Customer Reviews

Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954-2001

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OK, Whitney Balliett never got into Miles Davis's electric stuff. So he's a Moldy Fig. To quote Miles, "So What?" For my money, he's still the greatest observer of the modern jazz scene. What makes him great is the accuracy of his observation: No other jazz critic ("Notes and Tones" was written by Art Taylor, a drummer) has been as generous as Balliett at letting the musicians speak for themselves. Reading his reviews, you often forget he's there. That never happens with Stanley Crouch, now does it? I don't like to think about how old Balliett is, nor do I like to think about what jazz criticism will be like without him. By the way: Balliett is not an exclusionary writer. You do not need a Hip Merit Badge to read and enjoy his work. He's a national treasure. Recognize his greatness while he's still here to enjoy it!

Whitney Balliett is one of my favorite jazz writers (along with Dan Morgenstern and Ira Gitler), and I've enjoyed reading his pieces in The New Yorker since the 1960s. In the introduction to this book Balliett says he chose the title COLLECTED WORKS because "I like its ring"; that's a bit unfortunate because it gives the wrong impression. These are not his "collected works" but rather, as he again says in the introduction, "a distillation of many of the reviews and critical pieces that I have written about jazz." If you saved most of the original articles as I did, you would have a fairly decent sized pile of pieces that are not included here; perhaps even worse, you would notice that many of the articles appear in the book in truncated form (perhaps that's where the "distillation" comes in). One of the reasons I bought the book was because from its title and size (almost 900 pages) I thought I could take the Collected part literally, and I'd be able to free up some file cabinet space by discarding the original magazine articles. No way. I know this is a personal issue (mainly), but buyers should be aware of what they're getting (or not getting) here.

That being said, what you do get is absolutely worth having. Balliett knows the music as well as anyone and describes what he hears clearly and directly. He writes about the entire spectrum of jazz, from the earliest years of the music up into the avant-garde. Besides being deeply appreciative of the jazz masters (Armstrong, Morton, Ellington, Basie, Parker, Rollins, Coleman, to name just a handful) he writes about hundreds of musicians, good, bad, indifferent (but mainly good) who made it onto the jazz scene. He is particularly fond of good drummers (being a drummer himself). Reading The New Yorker you could be almost assured of getting Balliett's perspective on important jazz happenings in (particularly) the NYC area every couple of weeks or so. It was a wonderful steady diet of superb jazz journalism and criticism. It's great to have what's been included between book covers now, and hopefully what's missing gets published in book form some day, too. I really could use that file space.

I grew up reading Whitney Balliett's pieces in The New Yorker and in anthologies. This book is the motherload--collecting a huge amount of his written jazz work in one place (excluding his wonderful profiles, which are available elsewhere). The work is an insightful and opinionated march through jazz history, written as the history unfolds. Since these acounts were written as players worked, aged and passed on, one gets a real sense of continuity and development in the music and in the people who played it. A must for any jazz fan.

This is my sixth copy of Ballietts" Collected Works : A Journal of Jazz 1954-2000. I love it that much. Have copies all over the house. Give it as gifts...lasts longer than a bottle of wine. When Balliett writes, you are there. In the club, at the concert, in the studio with the artists. You can hear the music...Miles, Monk, Mable, Bird, Billy, all the greats...and Balliett's not reluctant to write about the not-so greats. It's all there...46 years of JAZZ! The pictures he paints are the portraits of Americas' gift to us all. Buy the book and listen.

Whitney Balliett did not pull punches, he was very honest, direct, and courageous in his written reviews of jazz musicians and performances. Mr. Balliett had a rare ability to translate what he heard in the music into very descriptive prose, giving the reader a colorful image of the musicians, their surroundings, and how the music was being presented. His honest assessments of performances were grounded in his thorough knowledge of jazz, its history, and of the musicians' background influences. Whitney Balliett's Collected Works should be a must-read for anyone who loves jazz.

Whitney Balliett is a writing phenomonon. What he writes is straight from the bandstand, if you turned in a good performance as a band or a soloist he will say so; if it wasn't good he will say so too, without equivocation and believe me, he covered the music scene. This book is a collection of his articles for Thhe New Yorker supplemented by his independent wrtings and opinions. See if you can get it on Kindle. It is 900 pages and a little hard to handle. If you want to read of jazz as it happened get Balliett.

Whitney Balliett is one of the few extraordinary prose stylists of our age. The elegance and acuity of his sentences are practically miraculous. He's virtually without peer.

The man definitely has got style. His colorful articles on Jazz musicians can be considered literary works. Sometimes you feel his lack of musical background. But with such a charming style, who cares...