BOSTON BOY

Once, jazz was a real and pervasive presence in Boston and in the dim and scruffy clubs of the South End, this American Music-par-excellence thrilled thousands of afficionados, while yet rarely affording its dedicated and colorful creators a living. It was the Twenties and the Jazz Age; it was the Thirties and the age of the Big Bands; it was the wartime Forties, the age of The Savoy on Mass Ave and of Sidney Bechet; it was the baby-boom Fifties and the age of Storeyville in Kenmore Square... There were Big Bands and great ballrooms but there were, as well, many talented smaller bands, playing inspired improvised jazz and struggling to survive as they enthralled more limited audiences in more limited venues. Nat Hentoff eloquently reminisces about a time when the soulful sound of trumpet and clarinet, piano and bass - pained, glorious, yearning, introspective, challenging, alien even - could inadvertently reach out of the smoky, dark, cave-like clubs of Washington and Columbus Avenues, and so mesmerize a young boy that it could change his life. Nat Henhoff blends this tale of a city, its cultural glories and its social sins, with the story of the music, light and dark, somber and witty, pure and besmirched - the faithful mirror of the human soul. He leaves one desolate that - much too soon! - things changed, and he leaves one wondering why Boston let it happen; why the city - host to The Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory, the Symphony as well as The Boston Pops - couldn't swiftly rally to support and, in time, to save a once-thriving Jazz community... Oh, economics and changing taste are the answer, of course, but one is left wishing that Boston had been able to sustain its local jazz scene and, failing that, wishing that it should presently choose, at the least and at last, to honor it with a South End Jazz Museum. Many of the greatest Jazz Musicians played there once and their presence or passage should not be forgotten.

It's great to see a book like this. As another Boston boy, I had many similar experiences that have been hard and perhaps confusing to explain to someone who grew up in another time and place. My wife feels that she understands me better now after reading Boston Boy. We are giving copies to our sons. The book for me is nostalgic, poignant, and somewhat reassuring. Helps to understand that generation, that time, and that place. We made it in spite of the bastards.

Nat Hentoff, who later became famous as a writer about jazz and civil liberties, describes his "coming of age" and discovery of jazz in the Boston of the 1940s. A very enjoyable read.