Tom Talbert, His Life and Times

"A jazz classicist, schooled in the past, with a yen for the future, Tom Talbert is a romantic who shuns the cliche. He is a technician who trusts the heart. Even when he's being clever his notes are warm and tender." Budd Schulberg wrote these words in 1957. Almost 50 years later they still apply. A contemporary of Gerry Mulligan, Shorty Rogers, Gil Evans, Bill Holman, and Ralph Burns, Tom Talbert is a composer, arranger, bandleader, and pianist. In the late 1940s he led his own big band in Los Angeles, featuring star artists like Art Pepper, Warne Marsh, and Claude Williamson. In New York in the 1950s he wrote for Charlie Burnet, Buddy Rich, Claude Thornhill, Marian McPartland, Kai Winding, Machito, and conceived and Scored two of the most strikingly original albums in the history of jazz recording. Tom Talbert returned to Los Angeles in 1975 and has continued to record his own innovative, impressionistic, and subtly swinging music using the finest players, even to this day. In this account of his life and career, Bruce Talbot paints a vivid portrait of Tom Talbert and his world. Utilizing first-hand accounts, the book is crammed with memories of Los Angeles in the 40s, road tours of the Mid-West, a rare glimpse of the Twin Cities jazz scene during World War II, and a portrait of New York City in the 50s when it was truly the jazz capital of the world. The book includes a complete discography of Tom Talbert's work and a CD containing fourteen of his most important and representative recordings.