But Beautiful

"A masterful effort, which comes as close to the music's essence as prose can go."—Ted Gioia, San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle

"A gorgeous and lyrical collection of nocturnal jazz reveries, in which Dyer uses history, photographs, and recordings the way his famous subjects use musical themes--as a starting point for creative embellishment and improvisation."—The New Yorker

"But Beautiful is the only book about jazz that I have recommended to my friends. It is a gem, with the distinction of being 'about' jazz rather than 'on' jazz. If closeness to the material determines a great solo, Mr. Dyer's book is one."—Keith Jarrett

"Dyer turns jazz into poetry and his subjects into a beautiful sad music . . . Few will be unmoved by his passion and eloquence."—Tom Graves, The Washington Post Book World

"[Dyer's] writing is evocative, eloquent and, well, beautiful. What's more, his poetic language is always deployed in the service of accuracy. Anybody who has ever listened closely to Monk's music, for example, will recognize Dyer's account of his idiosyncratic style: 'He played each note as though astonished by the previous one, as though every touch of his fingers on the keyboard was correcting an error and this touch in turn became an error to be corrected and so the tune never quite ended up the way it was meant to.' In the end, But Beautiful is a splendid meditation on jazz and the personalities that created it, couched in a prose as lyrical—and as rigorous—as the music it describes."—James Marcus, Salon