Writes Richard Terrill, "The name fakebook derives from recognition that a jazz musician who is improvising over a set of chord changes is "faking," making up his or her own melody. The fakebook then is a place to start, the structure upon which music is completed." For this Fakebook, with its "improvisations" that pay homage to various greats like Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon, and John Coltrane, and with its exploration of how jazz works, jazz is the place to start in coming to terms with one's limits, in music and in life. After pursuing music as a young man-backing up celebrity performers at dances and county fairs, traveling with a rhythm and blues outfit, playing low paying jazz gigs in bars and lounges-Terrill concluded he'd never "make it" as a full time professional saxophonist. He became a published writer of memoir, poetry, and essays, followed a career as a teacher of writing, and for ten years never touched the horn. But then he took up playing again-almost as a whim at first, a self-dare-and soon rediscovered on weekend gigs the challenges, the despair and exhilaration, that jazz had always promised him. All of this he expresses in prose that glows with feeling and self-perception and makes Fakebook a work of literary consequence and true inspiration.This book gets it absolutely right. It's the story of all of us who have ever earned a dollar playing music. --Lyle Mays, Grammy Award-Winning Keyboardist, The Pat Metheny GroupThe best description of the actual process of making jazz music that I have ever read. Fine writing of a caliber rarely seen in jazz criticism or music instruction.--Don Rose, Jazz Institute of ChicagoThere is something so earnestly human and beautiful about Terrill's writing that I encourage you strongly to pick up his book for yourself. --Lee Bash, International Association of Jazz EducatorsThere is so much in this book for guys like me who've been through the music biz and continue in it long after we've paid those dues. --Rusty Jones, drummer. George Shearing Quintet, Marian McPartland TrioAs much as music, desire is the subject here, its evolution, its changing shapes, the compromises necessary to sustain it, and the refuges that desire must find in order to continue to vitalize a life.--Stuart Dybek, Author of I Sailed With MagellanAn ode to jazz. Visceral. Poetic. As warm and human as the music itself.--R. J. DeLuke, All About Jazz
Richard Terrill is the author of Saturday Night in Baoding: A China Memoir, winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award for Nonfiction; and two collections of poems: Almost Dark and Coming Late to Rachmaninoff, winner of the Minnesota Book Award. All three are available from the University of Tampa Press. Terrill teaches creative writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato and in the years since the events chronicled in Fakebook, has never again given up playing the saxophone. His recordings with pianist Larry McDonough are available from CD Baby and at larrymcdonoughjazz. homestead.com.
