Has a rabid enthusiast ever attempted to persuade you to share his obsession? In the case of Michael Stephans’ literary proselytization of Bob Brookmeyer, the zealot manages to wear down readers with equal parts mania and supporting facts.
Stephans’ On the Way to the Sky: Remembering Bob Brookmeyer is pure hagiography. The author may not possess an iota of impartiality but he makes a convincing case that the Kansas City native merits a higher profile.
Brookmeyer and his valve trombone were pictured on the cover of DownBeat magazine multiple times in the 1960s. Yet the standing of Brookmeyer, born in Kansas City in 1929, began to fade even prior to his death in 2011.
Brookmeyer’s exemplary artistic evolution combined with the precipitous decline in the popularity of jazz makes him virtually unknown in his hometown outside of jazz cognoscenti. Stephans is on a crusade to raise Brookmeyer’s profile.
His new study published by the University of North Texas Press consists of unalloyed idolatry. For instance, Stephans equates Brookmeyer to Johann Sebastian Bach and insists he’s “in the pantheon of the most original jazz soloists of all time” on the eleventh page of his study.
Decades before becoming Brookmeyer’s intimate friend and frequent collaborator, Stephans admits he played air trombone while listening to Brookmeyer recordings as a teenager. He comes by his hero worship naturally.
An informal compendium of recollections, recording analyses, interviews and press clippings, On the Way to the Sky resembles the outburst of an excitable chatterbox. Yet Stephans’ over-the-top enthusiasm is contagious.
He compelled me to immerse myself in Brookmeyer’s discography. I’d pigeonholed Brookmeyer as a hard-swinging associate of Al Cohn, Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan and as a respected arranger for the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra.
Thanks to Stephans, I discovered stunning works ranging from the 1960 “folk jazz” experiment Western Suite to the synthesizer-laden 1994 album Electricity. And how did I not know about The Ivory Hunters, a 1959 album on which Brookmeyer holds his own on piano paired with Bill Evans?
On the Way to the Sky may be a mix-and-match grab-bag of a book, but as a stimulus to a fuller appreciation of Brookmeyer, it’s literary masterpiece.
