Fallen from the Moon: Robert Edward Juice Wilson: His Life on Earth: A Dossier

Literary Nonfiction. African & African American Studies. Music. Includes 63 illustrations. Juice Wilson, born 1904, was a truly remarkable violinist, who grew up alongside Eddie South in Chicago, and reed player. He recorded just two violin solos with the Noble Sissle Orchestra in London in 1929. He then worked, as far as the wider jazz community is concerned, in some obscurity, in France, Italy, Spain, North Africa, Malta, before returning to USA, via Paris, to Chicago, for the first time, in the mid 1960s. He died in 1972, whatever wildly inaccurate date may be read elsewhere. This dossier collects accounts of him by those who knew him, including in Barcelona and Malta, and other documents, such as letters from him. Many previously unpublished photos are included, along with transcriptions of his two solos. The title of the book is drawn from an article in which Antoni Tendes, who knew him in Barcelona in the 1930s, said: "He gave me the impression of a man who had fallen from the moon." Tendes could not have known of our cover photo, taken later in Malta, yet there is the moon.