More Than the Music features 27 unique jazz stories told by Hank O’Neal through his own experience.
“Most of them began so long ago, even as far back as the 1950s during my teenage years,” he writes in his book description. “In those days, jazz was still the new kid on the block, at least on my block. It was something most people knew nothing about — including me — so I watched, listened, and learned.
By the time he reached New York City in 1967 and began aging out of his 20s, many of the people who were previously just names on records or in books were now people he had met, worked with, and were getting to know on a personal level.
He’s picked out terribly talented and fascinating music-oriented men and women with whom he had more than a simple working relationship; these were people who helped shape his life, some in significant ways.
Once, they were all well-known — some only in the music world, others far beyond it. Their stories are detailed in 25 chapters from when time moved a little slower — before we were bound by TikTok’s clock or 280-character tweets—because, once upon a time, we weren’t always in such a hurry, he says.
“I have purposely mixed it up. While most were jazz musicians, others came from different worlds: a CIA director (Edwin M. Ashcraft), a famous movie star (Clint Eastwood), a noted poet (Allen Ginsberg), a famous industrialist (Sherman M. Fairchild), a legendary talent scout and social activist (John Hammond), a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and academic (Mel Powell), and the world’s foremost music festival producer (George Wein). And yet, it was the music that brought all of us together, and I consider myself very lucky to have known them.”
Hank O’Neal is a music producer, author, and photographer. Named for his father, Harold L. O’Neal Jr. was born June 5, 1940, in Kilgore, Texas. Although the family moved away from East Texas when he was a boy, his deep roots, memories, and many return trips as an adult, make it one of the most special places in the world to him.
In 2017, O’Neal released a book centered around his parents in East Texas, a place his father called “Heavenland.” Preserving Lives: An American Family’s Scrapbook, 1920-1950 is the story of two ordinary people living ordinary lives in East Texas almost a century ago.
Another book by O’Neal released in 2021 about his love of baseball and his interactions with baseball legend Ty Cobb. Sincerely Ty Cobb is illustrated with handwritten letters from Cobb to O’Neal along with cards and notes from other Hall of Fame players and traces 10 years of his own life in baseball as well.
Find his books on Amazon and on the Texas Christian University authors site.
