Visions of Jazz: The First Century [Hardcover]

Gary Giddins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1998

Already a jazz classic, Gary Giddins' Visions of Jazz: The First Century contains no less than 78 chapters illuminating the lives of virtually all major figures in jazz history.
From Louis Armstrong's renegade style trumpet playing to Frank Sinatra's intimate crooning, jazz critic Gary Giddins continually astonishes us with his unparalleled insight. In just a few lines, he captures the essence of Louis Armstrong, "He could telegraph with a growl or a rolling of his eyes his independence, confidence, and security. As the embodiment of jazz, he made jazz the embodiment of the individual." Giddins maintains, contrary to the opinion of most jazz enthusiasts, that Armstrongs voice was as much an integral part of creating jazz singing as his trumpet was to creating jazz. Perhaps the most remarkable chapters in the book are those that do pay tribute to the great jazz singers. Billie Holiday profoundly impacted music history, and Giddins eloquently honors her "gutted voice, drawled phrasing, and wayworn features." Many artists, such as Irving Berlin and Rosemary Clooney, have been traditionally dismissed by fans and critics as merely popular derivatives of true jazz. Giddins finally opens the doors of jazz to include these musicians. In addition to this, he devotes an entire quarter of this volume to young, active jazz artists. No other book has so boldly expanded the horizon of jazz and its influences.
Visions of Jazz is an evocative journey through the first one hundred years of jazz that will captivate--and challenge--musicians, music critics, and music lovers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As Gary Giddins makes clear in his introduction to Visions of Jazz, he's not attempting to draw a canonical line in the sand: "Everyone has his or her vision of jazz, and this is mine." Modesty aside, though, it's hard to imagine a critic with a more encyclopedic grasp of detail, or a more lucid, funny, and appropriately musical style. Weighing in at almost 700 pages, the magnificent Visions of Jazz consists of 70 profiles, beginning with a dual portrait of blackface pioneers Bert Williams and Al Jolson and concluding with the klezmer-infatuated clarinetist Don Byron. These sketches mingle musical, biographical, and cultural insights--indeed, one of Giddins's great gifts is to break down the very distinction between such categories. Yet Giddins is hardly an unhinged generalizer, and he loves to zero in on a particular chorus and disclose its charms on a bar-by-bar basis. The pinnacle of this musical microscopy occurs in his Dizzy Gillespie essay, with an almost biblical exegesis of 64 measures from the 1989 version of "Salt Peanuts." But even in these nuts-and-bolts passages, Giddins is always accessible, combining precisely the right proportions of edification and old-fashioned entertainment. The only problem with Visions of Jazz, in fact, is that it makes you so itchy and impatient to hear the music. Fortunately, Giddins has taken care of the problem by curating a companion disc called (you guessed it) Visions of Jazz. This isn't, it should be said, a predictable journey from one jazz milestone to the next. Instead he's assembled a delightfully idiosyncratic anthology, which testifies to the music's irresistible pulse and all-American parentage. --James Marcus

From Booklist

A columnist's prose piles up but, without a lot more work, seldom amounts to a book of lasting worth. Fortunately, Giddins got the Village Voice to let him work half-time, other publications to pay for expansions of what began as columns, and jazz-loving editor Sheldon Meyer to foster his labor of transforming journalism into an interpretation of jazz history conveyed in 79 lucid articles about major performers. The book's organization expresses Giddins' conception of jazz. After a section on "Precursors" (songwriters who created basic jazz repertoire and performers who influenced jazz style), other sections consider figures who epitomize what jazz has been during its century of existence--to wit, as the section titles say, "A New Music," "A Popular Music," "A Modern Music," "A Mainstream Music," "An Alternative Music," "A Struggling Music," and "A Traditional Music." Giddins explains music to nonmusicians superbly, and jazz fans who head to the woodshed with his book, Ted Gioia's fine History of Jazz , and a stack o' sides will be gone--real gone!--for days. Ray Olson

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 690 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 3rd edition (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195076753
• ISBN-13: 978-0195076752
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #862,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #69 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Composers & Musicians > Jazz

More About the Author

GARY GIDDINS is a long-time columnist for the Village Voice and a preeminent jazz critic who received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award, and the Bell Atlantic Award for Visions of Jazz: The First Century in 1998. His other books include Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams--The Early Years, 1903-1940, which won the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award and the ARSC Award for Excellence in Historical Sound Research; Weatherbird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century; Faces in the Crowd; Natural Selection; and biographies of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. He has won an unparalleled six ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Peabody Award in Broadcasting.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The new standard jazz history, May 30, 2000

By 

Richard S. Sullivan (Santa Fe, New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Visions of Jazz: The First Century (Paperback)

Gary Giddins has performed a remarkable feat. He has covered one hundred years of jazz history in one volume. At 700 pages it is big for sure but it is well researched and very readable. At first glance it appears that Giddins has structured and organized the book in the worst possible way by having one chapter on each of the seminal figures of jazz history, and in semi chronological order.

The pitfall here is that it lends itself to a book that looks like lots of note cards strung together. This structure can also obscure the larger picture; jazz is not just the history of a bunch of individuals. Giddins very skillfully avoids both of these traps. Each chapter is well researched, filled with anecdotes about the musician or group, and through the chapters flows the larger background of the historic movements and issues in the development of jazz.

Giddins also approaches jazz with a refreshing "inclusiveness" and wastes precious little energy in defining what jazz is or in dismissing various movements as "unpure" or other such nonsense. In fact he makes the point right up front that jazz owes as much to popular music for its genesis as it does to spirituals or black folk music. In the chapter on Irving Berlin he points out that Tin Pan Alley was a mixture of black, Jewish and other ethnic blends of music, and in fact, Berlin was even accused of having an underground railroad of black song writers in his back room that he was ghosting for. And this, at the time, was not meant as a compliment..

Of course, jazz cannot be discussed in a vacuum and race plays an important part in its history. Giddins adds two bits of trivia, which I find speak volumes in themselves about where we are and where we have come from. One was that Al Jolson lobbied Gershwin for the part of Porgy. He, thankfully, did not get it. Second was that Ellington's all black orchestra played in an Amos and Andy movie in the 30's and the producer had the lighter skinned members of the orchestra blacked up with makeup for the scenes. I suppose this was to dispel any idea in the minds of the movie audience that the band might be integrated.

The book lacks a recommended discography, which would have been valuable. Giddins does comment on the recordings of his subjects in their respective chapters so that is a big help. There is a 2 CD companion set with the same title which is a nice-to-have but it is largely an afterthought and the only connecting material is the 4 inch square flimsy comment sheets that come with the CD which does not really relate back to the book itself.

This is a essential book for any jazz lovers library.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a wonderful book !.`, May 11, 2000

By 

david milne (northeast, usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Visions of Jazz: The First Century (Paperback)

I am 57 years old, a white, suburban male, with almost no experience in jazz. I know what I like, but I don't know why, and although I enjoy older generations of singers and songs, many of the people in this book are unfamiliar beyond their names. That is the triumph of this book. It is so well written, so beautiful and rapsodic,so educational and entertaining, I want to learn more, hear more, and find the connections. The only thing I wish were included were photographs and a 10 cd set to hear the music the author refers to. Now, I have to get a saxophone or trumpet !

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, March 10, 2000

By 

A. Watkins "reggaetapes" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Visions of Jazz: The First Century (Hardcover)

The research and time but into this indepth overview of the first century of jazz is absolutely remarkable. Discussing the most influential and popular jazz artists of the century, this book gives insight into the artists and their music as well. Absolutely outstanding!