Like Young: Jazz, Pop, Youth, And Middle Age

by Francis Davis

Francis Davis is one of this nation's savviest and most admired music and cultural critics. In this collection of essays he observes the modern jazz and pop that have reached middle age at the same moment as many of their listeners, including the author. Moving through the scales from Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday to Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra, he comments on music both old and new, on stage and screen. In addition to taking the pulse of jazz at the millennium, he offers fresh insights on pop icons like Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Burt Bacharach, and Brian Wilson. He also goes beyond character sketch and critical script to weave in fragments of his own life, making this the most personal of his collections. Like Young will resonate both with those who have spent two decades reading Davis and those who are discovering him today.

Genres: Jazz, Essays

352 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2001

About the author

Francis Davis was an American author and journalist. He was best known as the jazz critic for The Village Voice, and a contributing editor for The Atlantic Monthly. He had also worked in radio and film, and taught courses on Jazz and Blues at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a 1994 recipient of the Pew Fellowships in the Arts.

Reviews

[Seth Arnopole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this collection of Francis Davis’s writing about jazz and popular music when it came out in 2001. His cheerfully self-indulgent essay about his yearly vacation in Santa Cruz with his wife Terry Gross made me think that the life of a writer sounded pretty sweet. I started writing my own reviews and essays about popular culture, but apart from a piece of two that appeared in a ‘zine, my writing career never got off the ground.

The pieces in this book introduced me to works by Walt Dickerson, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and Betty Carter, and I will always be grateful for that. Rereading the book today, I am less charmed by the curmudgeonly tone that often creeps in, light snark that wears thin (but is justified in a review of the show Rent, to be fair). Davis can be tone-deaf at times as well, such as when he describes Wynton Marsalis as “playing the race card.”

There is still a great deal of worthwhile content here, though, especially when he steps out of the way a bit. A wacky interview with Sun Ra, a perceptive look at the work of Burt Bacharach, and a vivid profile of Dion are highlights.