Customer Reviews

Jazz

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

 

 

Starting with the iconic photo of Dexter Gordon on the dust jacket through to the last page, this book is an outstanding presentation of the history and musicology of America's classical music, jazz. It is a book that should be useful to the die-hard jazz fan, the jazz novice and everyone in between.

The book begins with a chapter on the basic elements of music, followed by a chapter covering the basics of jazz styles and improvisation. This introduction is followed by 17 chapters covering the history of the music, from its roots in spirituals, the blues, and ragtime up to the jazz (what there is of it) of today. There is also a useful glossary and a short section on record collection and jazz films.

Many books on jazz history are available, some covering the entire century-plus of the music, and others concentrating on certain periods. There are also a few books on jazz musicology, most notably Mark C. Gridley's outstanding "Jazz Styles". But Gridley pointedly avoids any discussion of the personalities and the non-musical activities of the musicians, as though they created their music in a vacuum. This leads to such oddities as a section on Bud Powell, for example, in which Gridley notes that Powell was "only sporadically active during most of his career", without explaining that Powell was a diagnosed schizophrenic who suffered not only from the disease, but also the horrific "treatments" of the day. Not for "Jazz" authors Giddins and DeVeaux is this `hands off the personal lives' approach. They include brief biographies of the most important musicians, warts (of which there are many) and all. This is essential, in my view, to understanding the music that these men (and a very few women) created.

But this book also contains sufficient discussion of the technical aspects of the music, if not employing quite the music school language of Gridley's book, which is fine with this non-musician fan, and probably for most readers. And while the authors must have their preferences, one will not find them imposed on the reader, as is common in some books. While I appreciate and use such books as the "Penguin Guide", I find Cook's and Morton's sometimes quirky and avant-garde taste not always to my liking.

An interesting feature of the book is a bar-by-bar (almost) account of some of the most important performances in jazz history. In order for this feature to be useful one must, of course, have the recordings to listen to while reading the discussions. Like many jazz fans and collectors, I have most of the performances in my record collection, but for those who don't, the authors provide a 4-CD set that goes along with the book, though at the hefty price of $60 on Amazon. This would be essential for the serious jazz novice without access to a jazz record collection; for jazz-o-files, it would be useful and convenient, but perhaps not worth the additional cost. I'm still trying to decide if it's worthwhile searching my collection for each of the correct tracks, or paying up for the CD set.

If there is any complaint that I could about this excellent book, and it is a minor one, is its the lack of discussion of the jazz scenes today outside the USA, where jazz continues to be vital a musical culture, while it atrophies here in its home country. The UK, and to a lesser extent the rest of Europe, along with Australia and even parts of Latin America are where jazz is prospering in the 21st century.

The book arrived looking a little too much like homework. But by the second chapter - its worth getting the collection of CDs that baby sit this book even if you have a lot of the recordings separately, especially useful on MP3 - it was soon obvious that the authors must have been at pains to keep this to one volume. And by the third chapter I wished there were several more volumes and much more extensive analysis of the musicians included and those not mentioned.
Perhaps the greatest delight is hearing coherent and structured synopses of many things you pick up incoherently over years of listening. There's not much of the subjective in this tome which, since the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, serves as a serious but friendly overview of this great but undervalued pillar of American and world culture. More like this please...

I gave this book to my son, who is a professional jazz guitarist, for Christmas. He really appreciated it, not only for the quality of the illustrations and the thoroughness of the text, but the fact that it included bar charts and additional information that he, as a musician, really valued. I, a non-musician, thoroughly enjoyed learning more about the subject and now am listening to musicians and forms of jazz I did not understand before. It has enhanced both my enjoyment and my appreciation of jazz.

Great read for casual jazz fans and scholars alike. Describes the history of jazz, the music theory behind it, and the major figures involved. Also includes a glossary at the end and 101 discs to start out your best jazz collection. My two favorite parts: 1) commentary on individual tracks, with descriptions of what's going on at each moment in the song; 2) the phrase, "There is much not to like about smooth jazz - like everything."

