Music Was Not Enough

by Bob Wilber, Derek Webster

Bob Wilber is perhaps most widely known for his arrangement of the music for the film The Cotton Club , but among jazz aficionados he is highly respected for his work on clarinet and saxophone. In Music Was Not Enough , Wilber recounts his career as a jazz musician, both in America and in
Europe.
A protégé of jazz great Sidney Bechet, Wilber has known and played with some of the great jazz musicians of the last three decades. After leading his own band in America, he went to Europe with Mezz Mezzrow's all-star band, and later became involved with the Six, and the bands of Bobby Hackett and
Eddie Condon. Later still, he played a leading role with the World's Greatest Jazz Band, Soprano Summit and the Bechet Legacy.
Wilber's account of his studies with Bechet and other early jazzmen, his attempts to survive as a musician during the fifties and sixties--including his recovery from drug addiction--and his subsequent return to fame make this book an important contribution to jazz history.

222 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31, 1988

Reviews

[Daniel Mcbrearty · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are few people in the jazz world who are as deep in it as Bob, having studied as a lad with Bechet, and rubbed shoulders with many other legends of the music. The book is in part a description of some of these encounters, and in part a frank admission of his own struggles with issues of self-confidence as his career progressed. Happily, he got through it and has continued to grace the planet with his wonderful playing. The book is honest and interesting to fans of jazz music.