“Anyone who is interested in jazz, or potentially interested in jazz, should read Hentoff for insights and perspectives on the most important American contribution to the world of music.”
“Hentoff is . . . an iconic jazz writer”
“Hentoff may wear his love for jazz on his sleeve, but he balances it with insight, knowledge and long experience.”
[Hentoff] is known for the quality and depth of his humanity in addressing the lives of the people who create jazz, an art form he believes has an energy stream of its own, a tributary to the river of life. This idea leaps out at the reader from almost every page of this work. . . . The offerings here -- a prosaic, unadulterated look into Hentoff's world view -- demonstrate that he's on the same path as the great musicians he writes about. He wants to be free, and understands that he's not unless everyone else is. He is a unique American. And a great one.”
“For more than half a century, Hentoff has deftly chronicled the lives of jazz musicians, the rise of jazz music in America, and the intimate relationship between jazz and civil rights, weaving intricate rhythmic prose around themes of loss, triumph, and musical virtuosity. . . . Hentoff’s essays often generate thoughtful insights into this uniquely American musical form.”
“These sixty-four essays and articles read like a colorful potted history of jazz in America, and are peppered with rich anecdotes and first-hand stories from the mouths of the great jazz artists that Hentoff knew personally.”
“Nat Hentoff may very well be the foremost jazz historian in the world because he was there to witness firsthand the music’s evolution from big band and swing to fusion and bossa nova; and to dive into the souls of the men and women who created it from Ellington, Basie, Miles, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington, among many others. At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene is an invaluable archive of not only the musical influence of America’s only indigenous music on the world, but its enormous impact as an engine for social change as well. It is a book that should be read by every young musician, music fan, and educator in America.”—Quincy Jones
"The very best witnesses in the worlds of the law, aesthetic evaluation, social contexts of imposing significance, and artistic public performance are those who accurately understand what they have seen or what they are seeing. Nat Hentoff has been and continues to be a star witness in every one of those arenas. One of the greatest contributions of his jazz writing is that he has never felt the need to condescend to black people or to let the dictates of sociology diminish the universal significance of what they do when they do it well. Nat knows that so many jazz musicians have done what they do superbly, quite often expressing themselves beyond the narrows of color. As sensitive to the Americana of jazz as he is to its transcendent revelations about the sound of the human heart, Nat Hentoff is part of our American luck."—Stanley Crouch
“At the Jazz Band Ball is full of nuggets from Nat's rich lode of wit and wisdom, gleaned in a lifetime of fellowship with jazz and its makers.”—Dan Morgenstern, Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University; author of Living With Jazz: A Reader