I bought and read this book cover to cover for a Jazz History college class, and it was an excellent accompaniment to lecture. Great overview of a great genre, along with artfully selected listen-along tracks on the 4-CD listening companion. I would recommend this book to anybody interested in teaching, studying, or investigating Jazz history.

However, I have one qualm. I am inspired to write this review not to further solidify the great content reviews, but to address the binding of the book itself. I have never used such a poorly bound book, there are probably 30 pages in my text that have ripped out just from turning the page. Incredibly infuriating as I would love to keep this text after I am done with it, but if it's missing half the pages, what's the point? Hopefully this is either a) a fluke, or b) a problem that will be fixed in the next edition, maybe through a new printer.

Over all, great book, just be wary because now I feel mine is close to ruin because of this flaw.

Many followers of this music have two lists--the "responsible" one of received wisdom concerning the evolution and essence of this challenging but ceaselessly rewarding art form and, second, a private "hall of fame" reserved for personal favorites. Giddins adheres to the first list, the party line, which is what makes the book suitable as a textbook on the subject for the reader, whether a student in a college class, a curious novitiate, or a veteran musician who has never taken the time to get the "big picture." Many musicians in this latter group were offended by the Ken Burns' jazz series on PBS, even directing their displeasure toward Wynton Marsalis for brainwashing the ambitious, talented filmmaker (whose film, above all, demonstrated that this music actually CAN be learned, understood, appreciated by a non-musician like its "A" student director). But Wynton was taking his cues from the likes of Giddins along with a legacy of jazz historians and writers too numerous to mention--Stearns, Ulanov, Hentoff, Williams, Berendt, Hodeir, Gridley (to name a few). This same cadre of musician-dissenters will find litle consolation in the present volume, which consigns Stan Kenton to 2-3 mentions (his low profile in these jazz histories--more than any other musician's--seems to irritate the non-canonical musician-"experts").

But at a time in human history when the sense of the past is being digitalized, disseminated, dispersed, atomized, and disintegrated as at no other time, what is needed, above all else, is some sense of coherence, continuity, and responsible prioritizing. Editing for a jazz webzine, not to mention observing the present-day participants in this music, will soon reveal that what was once taken for granted--namely, that jazz is an African-American art form--is now either considered irrelevant or, worse, politically incorrect. But without a past, without a progenitor, without a lineage there is no art form--simply a miscellaneous collection of undeniably talented, creative artists producing original music that, since it fits in no tradition or cultural timestream, will expend its energies coincidentally with the lives of the assorted performers.

That's why writers and volumes such as Giddins' do us all, not to mention the music, a favor. It well may be that jazz today has its greatest acceptance among whites in Norway, Finland, Canada, Russia, Israel as well as listeners in Asia, but that latter-day universality cannot alter the origins of the music, anymore than Kurosawa's version of "King Lear" can replace Shakespeare's. It boggles the mind that musicians are so ignorant of the importance of a "canon" to the academization and study of literature or of French "auteur theory" to the relatively recent (since the 1970s) academic courses offered in film history, aesthetics, appreciation. Without an organizing principle, without a widely accepted tradition, without emphasis not merely on the performance of the music but on receptionist aesthetics, jazz is a music that's thrown to the winds, outside the bunkers of institutional protectionism, subject to the whims of the marketplace. It has had its time as the individualist's counter-cultural expression; now that position can be occupied by the rappers; jazz and its most representative geniuses may instead occupy a more central position in the realm of the arts that, providing they are understood (I only wish there were as many individuals capable of reading poetry as there are poets!), comprise the examined life that enriches the experience of human beings in general and of Americans in particular.

