Snoozer Quinn: Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar Pioneer

by Dan Sumner, Katy Hobgood Ray, Steve Howell (Foreword by)

Overview

Musical Transcriptions, biographical information, and photos covering fingerstyle jazz guitar pioneer Snoozer Quinn. First time in detail treatment of Quinn's life and playing style. Includes transcriptions of eight Quinn's recorded performances. Also includes short interviews and exhaustive discography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781667844770
Publisher:	BookBaby
Publication date:	06/06/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	104
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Louisiana-based guitarist, arranger, educator, and music producer. He is an internationally acclaimed guitarist who performs and tours the world regularly with a variety of acts. He is a sponsored Benedetto Artist and owns and operates Fort Sumner Studio in Monroe, Louisiana, where he has recorded and/or produced dozens of critically acclaimed albums. He has taught music at Loyola University (New Orleans), Indiana University, Capital University, was Assistant Professor of Music Education and Guitar at University of Louisiana – Monroe and was the music director of the Kennedy Center Award-winning Lusher Charter School. He holds degrees in Jazz Studies and Guitar from Capital University, the New England Conservatory of Music with Doctoral studies at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.Master's degree in musicology from Tulane University with a concentration in New Orleans music. She authored the biography of Snoozer that follows and compiled his discography, as well as providing the photographs included here. She currently works in media relations at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and as an adjunct professor of public relations. She is a singer, musician, recording artist, and music historian especially passionate about the positive power of music in the lives of children. She hosts the weekly kids radio show and podcast "Confetti Park" and plays music with the New Orleans-based children's chorus Confetti Park Players and the Shreveport-based Friends of Lead Belly. She is a proud alumna of Carleton College and Tulane University. She released an album with her husband, Dave, in 2019 entitled "I Dream Of Water" to unanimous critical acclaim. Katy is indisputably the foremost authority on Snoozer's life and career as a result of her exhaustive research.East Texan Steve Howell's guitar playing and singing are very much rooted in the traditional jazz and rural acoustic blues genres born in the American South. His musical interests also extend to rhythm and blues, pop music from the 1950's and 1960's, and rock ' roll. His interpretations of tunes from these genres have been enjoyed by audiences in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Oregon, and Great Britain for over forty five years and lauded by critics from the United States and Europe who have unanimously praised his unique approach to breathing new life into time-honored songs from days gone by and reintroducing little-known gems of American music to a whole new audience. He has released ten CD's and was the recipient of the Texas Music Academy's 2011 Historical Significance Award. His recordings are in steady rotation on radio playlists in the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, Greece, Croatia, and Australia and on XM and WorldSpace satellite radio. "Fingerpicking Early Jazz Standards," a set of fifteen of his fingerstyle guitar arrangements has been published by the Hal Leonard Corporation in 2018.

Editorial Reviews

09/05/2022

Both an inviting introduction and an as-definitive-as-possible accounting, this examination of the work of the legendary—and rarely recorded—fingerstyle jazz guitarist Ed “Snoozer” Quinn lays out the biographical facts and extant musical output of this elusive Louisiana native who in the early days of jazz blended a country-blues sensibility with the swing and “hot” sounds coming out of New Orleans. Offering photographs, original interviews, and a host of archival materials, musical collaborators and co-authors Ray, who wrote the biographical portions, and Sumner, who transcribed eight Quinn recordings and offers clarifying commentary, separate fact from myth. They trace Quinn’s life and art from his upbringing, in the first decade of the 20th century, in the lumber town Bogalusa, Louisiana, to his prime years spent accompanying greats like Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden, to his death of tuberculosis in 1949, and his legacy and influence afterwards.

Their welcome attention to technique sets this compact volume apart from appreciations by non-experts. Testimonials from Quinn’s contemporaries, plus notables like Les Paul and Leo Kottke (who said in 1987 “Snoozer was playing what a lot of us today are trying to play, which is a finer approach to the guitar, but with all of the available harmony”), illuminate his rise to success in the most popular band of the 1920s, Paul Whiteman’s, and his subsequent “retreat” from the national scene at the start of the Depression.

The story of Quinn’s great, late-period recordings is poignant and tragic: in 1948, the cornetist Johnny Wiggs, a friend and bandmate, brought a recorder when visiting Quinn in the TB ward. The resulting duets form the bulk of Quinn’s available oeuvre. “I cannot imagine that the sounds we hear on the recordings reflect Snoozer at the height of his powers,” notes Sumner, a noted guitarist himself. The transcriptions and commentary offer welcome new insight.

Takeaway: A compact yet definitive examination of the life and art of an elusive guitar great.

Great for fans of: Richard M. Sudhalter’s Lost Chords?, Howard Morgen’s Concepts: Arranging for Fingerstyle Guitar.

Production grades Cover: A Design and typography: A Illustrations: A Editing: A Marketing copy: A

BookLife Reviews