Music was Not Enough

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.