As for that personal list, after a lifetime of listening to this music some of us find ourselves spending more time with Hank Mobley and Sonny Stitt than with Bird and Trane, with late Bill Evans than the early trio with Scott LaFaro, with the 1970s Jazz Messenger recordings than those Blakey made in the '60s and '80s. And along the way we have little epiphanies about the enormous importance of Norman Granz, who preserved the language of Diz and Bird, Ella and Pops, as opposed to other labels that perennially went for the hook, the hit, and the buck. And we remain grateful as never before that "Kind of Blue" came out on Columbia, assuring the sonic depth and resonance that, 50 years later, would still accommodate an ever-expanding throng of listeners, or we thank the muses that Helen Keane would see to it that the musician with the most extraordinary touch perhaps in recorded jazz piano history (the equivalent of classical music's Michaelangeli) would not be homogenized to the point of being indistinguishable from Horace Silver. All of these stories need to be told, along with the lives of the musicians whose personal "voices" many of us respond to more than the mechanical structures analyzed by this otherwise fine and accessible study. But first a curiosity has to be planted. Then the other audience will come to go over the crop, hand selecting its most prized fruits. (Were it not for French theory, it's entirely possible that "Citizen Kane" would be a forgotten, even non-existent film (more Hollywood films have perished than have been preserved.) Books like "Jazz" ensure that the life of Louis' "West End Blues" or "Hawk's "Body and Soul" or Bird's "Embraceable You" endure for longer than any single individual's lifetime.

I was excited when I saw the title of the book "Jazz"....
Upon reading I was disappointed in that it covered all the same territories that many other books about Jazz have covered...
Reading some of the reviews here I have to agree with others when they stated the omissions of very important figures though lesser known in the main stream. Since the names Barry Miles and Terry Silverlight were brought up I will also use them as a prime example of two pioneers of the Jazz/fusion movement who should absolutely be included! We know of Chick Corea , John McLaughlin , Tony Williams & Miles but it would be very refreshing to read a more in depth view of this genre and the lesser known names but equally as talented musicians who helped make Jazz and all its subcategories worth listening to and reading about!

My name is Richard Stein. I am a former Jazz nightclub owner ("Richard's Lounge" 1972 to 1980). I have included below the names of some musicians that performed there numerous times. They appear in no particular order. I provide them with the hope that my response to the book "Jazz," sold in Amazon, is understood as being offered by someone who has devoted his life to the art form and continues to do so out of his love for musicians that place their love for the music ahead of the financial rewards that it often does not produce.

Elvin Jones, Frank Foster, Kenny Barron, David Liebman, Richie Birach, Jeff Williams, Frank Tusa, Vic Juris, Barry Miles, Terry Silverlight, Betty Carter, Stan Getz, Al Di Meola, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Morgana King, Dakota Staton, Lee Konitz, Cecil McBee, Philly Joe Jones, Arnie Lawrence, Chico Hamilton, Jack DeJonette, Joe Henderson, Paul Chambers, Billy Higgins, and the list goes on. ................The point is, it would be my hope that the reader of this review respects the list and perhaps the values of a jazz nightclub owner from his historical viewpoint(s)..............there has been a serious omission on the roots of the modern jazz beginnings of " Jazz Fusion"......It has been my personal experience of having Barry Miles and Terry Silverlight perform at the above mentioned nightclub in the very early 70's. They had already settled into that approach; had started its development; and was copied by many other musicians. THAT IS FACT!....... To omit them from the book " Jazz " gives me thought as to the credibility of its author in researching and presenting his facts.

I continue to applaud musicians that sacrifice through their love of music, with a fervent wish that authors do their research in the proper spirit and with the sensitivities, respecting the facts , and present their findings with truthful accuracy.

I received this book as a gift from one of my children since they know I am a jazz fan. I was very disappointed when I couldn't find mention of people who were very innovative in the jazz world and started movements such as Jazz Fusion. Just like other reviewers before me, I was stricken by the omission of Barry Miles and Terry Silverlight from the great contributors to this exciting music genre.