Customer Reviews

Jazz on CD, The Penguin Guide to: Second Revised Edition (Reference)

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

If the story of jazz is best found in the music itself, this is, far and away, your best guide to CDs. IT is simply the best jazz review book available.

The authors have exceptionally good, eclectic tastes; I detected no particular biases here. Other reviewers have complained a little about the relative emphasis on English and European performers. I found that this improved the coverage of jazz, and did not feel that American performers were slighted. Besides, these performers are excellent, perhaps underrated in America, and often record alongside musicians from many countries!

The authors clearly explain their rating system, and there is a valuable emphasis on the sound quality of the recordings. Excellent notes on personnel and dates of recording: This is important because publishers seem to constantly repackage their jazz CDs, sometimes the only way to know what you've got is to compare personnel and dates.

Another strength here is the biographies of the performers. There's lots of detail, and, as in the reviews, the authors don't refrain from fully critiqueing the records. Unfortuantely, this new edition does not have the small section on compilation CDs (i.e., Special limited-time gatherings of great musicians, such as the All-Star Metronome Band. Perhaps these are no longer in print, or they are now listed under the principle player(s), at any rate, I preferred the prior method of listing these separately.)

I think the reviews are fair and insightful. Of course, you'll disagree with some of them, but this is really an excellent guide to jazz musicians and their output. Their choice of musicians is thorough and appropriate (scant attention is paid to "light" jazz/pop artists such as Kenny G., etc., favoring instead performers ranging from Armstrong and Basie, bebop and big band, to contemporary musicians like Metheny and Krall. The only question is whether you should wait for the next edition. I recommend buying every edition (if you can), new mixes, box sets, and re-done CDs are, perhaps unfortunately because of the confusion, coming out all of the time. But between this and the last edition (despite my one reservation above), this will map better onto what's available. Very highly recommended for the serious fan, and for beginners who want to learn a LOT more!

If you haven't bought one of these books, buy this one. If you own the 5th edition, however, save your money.

You have three primary choices for these "jazz guides": All Music Guide, MusicHound, and Penguin. AMG includes reviews of out-of-print CDs, and older LPs, which can be frustrating because you'll read glowing reviews of albums you won't be able to find. MusicHound is a compilation of reviews by different authors, so you can forget about any kind of consistency. Penguin is informative, contemporary, and consistent. It's your best choice.

This book features 1601 pages of CD reviews and artist biographies, not including the introduction and index. Whatever your level of knowledge, however long you've spent listening to jazz, you're sure to discover something new in this book. And that's a tremendous reward for Amazon's price.

On the other hand, as an update, this edition doesn't impress me. Significant artists like Mel Lewis and Carl Fontana still lack entries. Mick Goodrick, Christian McBride, and others have actually been removed. The artists suggest, in their introduction, that those noting omissions should get a life. Of course, no one's perfect. There are, however, both minor omissions and glaring omissions, and this edition still includes too many of the latter.

Jim McNeely, for example, is listed on page 1005, along with four of his CDs -- the most recent, from 1992. The authors ignore "The Power and the Glory" [Storyville, 2001] and "Play Bill Evans" [Stunt Records, 2002], which are forgivable omissions. I believe "In This Moment" [Stunt Records, 2003] was released too late to be included.

But also missing are McNeely's "Lickety Split" [New World Records, 1997], which was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1998; "Nice Work" [Dacapo Records, 2000], which was nominated for two Grammies in 2001; and "Group Therapy" [OmniTone, 2001], which was nominated for a Grammy in 2002. You'd think an artist nominated for four Grammies would receive a more complete listing in a book like this.

These are limited examples of a larger trend: this edition doesn't show enough improvement over its previous edition to be worth updating. If you don't own the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD yet, then my criticisms are nitpicks. It's a great investment for a reasonable price, and you should buy it. If you already own an older edition, however, I can't recommend you buy this. Spend your money buying a new CD, instead. Let's hope that 2005 will bring a 7th edition that will amaze us all, anew.

This really is an indispensable book for the jazz collector. The biggest advantage it has over the books referred to in some of the customer reviews is that it lists session information. If, like me, you like to wander into used record stores or Goodwills, you'll appreciate the listings of personnel and recording dates that you can find in this book.

The reviews are well written and very witty. The writers treat their subject seriously but not stodgily and, in some instances, their geographic distance allows them a measure of independence from US opinions of certain artists. Their treatment of two musicians in particular, Kenton and Brubeck, are unexpectedly fair, acknowledging their weakness, while pointing out what is interesting and valuable about their best music.

