Emmy-nominated Game of Thrones star Lena Headey reads the acclaimed memoir that inspired the film in which she stars. This special movie tie-in edition is now available from Encore for a great value!
One day weâre walking down the street, passing a newsstand, when I stop and pick up a magazine (maybe Life) with Thelonious Monk of the cover. I kiss it, and say, âHi Monk.â Dad, combusting with pride, picks me up, looks at me with those beautiful gray-green eyes, and says: âFrom now on, youâre not just my baby, youâre my ace-one-boon-white-coon.â That, he would claim, was the day we forever connected, and became more to each other than everything.
So begins Amy Albanyâs life with her father, the legendary though obscure jazz pianist Joe Albany. Joe played with the likes of Charles Mingus, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and Dexter Gordon. In red-boothed, booze-drenched Hollywood nightspots, chances were youâd find Albanyâs daughter tucked behind the bar, curled on someoneâs fur coat, while her father played his set. Teddy bears were for other kidsâAmy slept with a â78 of Louis Armstrongâs âSugar Bluesâ, and later with a photograph of the man himself inscribed âTo little Amy-Joe, always in love with youâPopsâ.
Written with gritty honesty, Low Down is Amy Albanyâs extended improvisation on growing up, wise beyond her years and hip to the unpredictable ways of Old Lady Life at all too early an age, Albany guides us through the dope and deviance of the late 1960s and early 1970s jazz scene in Hollywoodâs underbelly and beyond. What emerges is a raw and poignant portrait of a young girl trying to survive amongst the outcasts and misfits who guided her life.