Customer Reviews

Jazz: The Essential Companion to Artists and Albums (Rough Guides)

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I enjoyed this book because of its widespread coverage of both American and international jazz musicians. It's an excellent musical resource which has a place in my music library alongside with such user-friendly guides as "World Music: The Rough Guide" and "The Brazilian Sound."

The essays are excellent and informative, but there is a noticeable emphasis on musicians from outside the U.S., occasionally to the short-shrifting, in my humble opinion, of some of the better known U.S. musicians. Also, if you're looking for a _comprehensive_ guide to recorded music, this is definitely not it. The authors select a few albums they feel are noteworthy and don't mention the rest.

Like all guides that intend or claim to be definitive references to their subject matter, this falls short to an extent, and will not please everyone. However, along with other companion books, this is a great reference guide to jazz artists and styles.

OK, this book is a good manual if you want to know something about special artists and some of their records, but it were just three musicians who wrote the whole book, and they just did not tell about what they didn't like (for example Miles Davis: they stop with "Jack Johnson", then say he had his midlife crisis in the 70's and returned with "a wonderful album" in about 1981 - nothing about "Dark Magus" and other masterworks from this era!).

Maybe American readers are not interested in European musicians, but I think it is just fair to give them a place in this book, too (like Dieter Seelow, who lives almost next door to me).

Get this book if you need an encyclopedia about jazz, although it is a bit unbalanced. A better one is "Das Jazzbuch" by Joachim Ernst Behrendt (?), but I didn't find it here because I could not spell his name and I don't know if there's an English translation.