Customer Reviews

The Jazz Guitar

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This is a straight forward listing of all major and not-so-major jazz guitarists mainly from the U.S. and Europe. There is a biography, and a select discography and publications on every player. The book opens with a well-researched introduction on the evolution of jazz guitar, and closes with a section on the guitar as a jazz instrument--from Gibson to Benedetto. If you love jazz guitar, and need a handbook--this is it. Pictures are all in black and white. How I wish Summerfield included color pictures if they are available save for those artists from the early to mid 1900s. This 1998 publication is the 4th edition, and jazz guitar is still evolving with revolutionary players like Tuck Andress and Charlie Hunter paving the way. Maurice Summerfield has provided us a good survey of this art form.

This book is a must for a jazz guitarist or jazz musician library. I do suggest to have it and to read it. The book is full of information about a lot of jazz guitar players, there are a lot of photographs, selected recordings for each jazz guitar player, selected reading.
Marco Leonardi

I've always thought of Summerfield's guitar books (see also, "The Classical Guitar: It's Evolution, Players and Personalities Since 1800") as deluxe periodicals. Lot's of general information, nice photos, kind of mundane. A good reference for the enthusiast, though.