Customer Reviews

The History of Jazz

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Anyone purportedly writing a "History of Jazz" faces a daunting task: A complex history of interwoven musical strands, the linkages and evolutions (sometimes skipping a generation), the geographic spread to Europe and elsewhere, the eventual fragmentation of jazz into diverse sounds and approaches, and the opinions of knowledgeable, rabid fans.

Ted Giola succeeds magnificently: This is the best single-volume history of jazz I've seen. While not without some minor flaws (see below), this is a comprehensive, generally very well written, and intriguing story of the genesis and development of jazz. It is a compelling story, and Giola writes without mythologizing jazz, or constantly needing to remind us that this is, indeed, art. The giants of jazz-- Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Holiday, etc. are critiqued rather than lionized.

Giola proceeds through the now familiar African, American, African-American, and European roots of jazz that emanated first from New Orleans. He traces its developmental routes through Chicago and New York, the Armstrong solo evolution, and the diverse "territory bands" such as those of Bennie Moten and Count Basie.

Fortunately, Giola does not limit himself to a strictly chronological narrative. He interrupts the timeline with revealing excursions into topics such as the development of instrumental styles (e.g., piano, trumpet), and jumps ahead to show the impact of early influences on later styles (e.g., Lester Young and bebop). He also pays attention to cultural, technological, and economic context, without letting these subtexts blare over the music. Giola knows music from the "inside" as well as the outside, and his discussions of jazz technique and harmonic and rhythmic innovations are detailed and precise. His deconstruction of various solos and styles is illuminating: Charlie Parker's "Indiana" is a version "where almost every bar features one or more altered tones-an augmented fifth, a major seventh played against a minor chord, a flatted ninth leading to a sharpened ninth...a textbook example of how bop harmonic thinking revolutionized the flow of the melodic line in jazz." Yet Giola is also astute in directing our attention to the "core of simplicity" ...the "monophonic melody statements" in bop.

Giola's critiques of various musicians are generally fair and accurate, and he discusses the famous as well as the overlooked. Every jazz fan, however, will probably find some favorite musician given insufficient coverage, or will disagree with a Giola critique. There's no mention of Carmen McCrae, about half a page on Sarah Vaughan, very little mention of European jazz, not much discussion of Miles Davis' or Basie's later work ("The Atomic Mr. Basie," for example). For my tastes, there is not enough on Mingus' sidemen (other than Eric Dolphy and Rahsaan Roland Kirk) and he describes the Mingus Town Hall Concert as a fiasco. (Organizationally it was a disaster, but musically it succeeded.) Giola's statement that "Mingus was the closest jazz has come to having its own Ezra Pound," is baffling. To a large degree, however, these are editorial (the book is only 395 pages long), as well as critical decisions. Not everyone would agree, as I do, with Giola's dismissive statement that Kenny G. "sold over $20 million of emaciated pseudo-jazz to a devoted audience. A critic cannot and should not please everyone.

Giola commands our respect because of his thorough knowledge of jazz and its web-like variations and influences. He knows his material well, whether it's the origins of jazz or the "Third Stream" and "Free Jazz" movements of relatively recent years. I recommend this book very highly to both musician and non-musician alike, jazz aficionado and novice. You may read the book as an introduction to jazz, or to achieve a greater synthesis of what you already know. It may also serve as a springboard to more narrowly focused jazz writing, such as Rosenthal's "Hard Bop" or Lees' "Meet Me at Jim and Andy's." There is a general index, an index of songs and albums, 15 pages on recommended listening, eight black and white photos, some notes on sources, as well as suggestions for further reading. This book, and perhaps a copy of the "Penguin Guide to Jazz," could easily serve as the core of a jazz lover's bookshelf.

I have a reasonable library of jazz books (including The Horn by JC Holmes, American Musicians by Whitney Balliett, Reading Jazz by Gottlieb, etc, etc) but my top five are HEAR ME TALKIN' TO YA by Hentoff and Shapiro; FOUR LIVES IN THE BEBOP BUSINESS by A.B. Spellman; STRAIGHT LIFE by Art and Laurie Pepper; THE STORY OF JAZZ by Marshall Stearns; and AS SERIOUS AS YOUR LIFE by Val Wilmer. What do I want in a jazz book? I want information, authenticity, entertainment; and decent writing. Now I have to move Mr Stearns over to make way for Mr Gioia and his HISTORY OF JAZZ for I believe it deserves to be in that exalted company.

