Billy Hart's book: OCEANS OF TIME

out now!! (also the band opens at the Vanguard tonight)

Officially out today: Oceans of Time: The Musical Autobiography of Billy Hart (as told to Ethan Iverson). Amazon link. If you like the book, please leave a review, for a review is real currency in the harsh marketplace of Amazon algorithms.

---

BLURBS FOR OCEANS OF TIME

A wonderful book. Reading it, you're sitting there listening to Billy Hart talk effortlessly and incisively about music and the remarkable people who make it. And you don't want him to stop.
—Lawrence Block, author of When The Sacred Ginmill Closes

Billy Hart has been an inspiration, mentor and friend for almost 30 years. I previously heard many of the anecdotes in this memoir but was amazed at the thoroughness and the spirit captured in these pages. This addition to America’s music history is a must have for drummers, music enthusiasts and the casual fan’s library.
—Jason Brown, drummer

I love this. What a story. What a storyteller. Billy Hart has brought so much light into the world. Anyone reading this book will see his beautiful spirit and magic. His sense of humor, humility, generosity, curiosity, honesty.
The history.
There is a treasure trove here. I’m so thankful for this.
—Bill Frisell, guitarist

Billy Hart reigns over the drums with the arch profundity of an artist who misses nothing and has more stored up than he ever needs to show. His playing indicates wisdom—a wisdom that stirs every page of this extraordinary book. From his first sentence, collating swing and religion, Oceans of Time is a non-stop gift. As edited by Ethan Iverson, it is a genuine “as told to” rather than a ghosted story. Billy’s companionable, no-bull narrative will gladden the heart of every jazz lover.
—Gary Giddins, author of Visions of Jazz

Ethan Iverson brings his ever-curious musical intelligence to document the amazing life and legacy of Billy Hart, one of the true living legends in jazz. Fast-paced and insightful, Billy's vast musical universe shines brightly. Immensely readable and a must-have for any jazz fan.
—Fred Hersch, pianist

There are far too few autobiographies/biographies of our jazz greats, both ancestral and living. And now along comes Ethan Iverson’s as-told-to treatment of the great Billy Hart’s modern jazz drumming odyssey. This exceptional volume quite cannily explores more than a few great drum techniques, but also goes deep into the dynamics of that most essential vehicle of jazz expression…the band. Hart provides fascinating commentary on great bands for which he has played an integral role: from the subtleties of the Shirley Horn Trio, to Wes Montgomery, to Jimmy Smith’s B-3 band, his contributions to Herbie Hancock’s explosive 1970s Mwandishi unit, McCoy Tyner, Pharoah Sanders, and Miles Davis On The Corner session, Billy Hart proves to be an enormously insightful tour guide. What is intended as a purely “musical autobiography” certainly delivers on that tip, and although some may label this a “musician-to-musician” exploration, there is much to be learned & derived here for the general jazz and modern music enthusiast as Hart compels readers to seek out the recorded evidence of his mastery and the bands he indelibly enhanced.
—Willard Jenkins, co-author of African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston

Jabali Billy Hart has such a great story to tell, and he tells it generously, looking back on a path of making music, of building and balancing a career, of being a spiritually rooted African American representing a proud legacy. The details of his life are remembered in detail and sharp definition. The music worlds of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s come alive. He examines his motives as deeply as his musical progress. He weaves his own, straight-forward voice and invites in those of others—like Shirley Horn, desiring more assertive support, telling Hart “Don’t tickle me…” Like his first wife guiding him, for musical reasons, to tour with Jimmy Smith, rather than James Brown. Like Herbie Hancock’s manager stepping on his toes, calling him “a real rock and roll drummer.” Like Miles Davis putting his nose to Hart’s, saying: “The next time I need a drummer I’m going to call you.” Hart himself declaring, “As far as I’m concerned, clavé is another name for God.” His book is deep, resonant, and historically rich, filled with life lessons that have not stopped being relevant.
—Ashley Kahn, author of A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album

Billy Hart, one of the most versatile and maybe the most prolific of all jazz drummers, has penned a memoir that’s flush with as much passion, joy, erudition, and intensity as his music. He paints colorful portraits of the many men and women who shaped his style and paved his career—a cast that includes most of the great figures in post-1960 jazz, some famous, some lamentably unsung—and also makes a compelling case for the drums as the soul of music and music as the heartbeat of life.
—Fred Kaplan, author of 1959: The Year Everything Changed

Billy Hart's Oceans Of Time (as told to Ethan Iverson) is a rich testament to his perpetual artistic innovation. As a contemporary African Griot, Hart disseminates the inner recesses of the culture, history, and practice of America's classical music in a revelatory way. This book is not just a must-have but a wellspring of inspiration and motivation for any practitioner, educator, or passionate advocate of the art form.
—James Newton, composer and flutist

