The author says he was born in Toronto in 1941 and is the retired president of an entertainment agency who spent 27 years hosting the radio show Some Experiences In Jazz, where he interviewed over 700 jazz people, including Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, Count Basie, Stan Getz, Peter Appleyard and Moe Koffman. The blurb tells us that “this captivating memoir chronicles a lifetime spent immersed in music, from hanging with jazz legends like Louis Armstrong and Oscar Peterson to witnessing icons like Sinatra, The Beatles and Elvis Presley. With over 700 interviews conducted throughout his career, Fogle shares first-hand accounts of his experiences in the music industry.”
Let me say at once that I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and then let me add that arguably I did so because I am roughly contemporaneous with Mr. Fogle, ergo his musical memories resemble my own as do his musical tastes. This is not to say that younger readers with minds that are open to a musical landscape that does not begin with hip-hop and end with rap may not also find lots to admire, even enjoy, should they care to join Mr. Fogle on his journey.
Mr. Fogle’s book is less a conventional book than a series of vignettes, each running to no more than two or three pages and each completely independent, so one can as easily start at page 330 (Buddy Rich), as page 38 (Erroll Garner), or page 108 (Stan Kenton). To give you some idea, the contents stretch to eight pages in which the author covers some 363 separate persons.
I will note, however, that had Mr. Fogle opted to begin each vignette at the top of the page, rather than halfway down, the book would have been much more compact. Nevertheless, I found the book far less daunting to tackle than I might have imagined.
Although I failed to learn anything new about familiar names – e.g., Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, Mel Tormé – I did encounter many names new to me, including several performers from Mr. Fogle’s native country, Canada, and all were worth reading about. I think it’s both fair and true to say that whatever your age you will find in these pages something to stimulate/intrigue you, and if you are, say, under 60, you will also learn an awful lot about a musical landscape now as remote and lost as Atlantis.
Robert Fogle: My 8 Decade Musical Journey. Independently published 20 January 2025; pb; 592 pages. ISBN 979-8307274767