Is there any other book that is as true as this book, when recalling the intricate history of jazz? If there is, it has escaped my eyes and i invite the opurtunity to read it. Ted Gioia is not only articulate in his representation of jazz history, but his facts are documented well above reproach. He even includes a suggested listening section at the back of the book. Incredible book! I am using it as an aid in teaching my highschool class the history of jazz. This book is a necessary investment for any jazz afficianado.

The back cover of this Oxford paperback claims that the book is suitable as an introduction to jazz or as an authoritative reference. I must admit that I am neither a jazz officianado nor a complete novice to the world of swing, bebop and fusion, making me incapable of confirming the cover's claims. However, for me, this book filled in the gaps quite nicely.

Most of my knowledge of jazz has come from the radio. The big names keep popping up but lesser known lights get little air time and I am at the whim of the dj's tastes. "The History of Jazz" covers them all, starting at the very beginning - drum circle dances in pre-abolition New Orleans. It then discusses the roots of early dixie land jazz (ragtime, Joplin, and the blues) and then describes the movement of jazz from New Orleans to Chicago and New York. It intersperses lively anecdotes about the fathers of jazz -Jelly Roll Morton was a procurer (pimp?) early on- with music theory and analysis. Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong and Morton all have a section devoted to them. A chapter on the jazz age pays special attention to Armstrong's Hot Five and subsequent career. Bix Beiderbecke's biography is given in detail along with notes on many other famous players of his day. A chapter is devoted to Harlem, stride piano, Waller, Ellington and the advent of the big bands, ending with a description of society and music at the Cotton Club. The Swing era gets a chapter to itself with even more in-depth treatment of big bands and those who led them (Goodman, the Dorsey's etc.). Kansas City style jazz, and european jazz traditions (Django Reinhardt) are also covered. The details of Billie Holiday's life, although well known, make for a sad story.

The second half of the book, which covers modern jazz, the fragmentation of jazz styles and recent jazz developments, is much less coherent than the first. The section on bebop with its lengthy discussion of the life and influence of Bird and Gillespie continues to be readable and thorough. However, as the author approaches the present day, the writing, like the jazz, seems to fragment. This is not to say that it isn't enjoyable reading, just that the sheer number of names and styles begins to pull the book in too many directions. California jazz, trad jazz, cool jazz, hard bop, post-bop and soul, free jazz, post-modern jazz and the various fusion forms leave the reader gasping for air. It seems clear to me that I will need to go out and listen to a lot of things to round out my education. Fortunately the book is well supplied with notes, further readings and, best of all a recommended listening list.

While I might not have understood everything the author had to say about the subtleties of the music, this book has made me a much keener fan of jazz. It has created in me the desire to seek out new and different forms of the music and to listen more carefully to the old stuff. For this, I gladly give it five stars.

I greatly enjoyed this book. Ted Gioia gives us a readable and fairly comprehensible single-volume overview of the rich and varied history of Jazz. Given that Jazz means different things to different listeners, trying to sum up in a single (and not overly thick) volume the varied facets and manifestations is a difficult task, but for the most part, I think Gioia succeeds.

The first half of the book, which deals with Jazz through the Swing era, is by far the more informative and detailed. Listeners whose main exposure to jazz has been through the neoboppers and fusion artists of the last three decades will learn a great deal about artists everyone should be investigating and appreciating. Detailed sections on the early jazz pioneers and Dixieland virtuosos are informative and engaging.

If I were to find a fault with this book, it is with the second half, which deals with Modern Jazz, beginning with bebop. I have also read the NYT review, and I agree with that reviewer, who believes that certain important figures are given short shrift. For example, Gioia cites Joe Pass' _Virtuoso_ album as one of the six greatest Jazz guitar albums of all time - but he never lists the others, and I recall no mention at all of greats such as Herb Ellis or Barney Kessel. Additionally, the last three decades are largely (in my opinion) glossed over. While it may or may not be true that no great revolutions on the scale of Bop or Free Jazz have taken place, surely the Joe Lovanos, Woody Shaws, and David Murrays of the world deserve a better and more detailed treatment.