As to the attention given to European and avant-garde jazz: Thank God. American critics and fans alike seem to think that be-bop and hard bop are the only kinds of jazz worth considering. While one might quibble with some of Cook's and Morton's opinions-I tend to bypass most fusion albums-seasoned jazz collectors will be able to figure out what they're getting into from the accurate descriptions contained here. If you buy a Sam Rivers disc expecting something like Ben Webster, you can't say you weren't forewarned by these guys.

I do wonder why some readily available discs were not included. Gerry Mulligan's Pacific Jazz stuff is all still in print and isn't reviewed here (although it is included in previous editions).

My only complaint is that the small print, running across a fairly wide page, is a little tough for those of us who are bi-focaled. Otherwise, I hope to see this book in many editions to come.

Despite the bland title of this book it is much more than a quick star-rating guide to recorded jazz; the accompanying texts are often quite detailed essays that give biographical & historical context for the recordings, besides often detailed commentary on the recordings themselves. Personnel listings are another important & useful feature. The British authors manage to combine catholic tastes with sharp & often opinionated commentary. They've thought hard about the music: it's often illuminating to compare the versions of entries between editions (for instance, their increased skepticism about the self-consciousness of the music of Geri Allen and Don Byron between this edition and the last two; or their rethinks about Coltrane's _Ascension_ or the later recordings of Evan Parker). The European perspective makes this an unusually unprejudiced guide, one reason why it can be recommended more than most published histories of jazz or guidebooks to a neophyte: free-jazz and fusion musicians are dealt with seriously & respectfully, as are Wynton Marsalis & other neotraditionalists. Though I note that a few reviewers on this page dislike the book's non-American perspective, I should think it a salutary reminder that jazz has many traditions & innovators, & that its influence now stretches over the world.

There are some small flaws. The most irritating is the occasional ambiguity created by the "As above." entry for personnel listings (& occasionally one of these entries is incorrect as the preceding entry has changed from the previous edition). There's the odd inconsistency in the ratings too (as when a four-star disc is mostly criticized in the text below, or a low-starred disc is praised highly in the text), but nothing major. It's a small pity that compilations are excluded, which means that fine discs like _The Birth of the Third Stream_ (e.g.) don't get a look-in.

Above all, this book is a demonstration of how jazz is not simply a canon of a select few geniuses, but is & has always been a lively meeting-place of many different players & traditions & talents, who all, in a big or smaller way, contribute something to the pot. A reader will come away from this book with a greater understanding of figures like Coltrane, Ellington, Parker, Coleman, &c., precisely because he or she will have a fuller sense of the whole scene--having met figures like Hill, Bley, Haig, Nichols, Konitz, Mitchell, Marsh, Giuffre, Mosca, Larry Young, Rivers, Hemphill, Lake, etc.

The Penguin Guide is a well-written, informative survey of the field. It's the only jazz review omnibus I return to for pleasure, rather than for reference.

While this tome is more opinionated than competing reviews, it's good to have a consistent frame of reference. You learn what the authors like and dislike, and can apply that to your own preferences. The essays that accompany the ratings avoid the redundancies found in the All Music Guide, and do a better job of placing the recording in the context of an artist's career.

Because the authors are English, however, much of the discographical data isn't very useful for American consumers. Also, the representation of American labels can be understated. For example, there's a lot more Blue Note CDs in print between the U.S. and Japan than in Europe, leaving some notable gaps in some artists' listings. Fans of other American labels and artists might find similar holes in the discography.

The flip side of its European focus is that you get reviews of artists and releases usually ignored by American reviewers. And the English/European jazz canon is different than the American version, making the Penguin Guide something more than the Revised Standard Version of the received wisdom you'd find in an American omnibus.

I wish the Penguin Guide would follow the example of the All Music Guide and simply review the important albums, deleted or not. Eventually those Bobby Hutcherson titles (to choose some personal favorites) will return to print, here in the U.S.A. or more likely in Japan, and when they do, you won't be able to consult the Penguin Guide unless you wait for the biannual update, by which time the album may be out of print again.

The new Penguin Jazz Guide is an indispensable as its predecessors, but it is not without its faults. I have owned every edition since 1992 - the latest is the 7th. The fact that I keep buying it indicates my appreciation of this thorough work.

