... IF EVER a musician lived the jazz life it was clarinettist Pee Wee Russell, whose story is told by Robert Hilbert (Pee Wee Russell; The Life Of A Jazzman, Oxford University Press, £17.50). Russell was one of those men of legend, somebody who rose in the afternoon, drank a bottle of milk, stumbled out to the liquor store to buy a quart of whisky, went back to his apartment to drink it and then ...

... The scene as they saw it W ROYAL Stokes, author of The Jazz Scene (Oxford University Press, £8.99 paper back), has written an enthralling book, based on dozens of interviews with jazz musicians from all parts of the United States and from all man ner of backgrounds. He schematises his volume into areas, dealing with New Orleans, Chicago, Kansas City and the South West, New York, big bands, ...

... Family ties Compiled by PETER HEPPLE YET another big crop of show business biographies, including one of his father Robert by Sheridan Morley (Robert My Father, Weiden-feld and Nicolson, £16.99). Let it not be said that the son thought his father the greatest actor who ever lived, though the affection which shines through the book obviously leads him to believe that he was one of the best ...

... Cotes on Cotes IN an era in which many actors are graduates and the vast majority have had drama school training, Peter Cotes stands out as one of the last of a breed. l rue, ne aia attend tne Italia Conti School, which in those days almost stood beside RAD A as a place where theatre was taught, alongside singing and danc ing, as a prelude to a career in show business. But, as his ...

... Entertaining reads Victorian attitudes THERE can be few people nowadays who actually attended performances during the Lilian Baylis regime at the Old Vic. For most of us our acquaintance with the theatre began when the fledgling National took it over in 1%3, though Michael Benthal! put it tirmly on the post-war map during the previous decade, when Richard Burton first became a theatrical idol, ...

... by PETER HEPPLE Life stories uncovered or found thrown away in the cupboard THE MANUSCRIPT of Tony Richardson's The Long Distance Runner (Faber and Faber, £17.50) was found on the day of his death, apparently carelessly tossed into the back of a cupboard, which incidentally is where he also kept his Oscar. If this is because he did not consider it worthy of publication, or whether at some ...

... DISCDISCDISCDISCDISCDISC Compiled by PETER HEPPLE IT IS astonishing to think that Benny Carter is still continuing his career at the age of 86, and has been a name instrumentalist and arranger for 65 of them. And what an instrumentalist, for Carter plays alto sax (his main instrument), tenor sax, clarinet and trumpet with equal skill, his always graceful alto playing con trasting with his ...

... Instructive study of seductive music PROBABLY the most highly developed music industry in the so-called Third World countries is that of Brazil. Moreover, popular music is truly part of the national culture, having been given state support on a scale equalled by no other nation. This is in part because it is a way of achieving a national heritage in a country of almost wildly mixed origins the ...