Helene LaFaro-Fernández was born in Irvington, New Jersey, USA but spent most of her youth in Geneva, New York. In 1957 she joined her brother Scott in Los Angeles and has made her home there ever since. This is her first book.
Winner of the Best Book of 2009, Jazz Division, sponsored by
AllAboutJazz-New York, 2009
Selected for "Best of the Best" from University Presses, ALA Annual
Conference, 2010Winner of the 2010 Association for Recorded Sound
Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound
Research in Jazz, 2010
"Fernandez' insightful comments about her brother offer far more
than jazz scholars have ever known about this significant and
somewhat enigmatic figure in the history of jazz. All in all, a
very complete portrait."--Bill Milkowski, author of Jaco: The
Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius
"LaFaro's story is compelling not only because of his own prowess
as a musician, but also due to the company he kept. How many
musicians by their twenty-fifth year could say they had played with
Benny Goodman, Ornette Coleman, Chet Baker, Stan Kenton, and Bill
Evans? Only one. Scott LaFaro."--Frank Alkyer, publisher, Down
Beat
"Scott LaFaro was a true jazz innovator. His sound, sense of time
and melodic invention blazed a trail for modern bassists and he was
a beacon of light for those players who dreamed of more freedom
within structure. Bill Evans once described Scott's playing to me:
'He was really discovering something every night on the bandstand.
He had all these ideas that were just bubbling up out of him. And
he had a way of finding notes that were more fundamental than the
fundamental.' " --Marc Johnson, bassist
"Scott LaFaro was a brilliant artist whose untimely death remains
one of the great tragedies of jazz more than four decades
later."--Jed Eisenman, manager of the Village Vanguard jazz
club
"Scotty was amazing. . . worked with all five fingers. . .
ridiculously wonderful. . . most inventive."--Dick Berk,
drummer
"Scotty's playing was the bible for bass players ... Jimmy Blanton
the old testament, Scotty, the new."--Christian McBride,
bassist
"It's astonishing that [LaFaro's] massive reputation is primarily
based on a handful of albums that feature him in full flower: the
four recorded with the Bill Evans Trio, two by Coleman and Jazz
Abstractions, a Gunther Schuller recording. His work on these is so
amazing, his facility on his instrument so fluid, his melodic ideas
and group interplay concepts so advanced that they still
reverberate today. Finally LaFaro has a worthy volume commensurate
with his stature in music."--AllAboutJazz.com
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