Shall We Play That One Together? The Life and Art of Jazz Piano Legend Marian McPartland by Paul de Barros (review)

Jazz journalist Paul de Barros has given us a marvelously comprehensive and un-blinking account of jazz pianist Marian McPartland’s life and work. It is the first commercially-published biography of this famous woman and the definitive work on the subject. The research behind this book is impressively thorough. The author conducted 51 interviews with the subject herself and 121 interviews with Marian’s colleagues and relatives. He consulted doctoral dissertations, unpublished interviews conducted by others, diary entries, Marian’s letters to business contacts and intimates, record reviews, concert reviews, and notes from an unpublished autobiography. Despite constituting an almost month-by-month account of the subject’s life, the book reads like a novel.

McPartland, who died at the age of ninety-five in 2013, is best known for National Public Radio broadcasts of her weekly radio hour, called Piano Jazz, for which she originated shows from 1979 to 2009. In her broadcasts she presented solos by herself, solos by guest pianists (and the occasional non-pianist), and improvised duets with her guests. Marian enlisted the collaboration of almost every important living jazz pianist and most of the rising stars. She also talked with her guests, sharing jazz history, musicians’ gossip, and insights about the music. Before her wide visibility through Piano Jazz, she played at the Brass Rail in Chicago during the late 1940s, with bands led by her husband trumpeter Jimmy McPartland, and she enjoyed long residencies with her own groups at New York supper clubs such as the Hickory House (1952–1960), The Embers, and the Café Carlyle (late 1970s to early 1980s). She was a composer-performer who was still active in her nineties while this book was being completed.

The author writes so well that the account flows gracefully, and tension rises and falls according to the drama in Marian’s experiences. The term “page-turner” certainly applies to this book. In fact, a movie script could easily be derived from many passages. For instance, her adventures while entertaining troops during World War II, only six weeks after D-day near enemy lines, afford several dramatic opportunities. Similarly, the whirlwind romance that led her to become the English war bride of an American soldier, who was a renowned jazz trumpeter, also lends itself to cinematic treatment. Accounts of her long, stormy marriage thereafter to this carefree man could also appeal to many potential viewers. Indeed, adventures in her husband’s life are interwoven throughout the book. Some of the most humorous incidents could easily be portrayed on film. For instance, her interactions with Benny Goodman are quite hilarious. She joined his band for a month of one-nighters, and de Barros recaps Marian’s account of the experiences:

Soon after the group’s New York debut at Lincoln Center, on November 5, 1963, Marian began to feel uncomfortable. During rehearsals, she noticed Benny giving her a funny look—a stare jazz musicians famously called “the ray.” When Marian played an inversion or slightly altered chord, Benny would hunch up his shoulders “like he had been stabbed in the back,” she said.

“It was unnerving, to put it mildly. Once after we had played ‘Rose Room’ or a tune equally familiar to me, he asked ‘Marian do you know that tune?’ And I said, ‘Well, we just played it, didn’t we?’ ”

Dissatisfied, Goodman designated trumpeter Bobby Hackett to tell Marian to back off the modern stuff, particularly on “Body and Soul.”

Marian told Hackett she thought she was playing the right chords and added, “Anyway, if Benny doesn’t like what I play, why doesn’t he tell me himself ?”

“Oh, he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings,” Hackett said.

As the tour moved through the eastern seaboard toward the South, she screwed up her courage, and with...