This is a first-rate history. Gioia writes with authority, but never distances the reader. Like an Ellingtonian suite, he structures the history of jazz in discernible movements and counter-movements that each evolve organically from their predecessors, while avoiding a mere chronology. Gioia gracefully executes the narrative in a tone that never exaggerates unnecessarily, and always judiciously considers and evaluates the place of each figure, style, instrument, movement, band, label and of course, important recordings and their influence. Gioia inevitably has his preferences, but he is far from prejudiced. This makes him a valuable commentator that should please fans and artists alike. Gioia's book is a major work which will become a standard account of the history of jazz and should be on everybody's reading list.

Ted Gioia, for me, managed to walk the fine line between hyperbole and inauthentic iconoclasm, purple prose and impotent erudition, racist apologia and racial pandering (on both/all sides), and the sleeping pill effect of both blanket chronological overview and meticulous historical data, regardless of perspective to give us a full meal and gift of a history of jazz that reads with the ease and enjoyment of a novel. I would have loved if he added another hundred pages to it all, allowing him to speak more about three topics in particular: 1) the socio-political implications of the culture of drugs among the musicians, 2) the transformation of jazz's link with debauchery through be-bop to that of spirituality and freedom in the American mind, epitomized via Coltrane in the 60's, and 3) the musical/theatrical/Griot/Delphic roles of the jazz singer in perpetuating the music and magic of the art form, from Armstrong to Bobby McFerrin. But with the kind of work Gioia has given us with this, I'll just have to shut up and write my own, and hope it holds up.

I highly recommend this book if you are a musician of any style (I am a jazz and opera singer). If you know someone who loves jazz, or has even a passing interest in its icons (the even handedness with which he explains Wynton alone makes the book worth having), the book is a great gift- you don't need a Doctorate in Music theory or semiotics to enjoy it. And if you are a jazz musician, you should own it. Period.

A fine book; a fine contribution.

Readers looking for a history of jazz who already know the history might find this book impressive in what it covers. Readers looking for a guide to the history of jazz and jazz styles will, I think, be disappointed. At its best, it covers (not completely, of course) the personnel, songs, and albums of the jazz world from its prehistory to the 1990s, and at its worst it does the same. There is a lot here, looking at it from one viewpoint, and nowhere near enough, looking at it from another. Gioia tried to cram and arrange an encyclopedia's worth of jazz facts into a linear history, and often what he ends up offering is not much more than a list of names and titles and dates, as if the history of jazz were reducible to a collection of liner notes. It isn't quite that bad. He does offer extended discussions on some artists, three examples being Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Cecil Taylor. Such mini-biographies interspersed throughout the chapters save the book from full-stop tedium.

Readers already familiar (through hearing the music) with the myriad variations and changes in jazz over its history will be pleased, I suppose, to find descriptions of the music and its styles written in that strange idiom of music criticism which means almost nothing unless you already know what is being described. At one point Gioia sounds almost like H. P. Lovecraft as he describes Albert Ayler's "darting phrases, hieroglyphics of sound representing some hitherto unknown sublunar mode; tones Adolphe Sax never dreamed of, and Selmer never sanctioned." (353)

This is a fascinating book. Gioia has done what appears to me to be a thorough, detailed, highly readable documentation of a form of music that has dominated American culture for the last near-100 years. I come at it as a newbie, even though I've lived through more than half of it. I just wasn't aware. This has been a valuable learning experience for me.

This is a great book and deserves 5 stars.
Something I didn't see mentioned is how recording technology affected Jazz.
It seems to me that it affected Jazz a great deal. When electrical recordings becames available instead of acoustical recordings, the bass replaced the tuba among other changes as far as I know. Also, vinyl records went from 78 to 45 to 33 rpm. This had a great impact as well. Sure, Bean was overpowering with his 3 minute solos in the 30's but then Coltrane went on with much longer solos that wouldn't have fit on 1 side of a 45 rpm. Does anybody else but I think that maybe hard bop for example wouldn't have taken off if the longer solos couldn't have been recorded?

This is my only suggestion for the 2nd edition! Aside from that, this book is quite remarkable. I can't think of how the author stitched all the pieces together (unless he wrote it in 1 stride!). It seemed quite seamless.