Young Man with a Horn

Young Man with a Horn is a great book, beautifully conceived and masterfully written. There is little else that can be said in praise of any book. New York Amsterdam News
 
The Young Man with a Horn is the story of a musician, a swing trumpeter who lives only for the pounding rhythms in his blood. Yet despite its subject matter, it is not the fragment of fervid impressionism that the jazz age used to produce; despite the irrationalism of swing, the book itself is a clear-minded, informed, coldly rational study of a swing-addict. The New York Times

Young Man with a Horn is practically perfect. You feel, and feel deeply, the atmosphere Baker describes, the music Rick and his friends make, the fanatic devotion of artists who can t take their music or leave it but must take it and take it hard. Between the lines Baker somehow gets a great many true things said about American life, its tempo, its elements of frustration, its unique and unquestioning vitality.   Clifton Fadiman, The New Yorker

I first read this book when I was twelve. I loved it because it did not condescend or sugarcoat. It took me inside the music it made me want to find an instrument and learn it.   Jesse Kornbluth