Oceans of Time: The Musical Autobiography of Billy Hart is an instant classic of the genre. Co-author Ethan Iverson captures the voice of the still-going-strong octogenarian NEA Jazz Master, who describes his experiences with a who’s-who of jazz expression during his 65-year career with the same multi-dimensional perspective that marks his drumming, simultaneously factoring historical context, psychological perspicacity, impeccable craft, and transparent emotion into the flow.
—Ted Panken, co-author of Life in E Flat: The Autobiography of Phil Woods

Billy Hart is rightly well-loved not only as a musician but also as a person. Here he recounts his experiences as a Black musician in the U.S.A., working with Herbie Hancock, Stan Getz, McCoy Tyner and many others. Hart speaks with candor, humor and insight. Iverson stays completely in the background, but he is surely the right person for this task. The details will be of interest to everybody, not only jazz fans.
—Lewis Porter, author of “Playback” on Substack and the Coltrane biography

Despite the fact that I’ve known Billy for many, many years, I’ve learned so much more about him from his autobiography. Written from a distinctly drummer’s point of view, it’s a fascinating picture of the jazz world he’s a part of and helped develop. He chronicles the music he continues to excel at after so much time. Read this book! I couldn’t put it down.
—John Scofield, guitarist

I had the privilege of meeting the great Billy Hart when I was a teenager and have enjoyed being in his presence as his student, fan, drum tech, and colleague. Recently, I got to observe Mr. Hart in a recording session—watching and listening to him “get levels” with the engineer was life-changing. I remember thinking he sounded like a whole choir of drummers, with the perfect balance, dynamics, and touch. Thank you, Mr. Hart, and all who helped share this treasure trove. I look forward to referencing this memoir for years to come.
—Evan Sherman, drummer

There is a hidden history of jazz that has eluded the grasp of even the most diligent scholars and critics. Billy Hart’s Oceans of Time feels like a crucial corrective to that oversight. While it contains a wealth of vivid—and at times inspiring or scathing—behind-the-scenes anecdotes of the jazz life, perhaps more importantly, it reads like a long-form unpacking of the mysteries of what we know as ‘swing.’ Hart has seemingly made it his life’s mission to register, internalize and process the innumerable subtleties of the American vernacular rhythmic tradition, and as the book goes on, his recounting of his on-the-job research begins to feel like a Rosetta stone. This book is instantly indispensable for anyone—musicians, historians, fans—who would seek to understand jazz on a molecular level. It’s the next best thing to hearing Billy Hart play the drums, and I foresee going back to it for the rest of my life.
—Hank Shteamer, jazz journalist

When Ethan initially told me about this book project, I thought to myself that Mark Turner had probably already heard most of what he would get, because Billy doesn’t always say much on the road. Boy was I wrong!!! This book fills in so many gaps, and it is fascinating from beginning to end.
—Ben Street, bassist

Billy Hart’s Oceans of Time is an extraordinary gift. The most majestic and soulful living drummer in jazz, Hart is also a philosopher and autodidact of profound depth. He has given us the rare jazz memoir that digs into the marrow of the music, dropping wisdom on nearly every page that unlocks the mysteries and magic of the bandstand. From the indivisible – but overlooked -- connection between swing rhythm and the clavé, to nuanced discussions of drummers both famous (Tony Williams) and unheralded (Donald Bailey), Hart guides readers through the complex dance of art, folklore, tradition, and exploration that define the best in jazz, including himself.
—Mark Stryker, author of Jazz from Detroit

I can't remember how or when I first met Billy Hart (Jabali), suffice to say that since that time we have been involved in many projects together—tours, recordings, gigs, etc. If I knew that Billy was going to be on any of the above, I always let out a sigh of relief because I knew that the rhythm section would be ‘tight as the nuts on a bridge.’
—Mickey Tucker, pianist

I always tease Billy, “You’ve got more gigs than you can handle.” But Billy is also so dependable, he always gives himself completely to the music. His beat is entrancing, passionate, exuberant, emotional, full, and complete—and it all comes out in this book.
—Buster Williams, bassist

The way Billy Hart tells his story takes you inside—inside the band room, inside the band, inside the music and the way it evolves, handed on through the generations. For the reader, the access is priceless. I read it in a single sitting and learned something on just about every page.
—Richard Williams, author of The Blue Moment: Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue

A unique feature of the book is a collection of 22 living drummers discussing Billy Hart in the first appendix, including Terri Lyne Carrington, “I think of Billy Hart for the answers” and Peter Erskine, “Billy Hart turned the key for me.”

---

Sincere thanks to the Cymbal Press team of Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager for taking on this project! And see you both at the club later! for:

The Billy Hart Quartet with Walter Smith III, Ben Street, and myself opens at the Village Vanguard tonight. We will be there through Sunday. Copies of Oceans of Time will be available for purchase.

---