Original image by There Stands the Glass.
Prior to devouring Henry Threadgill’s new autobiography Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Music, I considered the innovator to be more of a magician than a musician. The book co-written with Brent Hayes Edwards documents precisely how Threadgill became one of the leading artistic figures of our time.
Threadgill recalls witnessing performances by blues giants including Howlin’ Wolf in Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market, a seventh grade teacher repeatedly exposing him to the compositions of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and attending rehearsals of Sun Ra’s Arkestra as a teen.
Combined with the support of his proud family, how could he have become anything other than a groundbreaking artist? Well, he might have been killed in Vietnam. The capricious reaction of a Catholic archbishop to Threadgill’s army band arrangement of a medley of patriotic songs performed in Kansas City resulted in his redeployment to the war zone.
Threadgill’s literal war stories are jaw-dropping. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the autobiography becomes less riveting as it details the ascension of Threadgill’s career. The increasingly heavy emphasis on music theory is invariably dry. Even so, Easily Slip Into Another World is the best music-oriented book I’ve read in the past year.