An American composer and saxophonist recounts a long, extraordinarily accomplished life in music.

Born in 1944, Threadgill grew up in a Chicago whose airwaves were as catholic as they came: “I remember Mexican music, country music (which people used to call ‘hillbilly’ back then), jazz, rhythm and blues, boogie-woogie, plus regular programming including radio plays, detective shows, and science fiction.” All that, plus the gospel of the likes of Mahalia Jackson and the world music pioneered by none other than DJ Studs Terkel. Threadgill might have fallen victim to the mean streets of the South Side, where he got into his share of scrapes and police officers shot to kill. “People talk about being scared—they don’t know what being scared is,” he writes. “I was running for my motherfucking life.” Enlisting in the Army as a musician, he was promised soft postings until he managed to bring heat down on the brass for a unique arrangement of the national anthem, whereupon he was packed off to Vietnam. His recollections from the battlefront are immediate and affecting. “I played both clarinet and alto saxophone, depending on the circumstances,” he writes. “But in terms of my situation, the key word was ‘infantry.’ ” After his discharge in 1969, Threadgill began putting together one stylistically revolutionary act after another, from Air to Zooid, playing with Sun Ra, James White and the Blacks, John Cale, and Cecil Taylor, and absorbing lessons from—while avoiding imitating—the likes of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. The author is both encouraging and stern, as when he counsels, “If you haven’t had a love affair with the music, I don’t know what you’re doing in it.” More than that, he urges readers to innovate, improvise, and widen their horizons—for example, follow the Cuban model, studying percussion along with whatever instrument one chooses.

A vivid, vigorous memoir that every budding musician should read.