Personally I find many reviews witty, but professional. The Guide's faults are few, but they seem to persist over subsequent editions.
* Coverage is spotty. As a Dutch-speaking South African-Australian living in Canada, I really do want to see coverage of jazz world-wide. In the past I have complained about the scant coverage of the Southern Hemisphere (Australia and South Africa). But even coverage of European jazz is incomplete. Recently I saw the Dutch band "Bik Bent Braam" and the Belgian band "Octurn" on tour through the Canadian summer jazz festivals. Both bands have several CDs in print and available through various Amazon branches. However, neither band made it into the Guide. What is the reason for this censorship?
* Other European artist listings are out of date. For example, (Swedish) Lars Gullen's 2002 CD "First Walk" did not make it to this 2005 edition book yet, but older recordings are there. For British (South African) artists such as the Blue Notes and Brotherhood of Breath, discontinued recordings are still shown, but the several recent releases are missing. The Dedication Orchestra and Chris McGreggor have totally disappeared from previous volumes. An inconsistency? An oversight?
* I guess the book is growing, and so the publishers seem to be limiting space more and more. With the 7th edition, the index has disappeared! We ask for a CD-Rom to cross-reference musicians, and they respond by cutting the only index we have! Ouch!
* LPs were covered in the 1st edition, but are no longer covered. Titles deleted by CD publishers are excluded from new editions. Deleted titles should at least be listed with a rating, even if the review is cut, imho. Better yet. Please give us a "Volume 2" covering all the deleted albums from the previous editions, and with lesser known artists on fringe labels! You can add the requested cross-referencing CD-Rom to this Volume 2. And the old index.
* European catalogue numbers have been provided, but not the US equivalents. [...] Often there are equivalent editions of CDs available in various countries. Or CDs with very similar titles on different labels.
* The amount of typos is probably acceptable for a book of this size, but it is unfortunate that the same errors keep appearing in subsequent editions. A good overall edit is still required for the next edition (eg. listing the wrong tracks with the wrong album title). Many album reviews have not been updated since the 1st edition.

With the 7th edition, the authors have introduced a "Core Collection" list. I suggest that it will be impossible for anyone to collect this entire list. It is too difficult, too expensive - and too late in the game. A quick count came up with more than 250 CDs (counting sets). Unfortunately every time the Guide is published, many CDs have already been deleted by the record companies - of course not the authors' fault. If you want to collect the core list, I suggest you stick with your favourite artists.

On the other hand, I have collected all the crown (= five stars) albums since the first edition, and my collection is now complete. It is much easier to spread a collection out over time, as there are only a handful of new editions to the crown CD list with every new edition of the Guide. Often still hard to find. For example, "New Orleans Rhythm Kings 1922-1925 The complete set" from the 7th edition is near impossible to find right now.

In summary, my knowledge of Jazz has definitely increased a lot (across all styles) over the last 12 years, and my Jazz CD collection has improved from mediocre to excellent. But for all the above reasons I am still giving the Guide only 4 stars. Let us now hope for a refreshed 8th edition. I know the authors will have fun compiling it. I am certainly looking forward to reading BOTH volumes of it :-).

First of all, if you do not own such a jazz guide and want one, this is the only one to consider. The Rough Guide, AMG, etc. are merely mediocre compared to this massive and impressive tome. In fact, even if you're not interested in a guide per se, this book is invaluable if you are a jazz fan and would like some extensive and comprehensive collection of jazz musicians and their biographical and artistic development - that's what the Penguin truly is. Cook and Morton are learned and perceptive critics, better and more comprehensive in every respect than those in other guides. While others, including many of the public reviewers here, would dispute matters of taste, those are essentially non-critical and irrelevant issues. We all have our favorites, as do Cook and Morton, but the valuable service they provide is true criticism, especially in firmly placing each musicians discography within the context of his/her peers and also his/her own artistic style and goals. They also have a better perspective on European jazz than most Americans do, and while they may have some surprising enthusiams for certain players, they are always sincere and never pretentious. And they write much better than the others in this field. The Guide is more than just a collection of reviews, it's a discussion of myriad jazz artists and their musical histories as conveyed through recordings.

That being said, this new edition brings out some inevitable drop-offs from the previous one, and there's not much that can be done about it. It's a question of space. There are more CDs covered, more pages added, and the book itself is massive. What this has meant is a reorganization of the previous content - many sections have been pared down, paraphrasing more extensive reviews. To me, this is a sad loss, because one of the pleasures of this book is to pull it off the shelf, flip to a random section and really learn about a musician, not just a bunch of records. The extensive and wonderful sections on Coltrane, Parker, Davis and others are still here, and each musician now has a brief biographical paragraph preceeding the actual reviews, but a lot of information has been cut for most of the non-godlike figures, and that is a sad loss, no matter how understandable it is.

This the best guide to jazz available. The authors are intelligent, witty and biased - just the way they should be. I have all editions except the first one, so I obviously like their book. Nevertheless, I want to focus on the worst aspects of this remarkable piece of jazz scholarship.

