Masters of Jazz Guitar: Hardcover [Hardcover]

Charles Alexander (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1999

Written by some of the world's leading jazz authorities, this stunning book honors the brilliant artistry and music of selected virtuoso jazz guitarists past and present, reveals how they have redefined jazz over the years, and explores key developments for the guitar in the world of jazz since the early 1900s. It also includes two hundred compelling color photographs that bring the players and their instruments to life. Hardcover.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There are at least three kinds of jazz books: text-laden historical or critical overviews; photo-laden visual chronicles; and collections that detail the operations of a jazz musician, how a musician technically or creatively acts as a pioneer. Masters of Jazz Guitar dabbles happily in all three areas. It's a coffee-table book first, with fantastic, evocative photographs strewn throughout. You rarely see a collection in jazz that features photos of folks like Hungarian six-stringer Atila Zoller just pages away from far better known quantities like Al DiMeola, but the visuals here are just a sweet coating. Inside, the text is even more delicious, with 25 chapters breaking down the jazz guitar traditions, from Django Reinhardt to Wes Montgomery, Pat Metheny, and many more. In addition, the chapters are authored by a slew of great British critics, including Stuart Nicholson and Brian Priestley, each of whom demonstrates a liberal cut in the jazz tradition, an idea of the genre that easily spans swing, bop, free jazz, and the chilly abstractions of Derek Bailey. For the guitar player, this is a splendid and entertaining resource. For the jazz fan, it's all that and more. --Andrew Bartlett

From Library Journal

These two books provide contrasting approaches to jazz photo collections. Masters of Jazz Guitar, an oversized volume, skillfully mixes more than 200 color photos of musicians and album-cover art with 25 insightful essays by notable writers. Beginning with jazz guitar roots, Alexander--publisher of Jazzwise magazine--traces the use of the guitar from swing to bop to bebop, cool, hardbop, and fusion. It contains chapters on such icons as Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Joe Pass, and Wes Montgomery; devotes sections to specialty areas such as Brazilian guitarists; and showcases some of the new talent on both sides of the Atlantic. Hardly just a coffee-table adornment, this volume provides all types of readers with a visually stunning, informative compendium of the many styles of jazz guitar during the last century. Highly recommended. Is This To Be My Souvenir? more modestly compiles over 300 black-and-white photos from the collection of Danish journalist and one-time New York jazz aficionado Rosenkrantz. It includes photographs of prebop giants such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong as well as lesser-known artists like Rube Bloom. B chmann-Moller (You Got To Be Original, Man!) adds paragraph-length biographies of the musicians pictured. Though littered with many stock publicity head shots, the book occasionally rises above a drab effort with revealing, never-before-published photos such as the picture of a happy-go-lucky Fats Waller eating a hot dog on a New York street before a session. Hardly indispensable and suffering in comparison to Masters of Jazz Guitar, this title will appeal mainly to fanatics of prewar jazz.
-David P. Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Backbeat Books (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879305924
• ISBN-13: 978-0879305925
• Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 10.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,774,931 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)