New Books In Music

Texas poet/author/historian Dave Oliphant‘s KD: A Jazz Biography (Wings Press, 2012) is a poetic tribute to the life of Jazz trumpeter and one of the original Jazz Messengers, Kenny Dorham. Dorham, who played with some of the jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Art Blakey, Monk and many, many others, is less well known than many of his contemporaries, but Oliphant’s highly allusive and alliterative rhythms and rhymes open one’s ears, eyes and heart to the Texas-born and raised trumpet player. Oliphant describes Dorham’s small town roots: Ken’s prodigious ear at five years old Could pick out keyboard boogies cold & from Sis’s 78s he could already tell Louie on trumpet an equal of Gabriel Oliphant also describes touches on Dorham’s gigs and experiences in New York City, the West Coast, Paris, South America, Scandinavia, and his untimely death from kidney disease at the age of 48 in 1972. a brain filled with unseen notes heard within his inner ears then