How ‘The Jazz Ear’ works

Ben Ratliff on listening to the greats in the company of other greats

In his last book, “Coltrane: The Story of a Sound” (Picador, $16), New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff offered a heady, book-length analysis of the legendary saxophonist’s evolution and influence. Ratliff decided to lighten up a bit for his follow-up, “The Jazz Ear,” (Times Books, $25) which represents a series of conversations with jazz musicians as they listen to records that influence them.

Ratliff says the idea for the book was born out of a frustration.

“It came out of a sense of frustration that the expected way to write about jazz musicians was to wait until they have a significant new record and then use that as the journalistic reason for writing about them,” he says. “I figured out after a while that jazz isn’t really about records. Part of the reason jazz musicians don’t listen to records much is that jazz is all about making something new.”

But making something new and promoting it is not necessarily the essence of jazz either, says Ratliff.

“When I listened to music together with musicians, I got so much more out of it than by asking them questions about whatever they were trying to sell at that moment,” he says.

But it wasn’t just what his co-listeners said that helped inform his book.

“I learned a lot from their body language, from how they reacted and what tiny little gestures in themusic they reacted to,” says Ratliff.  “I can’t open up a musician’s brain and see how they function, but I can plumb their ears a little bit.”

If the format for “The Jazz Ear” seems like it was a lighter task than tackling Coltrane, that’s because it was.

“It was pure fun, actually. It was ecstasy,” he says. “By the end of the conversations, really great truths about these people were coming out.”

Ben Ratliff with Ran Blake
Tonight, 7
Brookline Booksmith
279 Harvard St., Brookline
MBTA: Green C Line to Coolidge Corner
free, 617-566-6660
www.brooklinebooksmith.com