Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century [Hardcover]

Gary Giddins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 2004

Gary Giddins's magnificent book Visions of Jazz has been hailed as a landmark in music criticism. Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post called it "the definitive compendium by the most interesting jazz critic now at work." And Alfred Appel, Jr., in The New York Times Book Review, said it was "the finest unconventional history of jazz ever written." It was the first work on jazz ever to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
Now comes Weather Bird, a brilliant companion volume to Visions of Jazz. In this superb collection of essays, reviews and articles, Giddins brings together, for the first time, more than 140 pieces written over a 14-year period, most of them for his column in the Village Voice (also called "Weather Bird"). The book is first and foremost a celebration of jazz, with illuminating commentary on contemporary jazz events, on today's top musicians, on the best records of the year, and on leading figures from jazz's past. Readers will find extended pieces on Louis Armstrong, Erroll Garner, Benny Carter, Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Billie Holiday, Cassandra Wilson, Tony Bennett, and many others. Giddins includes a series of articles on the annual JVC Jazz Festival, which taken together offer a splendid overview of jazz in the 1990s. Other highlights include an astute look at avant-garde music ("Parajazz") and his challenging essay, "How Come Jazz Isn't Dead?" which advances a theory about the way art is born, exploited, celebrated, and sidelined to the museum.
A radiant compendium by America's leading music critic, Weather Bird offers an unforgettable look at the modern jazz scene.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 146 lively essays, articles and reviews, most of them written for his Weather Bird column in the Village Voice, critic Giddins surveys the jazz scene from 1990 to 2003. He covers concerts, recordings and jazz festivals, and considers new artists as well as older singers and instrumentalists (e.g., Doc Cheatham, Rosemary Clooney, Benny Carter) and those long gone but brought to life on reissued recordings (e.g., Billie Holiday, the Boswell sisters and especially Louis Armstrong, whose seminal place in jazz is underscored by the book’s title, which comes from the famous Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines duet). Designed to be a companion volume to Giddins’s landmark reference, Visions of Jazz, the volume offers an overview of jazz’s avant-garde and discussions of dozens of familiar contemporary artists and relative newcomers, such as pianists Bill Charlap and Jason Moran. Giddins pays tribute to two deceased critics, Martin Williams and Leonard Feather, and praises engineer Robert Parker for his pioneering work in recovering the best sound from remastered 78s. As a reviewer, Giddins is opinionated but generous, with the laudable ability to capture the essence of a performer’s style in vibrant language that makes the music described seem almost audible. In a final essay, he outlines the history of jazz and shows that, contrary to some opinions, the form is very much alive.
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Review

"There is an indescribable joy in finding writers who not only know how to cleverly turn a phrase, but who truly understand how to imbue their writing with personality, life and a personal perspective that makes a reader want to keep coming back for more. Jazz writer Gary Giddins is such writer.... From Louis Armstrong to The Bad Plus, from Dave Holland to Dave Douglas, from Sonny Rollins to David S. Ware and Charlie Christian to Charles Mingus, Weather Bird is about as comprehensive a critical look at jazz as one can find in 600 pages."--John Kelman, allaboutjazz.com

"Giddins has been recognized as the Duke, the Count, the Earl of jazz writers.... No one puts it together like Giddins, whose writing is an unmatched combination of big ideas, witty wordsmithery, historical insight, and musicological know-how.... Thumbing through 'Weather Bird' is like listening to some of your old favorites--and being astonished as you still hear new things.... Giddins has set the bar for jazz scholarship so high no one is likely to top it.... His jazz column was a thing to be treasured--as is this collection."--Will Friedwald, New York Sun

"When it comes to selling the music he loves, he's a gifted evangelist. That's no small thing."--JazzTimes

"A hefty but absorbing collection of the ex-Village Voice critic's recent jazz criticism. As a dilettante jazz listener, I learned something from every paragraph."--Alex Ross, therestisnoise.com

"Giddins is opinionated but generous, with the laudable ability to capture the essence of a performer's style in vibrant language that makes the music described seem almost audible."--Publishers Weekly

"The breadth and depth of Giddins's knowledge is extremely impressive, his ear is astounding, and his masterly style routinely achieves the near impossible in writing engagingly about something that inherently eludes description.... The book stands on its own, but taken with Giddins's acclaimed Visions of Jazz: The First Century, it affords the reader a highly accessible, personal, and perceptive portrait of the development of jazz and its towering figures (and some lesser-known but significant talents), from its beginnings to the present."--Library Journal

"Giddins has a voice. It's full of bold assertions and blunt putdowns. He loves the music to death--that feeling oozes through these 600-plus pages, though Giddins balances emotion with intellect, as does jazz itself. He's a scholarly fanatic, obsessing on the music endlessly, at times comically, fusing a school kid's ebullience to dissertation-like detail. He seems to work as hard at understanding the music as musicians do at mastering jazz's labyrinthine systems."--San Jose Mercury News

"Giddins' insights are so compelling and his writing so crisp that matters like past, present and future become moot.... Like so many of the virtuosos he writes about, Giddins has an explosive way of expressing ideas, sometimes complex ones."--David Rubien, San Francisco Chronicle

"Giddins has probably become the standard by which all other jazz writers and critics have to be judged.... The second volume of Giddins' extraordinary work confirms fully that he was probably the greatest regularly appearing working critic of the music in its history."--The Buffalo News

"Giddins can be read for the sheer pleasure of watching him surround music with language. He's passionate and erudite, a marvelous historian, and always a splendid companion -- an essayist in the disguise of a critic." --Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn

"Gary Giddins is probably the best, most acute, most sheerly explanatory critic of jazz music ever born. These generous, thoughtful essays from the Village Voice and elsewhere resound with the sense of discoveries made during the act of writing." --Peter Straub

"Anyone interested in the artistry and importance of jazz should read this book. Anyone interested in the history of our culture should read this book. Gary Giddins eloquently deciphers the mysteries of jazz in Weather Bird. I was enterained by every page. I learned something and was inspired by every page." --Michael Connelly

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 656 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; First Edition edition (November 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195156072
• ISBN-13: 978-0195156072
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.6 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,886,000 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Solid Perspective on the World of Jazz--Old and New, January 14, 2006

By 

James Robert Parish (Studio City, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century (Hardcover)

Giddins, the author of the wonderfully detailed and perceptive biography of Bing Crosby, presents, interprets, and contrasts a wide array of topics revolving about the world of jazz: ranging from Rosemary Clooney to Louie Armstrong to the harmonious sibling act, The Boswell Sisters, as well as many essays on the state of jazz.
Separately, or in the context of the entire book, Giddins's personal assessments make for provocative reading on a complex, pulsating musical genre.
A great read!

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars jazz fans delight, July 12, 2007

By 

eddie mcbane "pablo the potentate" (st louis, mo USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century (Paperback)

giddins does a marvelous job of identifying the key jazz figures of the ages and sketching their techniques, showmanship and mastery of jazz idioms. a rare blend of scholarship and fascinating repartee.