls excerpts from interviews with the author and music-related passages from some of his major works. That said, this collection, while useful in providing biographical touchstones for the author, seems like a title in search of a collection. However, there are some great insights into one of America's greatest authors. Ellison was named after Ralph Waldo Emerson and in many of the former's essays, you get a sense of American transcendentalism merging with the African American experience. I was surprised to learn about Ellison's negative perceptions of bebop, which took over the more traditional, danceable blues and jazz forms popular in the day. In fact, he despised it. Bebop at the time shook the music world because it was so different, but would go on to take it's rightful place in the canon. It reminded me of Nina Simone, who had similar opinions towards hip-hop as it was beginning to emerge as a popular genre. Both, geniuses in their right, would be wrong about the direction of the future of music. But this collection serves as an illuminating appendix to the work of a literary master and music lover who believed jazz belonged to everyone. 

The Harlem Hellfighters

The Harlem Hellfighters by Max Brooks with art by Caanan White (2014) 257 pages

This fictionalized historical graphic novel contains some characters that are amalgams and some that are real people. One real life black officer given some focus in the story is jazz band conductor James Reese Europe. Max Brooks explains at the end that he originally wrote a screenplay to tell the story of this African American regiment that fought in WWI. When no studios or producers bought it he eventually turned it into this graphic novel. It is exciting like a good historical movie. Life and death for the soldiers in the trenches and no man's land of France is, of course, gruesome. Racism is faced throughout their training in America and assignments "Over There." The popular song of the period How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm is sung by the soldiers many times, and it got stuck as I heard it in my head. The song takes on special meaning as the men think about how they will be treated when, or if, they return to America. The Harlem Hellfighters fought separately, but under French command, as top American military personnel routinely worked to repress them. The narrative structure of this story kept reminding me of the Civil War movie from 1989 Glory. This regiment in WWI fought valiantly and achieved much that sadly has often not been taught in American history. 

 

Moon over Soho / Ben Aaronovitch

Moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch. 288 p.

A sequel to Midnight Riot, which I reviewed here. Peter's personal history comes into play with the big case here, as his father is a jazz musician and he's investigating what may turn out to be a series of magical murders of jazz musicians. Plus he has to continue his magical training, as well as try to deal with his friend Lesley, who was severely disfigured while helping him with an earlier case. I'm enjoing this series a lot, particularly for the way Aaronovitch makes London feel present, almost more like a character than a setting. I hope this series continues soon.


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