Dave Usher Releases MUSIC IS FOREVER: DIZZY GILLESPIE, THE JAZZ LEGEND AND ME

In Music Is Forever: Dizzy Gillespie, the Jazz Legend and Me, Dave Usher, white and Jewish, tells the story of how he, at age 14, met the jazz giant, a black man who practiced the Bahá'i Faith, and forged a 50-year friendship. During those years, Dave Usher helped produce Dizzy's records, and traveled the world with him. Dave Usher had two parallel careers and he tells the story of his 50-year friendship with the late jazz great, Dizzy Gillespie, while pioneering and becoming a world renowned expert on oil and hazardous material control, in his new book, Music Is Forever: Dizzy, the Jazz Legend, and Me.

His friendship with Gillespie, the creator of bebop, was forged in 1944 when Usher was 14 and lasted until the jazz trumpeter died in January 1993. In a story never told before, Usher describes the brother-like relationship he enjoyed with Gillespie as well as the partnership between Gillespie, the musician, and himself, a jazz producer. Usher relates funny stories as well as sad ones, and how he traveled the globe with Gillespie, producing some of the world's greatest jazz music. He also chronicles how he worked with other great jazz musicians, including Ahmad Jamal, Ramsey Lewis, Thad Jones, Sonny Stitt, Toots Thielemans, Shelly Manne, Joe Kennedy, Shorty Rogers, Willie Dixon, Nat Pierce, Stuff Smith, J J Johnson, Conte Candoli, Frank Rosolino, Annie Ross, and many others. Usher made the first recordings of artists Jackie Wilson and Little Willie John.

In the book, Usher also describes how his company, Marine Pollution Control (MPC) pioneered cleaning up oil spills throughout the world, becoming such an expert that President George H. Walker Bush called upon him to help clean up the millions of gallons of oil that Saddam Hussein spilled into the Persian Gulf during "Desert Storm" in 1991. He also carried out assignments for the United Nations.

In 1967, Usher founded MPC, an internationally renowned environmental services company, the first such company in the Great Lakes region and one of the first in the world. MPC assisted in cleaning up many of the world's major oil spills, including the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. Usher also was the founder and president for many years of the Spill Control Association of America (SCAA.) He also founded and served as president of the International Spill Control Organization (ISCO) and worked with the United Nations' International Maritime Organization (IMO.) As a founding member, he helped establish the American Salvage Association (ASA) and served as president for the Hazardous Materials Control Research Institute in Washington, D.C., and was president of the Liquid Industrial Control Association (LICA.)

DAVE USHER "MUSIC IS FOREVER"

RED ANCHOR PRODUCTIONS (Redanchorproductions.com)

Release Date: JANUARY 2015

UPC Code: 9 780692 211106 51795

ISBN: 978-0-692-21110-6

The soft cover book and ebook, published by Red Anchor Productions (RAP), are available at Amazon.com.

To post a comment, you must register and login.