1) Cook & Morton use a star-system to evaluate the CDs. Unfortunately, the ratings are inflationary. A mainstream record usually gets at least three (i.e. good) stars. This makes it useless to compare recordings by different artists; in other words, the ratings can be used only when one wants to know what might be the best recordings by a particular artist. Are jazz records really always good or very good? Of course not. It is simply absurd to read e.g. pages devoted to Chet Baker in the fifth edition: 76 records and only 8 of them is rated worse than 3 stars! Perhaps the authors, after all, have not had enough time to listen this vast amount of music?

2) Cook & Morton are very fond of both avantgarde jazz (especially european) and classic jazz of the 1920s. No problem with that. But they really should include more jazz fusion. I don't mean easy-listening instrumental pop, but serious jazz, like Allan Holdsworth. It seems to me that if an artist has flirted with rock music he will not be included even if he starts to make mainstream jazz. For instance, why isn't Bill Bruford included? The Earthworks records, not to mention the album with Eddie Gomez and Ralph Towner, have not found favour with Cook & Morton - probably because "Bill is not a jazz drummer". Is this just a coincidence or spiteful discrimination, I cannot tell.

3) The latest edition (5th) has too many errors. Of course there are always minor errors in a book this size. I give two examples. Coltrane's Ballads album hasn't got "I fall in love too easily" in it. Is the Navarro-Parker collaboration (Bird and Fats - Live at Birdland) worth 3 (cf. Navarro's entry) or 4 stars (cf. Parker's entry) and what actually is the quality of Navarro's playing on this record? More serious trouble has risen when the aurhors have edited their text more than once in order to update the entries. Sometimes they have failed and the text has thus become incoherent.

But never mind my complaints. This is a great book!

It's a tough job, sitting around listening to all the new jazz for Penguin, but someone's got to do it, and Cook & Morton have done it for the 5th time! The giant new edition has dropped, and it's a beauty, with a cool blue cover and over 1600 two-column pages of reviews. Some talk as if this book had any competition -- get real! That would be AMG, and it's online. This is THE ONE! A category of gripers seems to be the mainstream bop crowd, who want to stop the clock before 1959, but Cook & Morton simply do not leave out any serious jazz, which of course includes bop. Yes, they include the avant-garde, but if you don't like it, then don't read those reviews! Their approach is catholic -- inclusive. One type of "jazz fan" definitely won't like this guide, and that is people who think Kenny G plays jazz. Cook & Morton mince no words in their introduction:

"We have decided again to dismiss many records which amount to little more than easy-listening, instrumental or vocal music with only the vaguest of jazz connotations. The radio format in America known as "smooth jazz" includes a great deal of this kind of thing."

So it comes down to recommendations for 2 groups, those new to Cook & Morton, and those who already have an earlier edition:

1) If you haven't yet encountered Cook & Morton, and you either are or are becoming a serious jazz fan, then you must have this book -- it's that simple. You will be amazed at what you don't know, and will soon learn!

2) If you already have an earlier edition, it's chancier whether you "need" the new 5th or not. My first edition of C&M was the Third (purple, 1996). The Fourth (orange, 1999) just wasn't the same -- as many others have noted, some sort of update would be just the ticket when you've already been through most of the older releases. If you keep up with new releases by reading such publications as Down Beat (mainstream), Cadence, Coda, Signal to Noise or The Wire (all of which emphasize the avant-garde), then you are likely to find that the additions to the latest C&M are very patchy compared to what you already know.

One last word for fellow enthusiasts of the avant-garde, who may just discovering it via/despite Ken Burns -- Cook & Morton is a bible of sorts, but here are three more indispensable introductions: A) "Free Jazz" by Jost, B) "The Freedom Principle" by Litweiler, and C) "As Serious As Your Life" by Wilmer. All three have recently been reprinted -- go for it!

The ideal reviewer should share your taste!

There has been a tidal wave of books rating jazz and jazz recordings in recent years. Most of them are idiocyncratic or have dreadfully misguided taste. The is the lone gem! Penguin is the only reliable guide of them all.

Yes, I have minor quibbles, there is a universe of difference between the stellar performances rated four stars and the mediocre ones rated three. I'd like to see a five star system. I'd like to see more 1 star and 2 star ratings for lesser music. Yes, ultimately reviewers, including myself, end up rating a musician's music against his other music, not other people, so a four star rating of music by, say, Miles Davis or Stan Getz is NOT the equivalent of a four star rating by, say, Cannonball Adderly or Nat Cole (no letters, please!).Yes, they gush too much over some mediocre late Miles Davis.

But they are the most accurate and I find myself agreeing more than disagreeing. And they are far and away better predictors of how I would like music I haven't heard, and what to buy first, than any other guide. So, for me, if I can't review it myself, at this point in time, Penguin is the best available!

Also, Penguin is not as "Americo-centric" as other guides. It's worth the cost of admission for lesser known European artists like Bobo Stenson.