Dandelion; Memoir Of A Free Spirit

Paul Bley's jazz career has been marked by a burning creative restlessness continually leading to new musical discoveries. An earlier book about Bley, Stopping Time, was a collaborative effort matching Bley the grand raconteur with writer David Lee. Time Will Tell repeats that formula,this time with jazz academic and journalist Norman Meehan, although with strikingly more success. Bley's storytelling about himself and his inspired and inspiring fellow musicians (Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Sonny Rollins)is marked by both intelligent admiration and disarming candor. His love/hate relationship with pianist Bill Evans is wonderfully illuminated through Bley's detailed description of a recording session they shared creating George Russell's complex Jazz In The Space Age album. Quite unsparing of his ruthlessly competitive spirit toward other pianists, he admits thinking of Evans, "I'm going to knock this guy out, and he's going to sound bad," only finding that Evans in his own sweet way elevated his playing to the point where Bley met his match.