Art Pepper was described as the greatest alto-saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation. Straight Life, originally narrated on tape to his wife Laurie, is an explosive work chronicling his work amidst a life dealing with alcoholism, heroin addiction, armed robberies and imprisonment.

The result is an autobiography like no other, a masterpiece of the spoken word, shaped into a genuine work of literature.

"Straight Life demonstrates again and again that Pepper had the ear and memory and interpretative lyricism of a first-rate novelist . . . He did five years in San Quentin and his descriptions of life there are relentless and brilliant . . . He had no illusions nor did he have any remorse or self-pity . . . He was an eloquent and gifted man" - * New Yorker *

"One of the most memorable jazz memoirs" - * The Times *

"A tough, dizzying, hard and honest book that will haunt anybody who opens it" - * Down Beat *

"The most powerful, mind-riveting, brutally honest document I've ever read by an artist" - * Boston Ledger *

"A shattering portrait of genius confronted with human weakness . . . possibly the best memoir ever written by a jazz musician. A story that ranks with The Autobiography of Malcolm X in its direct honesty and power" - * Kansas City Star *

"This is a book of the jazz life . . . Pepper's voice, which rings clear (in that Bukowski-Fante vein), floats above the story with great assuredness, and is never less than aware of both the hilarity and the sad desperation of his life, the appalling darkness and the flashes of great beauty and compassion" - * Caught by the River *