January 6, 2006

Pimp My Memoir: Jazz Autobiographies' Tricked-Out Personae

By DAVID YAFFE

"Writers are always selling somebody out," wrote Joan Didion. When it comes to jazz autobiography, Didion's maxim is not just a metaphor. Jazz may not have actually been born in the red-light district of Storyville, but it certainly flourished there, and many of the music's legendary figures have not strayed far from the oldest profession.

Often egged on by ghostwriters or heavy-handed editors more attuned to book markets than to artistic insight, Billie Holiday described her