Customer Reviews

Swing It!: An Annotated History of Jive

5 star:		(2)
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3 star:		(1)
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To be honest, I'd only give this book four and-a-half stars because, while it does span off into all areas of jazz, it neglects western swing, and that is unforgivable. This book is great in every other way. It may be the best book on the subject of jazz because, through the articles on individual players, you get to read the very story of jazz itself. There's a lot of people in here, that I did not expect to find either. Case in point, the Andrew Sisters (!). There's some cool photographs in here. The introduction is interesting as well. You shouldn't skip over it like you do in most every other book (you know who you are).

Enjoyable and informative; a great book.

"What's shakin' pops?" "Hang tight my brother!," are the kind of words you'll see in this book. Talking jive, or jive talking, whatever you prefer, and the jive masters who started it all. Learn the jive from the Godfathers such as: "Louis Armstrong," "Fats Waller," "Louis Jordan," and the king of jive himself, "Cab Calloway." This book is an exciting read, and very educational. It also talks about the life and deaths of the famous jivers. A perfect selection to add to your book collection.

The subject is fascinating. Milkowski mentions all the most obvious practitioners and makes some excellent and surprising choices of less well-known Jive artists. However, as someone who knows this field pretty well, and owns many of the recordings, I got little more out of the book than I do by reading liner notes to CDs.

What was missing was focused, thorough analysis of the words and the music of specific songs and recordings. That's what is done in books like Alec Wilder's "American Popular Song" and Angela Davis's "Blues Legacies and Black Feminism" - books which truly deepened and expanded my understanding and appreciation of songs I already knew quite well.

I recognize that it is difficult to analyze absurdism, but Christopher Ricks's "Dylan's Visions of Sin" shows one way to deal with the creations of a jive master.

There's no good reason that writing and reading about Jive should be any less fun than listening to it or singing it. I hope "Swing It!" will lay the groundwork for a much more thorough and stimulating study of Jive.