A Thousand Honey Creeks Later: My Life in Music from Basie to Motownand Beyond

Love has a rare gift for storytelling, recounting details of his life and career with such focus and intensity that the reader can almost feel the bus bumping along the Midwest highways of the 1930s. Love, as Lipsitz says, was ""one of the truly great lead-alto saxophone players of all time,"" and he knew many of the finest jazz musicians of the big band era. His story is intrinsically linked with his hometown--Omaha, Neb.--to which Love has been devoted all his life. Love's refusal to abandon his beloved Omaha even when larger cities beckoned, is indicative of the warm-hearted idealism that marks the early part of this autobiography but also of the prickly, bitter arrogance that threatens to overwhelm the second half. Love is a devoted disciple of the Count Basie-style of big band jazz of the 1930s and `40s; for a short time, he even played with the orchestra, replacing his idol Earle Warren on alto sax. That seems to be the last time Love closely followed contemporary music. He is joyously anachronistic whenever his topic is big band's bygone era, but blithely unconcerned with bebop, soul, rock 'n' roll, rap and current jazz trends. Unfortunately, the longest and final chapter is an incoherent and self-contradictory diatribe against every subsequent development in American music--with the exception of Motown, where Love worked in the '60s and '70s, and which he feels represents pure, undiluted African American music. However, even the sad final chapter does not diminish the pleasure of reading this bittersweet love letter to the good old days. (Oct.)